{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_57779/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_57779","id":"gutenberg_57779","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57779","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Archaeology & Anthropology","Category: History - American","Category: Journals","Category: Poetry","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Catholic Church -- Periodicals"],"text":"Produced by David Edwards, David King, and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This\nfile was produced from images generously made available\nby The Internet Archive.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                      The Catholic World, Vol. XXV\n\n\n\n\n                          The Catholic World.\n\n          A Monthly Magazine Of General Literature And Science\n\n                               Vol. XXV.\n\n                    April, 1877, To September, 1877.\n\n                               New York:\n               The Catholic Publication Society Company,\n                           9 Barclay Street.\n\n                                 1877.\n\n\n\n\n                                CONTENTS\n\n\nAlba\u2019s Dream, 443, 621, 735\n\nAlong the Foot of the Pyrenees, 651\n\nAmong the Translators, 721\n\nAncient Music, Prose and Poetry of, 395\n\nAnglicanism in 1877, 131\n\n\nCatacombs, Testimony of the, 205\n\nChristendom, The Iron Age of, 459\n\nCluny, The Congregation of, 691\n\nCollege Education, 814\n\nColonization and Future Emigration, 677\n\nCongregation of Cluny, The, 691\n\nCopernican Theory, Evolution and the, 90\n\nCount Frederick Leopold Stolberg, 535\n\n\nDestiny of Man, Doubts of a Contemporary on the, 494\n\nDe Vere\u2019s \u201cMary Tudor,\u201d 261\n\nDivorce and Divorce Laws, 340\n\nDoubts of a Contemporary on the Destiny of Man, 494\n\n\nEchternach, The Dancing Procession of, 826\n\nEmigration, Colonization and Future, 677\n\nEnglish Rule in Ireland, 103\n\nEros, The Unknown, 702\n\nEuropean Exodus, The, 433\n\nEvolution and the Copernican Theory, 90\n\n\nFrance, The Political Crisis in, and its Bearings, 577\n\nFrench Clergy during the late War in France, The, 247\n\n\nGothic Revival, The Story of the, 639\n\n\nHow Percy Bingham Caught his Trout, 77\n\n\nIreland, English Rule in, 103\n\nIrish Revolution, The True, 551\n\nIron Age of Christendom, The, 459\n\n\nJane\u2019s Vocation, 525\n\nJob and Egypt, 764\n\nJudaism in America, The Present State of, 365\n\nJuliette, 667\n\n\nLavedan, The Seven Valleys of the, 748\n\nLepers of Tracadie, The, 191\n\nLetters of a Young Irishwoman to her Sister, 56, 218, 377\n\n\nMadonna-and-Child, The, a Test-Symbol, 804\n\nMarshal MacMahon and the French Revolutionists, 558\n\n\u201cMary Tudor,\u201d De Vere\u2019s, 261\n\nMillicent, 777\n\n\nNagualism, Voodooism, etc., in the United States, 1\n\nNanette, 270\n\nNatalie Narischkin, 32\n\nNile, Up the, 45, 236\n\n\nPan-Presbyterians, The, 843\n\nPhil Redmond of Ballymacreedy, 591\n\nPolitical Crisis in France and its Bearings, The, 577\n\nPope Pius the Ninth, 291\n\nPope\u2019s Temporal Principality, The Beginning of the, 609\n\nPresbyterian Infidelity in Scotland, 69\n\nPresent State of Judaism in America, The, 365\n\nProse and Poetry of Ancient Music, 395\n\nPrussian Chancellor, The, 145\n\nPyrenees, Along the Foot of the, 651\n\n\nRevolutionists, Marshal MacMahon and the French, 558\n\nRomance of a Portmanteau, The, 403\n\n\nSannazzaro, 511\n\nScotland, Presbyterian Infidelity in, 69\n\nSeven Valleys of the Lavedan, The, 748\n\nShakspere, from an American Point of View, 422\n\nSix Sunny Months, 15, 175, 354, 478\n\nStolberg, Count Frederick Leopold, 535\n\nStory of the Gothic Revival, The, 639\n\n\nTennyson as a Dramatist, 118\n\nTestimony of the Catacombs, 205\n\nThe Beginning of the Pope\u2019s Temporal Principality, 609\n\nThe Dancing Procession of Echternach, 826\n\nThe Doom of the Bell, 324\n\nThe European Exodus, 433\n\nThe Romance of a Portmanteau, 403\n\nThe True Irish Revolution, 551\n\nThe Unknown Eros, 702\n\nTracadie, The Lepers of, 191\n\n\nUp the Nile, 45, 236\n\n\nVeronica, 161\n\nVoodooism, Nagualism, etc, in the United States, 1\n\n\nPOETRY.\n\n\nA Thrush\u2019s Song, 689\n\nA Vision of the Colosseum, 318\n\nA Waif from the Great Exhibition, 101\n\nAshes of the Palms, The, 142\n\nAubrey de Vere, To, 676\n\n\nBirthday Song, A, 523\n\nBrides of Christ, The, 420, 556, 701\n\n\nCathedral Woods, 665\n\nColosseum, A Vision of the, 318\n\n\nDante\u2019s Purgatorio, 171\n\n\nFrom the Hecuba of Euripides, 353, 550\n\nFrom the Medea of Euripides, 638\n\n\nHigher, 456\n\n\nItaly, 745\n\n\nMagdalen at the Tomb, 637\n\nMay, 246\n\nMay Carols, Two, 217\n\nMay Flowers, 189\n\n\nPapal Jubilee, The, 289\n\nPope Pius IX., To, 363\n\nPurgatorio, Dante\u2019s, 171\n\n\nSt. Francis of Assisi, 11\n\n\nThe Ashes of the Palms, 142\n\nTo Aubrey de Vere, 676\n\nTranslation from Horace, 854\n\nWild Roses by the Sea, 338\n\n\nNEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\nA Question of Honor, 716\n\nAn Old World as seen through Young Eyes, 143\n\n\nBeside the Western Sea, 718\n\nBessy, 720\n\nBiographical Sketches, 717\n\nBiographical Sketches of Distinguished Marylanders, 573\n\n\nCarte Eccl\u00e9siastique des Etats-Unis de l\u2019Am\u00e9rique, 288\n\nChildhood of the English Nation, The, 284\n\nChrist, The Cradle of the, 281\n\nChristopher Columbus, The Life of, 572\n\nClassic Literature, 280\n\nCode Poetical Reader, The, 287\n\nComplete Office of Holy Week, The, 144\n\nComprehensive Geography, The, 144\n\nConsolation of the Devout Soul, The, 286\n\nCradle of the Christ, The, 281\n\n\nDiscipline of Drink, The, 575\n\nDora, Bessie, Silvia, 720\n\nDr. Joseph Salzmann\u2019s Leben und Wirken, 285\n\n\nEcclesiastical Law, Elements of, 860\n\nEdmondo, 720\n\nEnglish Nation, Childhood of the, 284\n\nEssays and Reviews, 429\n\n\nGeometry, Elements of, 860\n\nGod the Teacher of Mankind, 720\n\nGolden Sands, 430\n\n\nHeroic Women of the Bible and the Church, 288\n\nHofbauer, Ven. Clement Mary, Life of, 432, 572\n\n\nKnown Too Late, 576\n\n\nLady of Neville Court, The, 432\n\nLegends of the B. Sacrament, 574\n\nLibraries, Public, in the United States of America, 855\n\nLife of the Ven. Clement Mary Hofbauer, 432, 572\n\n\nMagister Choralis, 430\n\nMarylanders, Distinguished, Biographical Sketches of, 573\n\nMusica Ecclesiastica, 144\n\n\nParadise of the Christian Soul, The, 576\n\nPhilip Nolan\u2019s Friends, 719\n\nPriesthood in the Light of the New Testament, 713\n\nProblem of Problems, The, 282\n\n\nReply to the Hon. R. W. Thompson, 719\n\nReport of the Board of Education of the City and County of New York, 715\n\nRoman Legends, 718\n\n\nSalzmann\u2019s Leben und Wirken, 285\n\nSidonie, 574\n\nSongs of the Land and Sea, 720\n\nSpirit Invocations, 576\n\nSumma Summ\u00e6, 288\n\n\nThe Catholic Keepsake, 720\n\nThe Little Pearls, 718\n\nThe Pearl among the Virtues, 720\n\nThe Story of Felice, 720\n\nThe Wonders of Prayer, 718\n\n\nWhy are We Roman Catholics? 288\n\n\n\n\n                          THE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n                    VOL. XXV., No. 145.\u2014APRIL, 1877.\n\n\n NAGUALISM, VOODOOISM, AND OTHER FORMS OF CRYPTO-PAGANISM IN THE UNITED\n                                STATES.\n\n\nWhen the Almighty introduced the children of Israel into the Promised\nLand he enjoined the utter extirpation of the heathen races, and the\ndestruction of all belonging to them. But the tribes grew weary of war;\nthey spared, and their subsequent history shows us the result. The\nChanaanites became in time the conquerors and made the Hebrews their\nsubjects politically and in religion. The paganism learned on the banks\nof the Nile had become but a faint reminiscence in the minds of the\ndescendants of those who marched out under Moses and Aaron; but the\nworship of Baal and of Moloch and of Astaroth overran the land. A long\nseries of disasters ending with the overthrow of their national\nexistence, and a seventy years\u2019 captivity, were required to purge the\nHebrew mind of the poison imbibed from the heathen remnant. Then all the\npower of the Alexandrian sovereigns failed to compel them to worship the\ngods of Greece. _Omnes dii gentium d\u00e6monia_ is a statement, clear,\nplain, and definite, that we Catholics cannot refuse to accept. Modern\nindifferentism may regard all the pagan worships as expressions of\ntruth, and the worship of their deities as something merely symbolical\nof the operations of nature, not the actual rendering of divine honors.\nBut to us there can be no such theory. The worship was real and the\nobjects were demons, blinding and misleading men through their passions\nand ignorance. The very vitality of paganism in regaining lost ground,\nand in rising against the truth, shows its satanic character.\n\nThe experience of the Jewish people is reproduced elsewhere. When\nChristianity, beginning the conquest of Europe with Greece and Italy,\nclosed its victorious career by reducing to the cross the Scandinavians\nand the German tribes of Prussia, later even than the conversion of the\nTartaric Russians, there was left in all lands a pagan element, on which\nthe arch-enemy based his new schemes of revolt and war upon the truth.\nWe of the Gentiles, whether from the sunny south or the colder north,\nbear to this day, in our terms for the divisions of the week and year,\nthe names of the deities whom our heathen ancestors worshipped\u2014the\ndemons who blinded them to the truth. The Italian, Frenchman, and\nSpaniard thus keep alive the memory of Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus,\nand Saturn; the German and Scandinavian tribes of Tuisco, Woden, Thor,\nFreya, and Sator. Janus opens the year, followed by Februata, Juno, and\nMars; Maia claims a month we dedicate to Mary, and which the Irish in\nhis own language still calls the Fire of Baal\u2014Baal-tinne.\n\nEarth and time even seem not enough; we go, so to speak, to the very\nfootstool of God, and name the glorious orbs that move in celestial\nharmony through the realms of space, from the very demons who for ages\nreceived from men the honors due to God\u2014from Jupiter and Saturn, Venus\nand Mars, Juno and Ceres, Castor and Pollux, and the whole array of gods\nand demi-gods.\n\nAnd it is a strange fact that the only attempt made to do away with\nthese pagan relics was that of the infidel and bloodthirsty\nRevolutionists of France, pagan in all but this.\n\nWe bear, as it were, badges of our heathen origin\u2014tokens, perhaps, of\nthe general apostasy which, as some interpreters hold, will one day\nbehold the Gentile nations renounce Christianity, when the number of the\nelect is to be completed from the remnant of the Jews.\n\nIn the heresies, schisms, and revolts against the church the pagan\nelement appears as an uprising, an attempt to retrieve a defeat by\ncausing an overthrow of the victorious church even where a restoration\nof the old demonic gods seems in itself hopeless. The German tribes and\nthose of Scandinavia, receiving the faith later than the Latin and\nCeltic races, revolted from the church while the remembrance of pagan\nrites and license was still fresh. The so-called Reformation was\nessentially gross and sensual, and none the less so because the\nChristian influence made the absolute rejection of God for a time\nimpossible, and compelled it to borrow tone, and expression, and the\nouter garb of Christianity. Vice, in its open and undisguised form,\nwould have shocked communities that had tasted of Christian truth. The\narch-enemy was subtle enough to meet the wants of the case, and to\npresent what would appear to the sixteenth century as true, as shrewdly\nas he presented the grosser forms to earlier minds gross enough to\naccept them. But, it may be said, it is going too far to make all\nheresies diabolical; yet the church so speaks. If, in the prayer for the\nJews on Good Friday, it asks that God would remove the veil from their\nhearts, that light might shine in upon the darkness, we cannot but\nobserve that when the petitions arise for those misled by heresy, the\nchurch speaks of them as souls deceived by the fraud of the devil. The\nNew Testament is full of allusions to this war of the arch-enemy: he is\nheld up as one who will come to some as a roaring lion, terrifying and\nalarming; while to others he comes as an angel of light, plausible and\nHeaven-sent, as it were, raising up false teachers whose reasonings\nwould, were that possible, deceive even the elect. And St. Paul tells us\nthat our struggle is not with flesh and blood\u2014not with the men who are\nbut instruments\u2014but with the spirits of darkness who are the prime\nmovers.\n\nThe war waged took different forms. In the north sensualism and the\ngrosser forms of self-indulgence were the revolt against the spirit of\nmortification, of self-conquest and control. It required and had no\naid from the imagination, art, poetry, music. But at the south the old\npagan classics, imbued with the religion of Greece and Rome, became\nthe literature of the new Christian world and exercised a\nsteadily-increasing pagan influence. In the French Revolution, and in\nthe modern less bloody but as deadly Masonic war, we see the old pagan\nideas and thoughts come as if spontaneously to the surface. From the\nreverence for all connected with the old pagan worship down to pagan\ncremation we see the revival, less gross, less sensual than in the\nnorth, idealized by the conception of beauty in form and color, with\nall the allurement of symmetry to win the eye, the ear, the\nimagination. That ancient art and the ancient classics have been a\npotent instrument in weakening the Christian spirit, and in paganizing\nthe learned and the young whom they train, is admitted, and attempts\nare made to counteract the influence.\n\nOur country was settled by communities more or less imbued with all the\nOld-World paganisms, some of which shot out into new and strange forms,\ngenerally of the northern type, hiding sensualism under a cloak of\nreligion, as in the Oneida community and the Mormons, the latter going\ndirectly into the ancient pagan channel in their anthropomorphic\nconception of God.\n\nBut besides this pagan element\u2014the more insidious because scarcely\nsuspected by most, and which many even now would treat as absolutely\nnull for evil\u2014the country was, in its aboriginal inhabitants, utterly\npagan; and within our limits the remnant of those nations and tribes\nwhich now represent the original occupants are to a very great extent as\npagan as they were three centuries ago. Even where tribes have been\nconverted to Christianity, and been for a long series of years under\nChristian teachers, a pagan element often remains, nurtured in secret,\nand heathen rites are practised with the utmost fidelity by many who\nkeep up the semblance of being faithful worshippers of the true God.\nThis crypto-paganism is termed by the Spanish writers in Mexico\nnagualism, and, from its secret character, formed one of the greatest\nafflictions of the missionaries, eating out the very heart of the\napparently flourishing tree planted by the toil and watered by the blood\nof the earlier heralds of the Gospel.\n\nAnother pagan element came with the negro slaves\u2014barbarous men torn from\nAfrica, without culture, imbued with the most degrading superstitions of\nfetichism, and believers in the power of intercourse with the evil\nspirits whom they dreaded and invoked. In the utter disregard of their\nmoral welfare which prevailed in the English colonies, no attempt was\nmade in colonial days to eradicate their pagan ideas and to instil\nChristian principles; on the contrary, efforts were actually made to\nprevent their instruction and baptism, from an idea that Christianity\nwas incompatible with a condition of slavery.\n\nIn time the negro slaves and their descendants imitated externally the\nreligious manner of their white masters, but their old fetichism was\nmaintained, with the invocation of evil spirits and attempted\nintercourse with them. The more Christianity in any form penetrated\namong these people, the more this pagan element assumed a secret\ncharacter, until it became, as it is in our day in the West Indies and\nthe South, under the name of vaudoux or voodoo worship, the secret pagan\nreligion of the negro and mixed races.\n\nAnother pagan element\u2014which cannot be called cryptic, because it meets\nthe full meridian blaze of day, as though it were a thing entitled to\nexistence and protection without limit or check\u2014is the Buddhic worship\nof the Chinese, with perhaps the less debasing ancient paganism of that\nnation. Temples arise and pagan worship is carried on before hundreds of\naltars, chiefly on the Pacific slope. This, with the degraded morals of\nthe heathenism it represents, forms a question difficult to solve, and\nexciting grave attention not only in California, but in other parts of\nthe country.\n\nThe facility with which Mormonism has gained hundreds of thousands of\nvotaries to its monstrous doctrines, and the difficulty under our system\nof laws of counteracting its influence, leaving its suppression simply\nto the general condemnation it receives from the public opinion of the\ncountry, convince all thinking men that it is a great and serious danger\nto the well-being of our country in the future. It lies between the\nunchecked, uncensured paganism of the Chinese in California and the\nheathenism of the wild Indian tribes, the nagualism of the New Mexican\nPueblos, and, still further east, the voodooism of the negro. Who can\nforesee the fearful creation of evil that the Prince of Darkness may\nform out of this material ready to his hand? Buddhism overran nations of\nvarious origin, civilization, and mode of life\u2014the lettered Chinese, the\nnobler Japanese, the wild Tartar; it has adaptability, as seen in its\nassuming external Christian dress and ideas, taken from early envoys of\nthe faith. Mormonism shows a vitality and a power of extension that none\nwho remember its origin could, at the time it arose, have believed\nwithin the limits of possibility. The voodoo mysteries permeate through\na population numbered by millions. If nagualism and Indian paganism\nexist only among tribes rapidly hurrying to extinction, these tribes\nhave shown in some cases recuperative power, and, fostered by the\nstronger heathen elements, may revive sufficiently to be a source of\nmischief. It may be said that, except in the case of the Mormons, this\nelement is confined to inferior races\u2014the Mongolian, negro, and\nIndian\u2014and cannot affect the mass of the American people; but this is\nreally not the fact, as in almost every case whites living near the\ninferior races do actually imbibe some of these pagan superstitions and\nbecome believers in them and in their power, while the spread of the\nso-called spiritualism through all classes in this country shows at once\na vehicle for the propagation of any form of diabolism that may rise up\nwith dazzling powers of attraction.\n\nThe influence of crypto-paganism on the whites can be seen in our\nhistory. The New England settlers made comparatively short work of the\nnative tribes, who were in their eyes Chanaanites not to be spared.\nBut though they slaughtered the men, women were saved, and not always\nfrom motives that will stand too close a scrutiny. Indian women became\nslaves in the houses of the New England colonists. If there was any\noutward conformity to Christian usage, most of them remained at heart\nas heathen as ever. The Indians of almost every known tribe avowedly\nworshipped the Spirit of Evil. North and South missionaries found the\nnatives acknowledge and justify this practice. As a rule they admitted\na Spirit of Good, but, as they argued, being inherently good, he could\ndo only good to them, and need not be propitiated; whereas the Spirit\nof Evil continually sought to injure men, and must necessarily be\npropitiated to ward off the intended scourge. This adoration of the\nEvil One, and the attempt to propitiate him, win his favor, and do his\nwill, the Indian slaves bore with them in their bondage. What New\nEngland witchcraft really was\u2014diabolic, delusion, or imposture\u2014has\nnever been settled. No sound Catholic divine versed in mystic theology\nhas ever, to our knowledge, marshalled and sifted the facts, and the\nevidence cited to support them, in order to come to any reasonable\ntheory in the matter. New England of the seventeenth century firmly\nbelieved it diabolical; New England of the nineteenth century as\ndogmatically decides that it was delusion or imposture; but,\nunfortunately, neither seventeenth-century nor nineteenth-century New\nEnglandism can be deemed a very safe guide, and each is condemned by\nthe other and admits its liability to err, although both had the same\nenergy for forcing their opinions for the time being on all mankind.\n\nBut, whatever the real character of New England witchcraft was, one\nthing is certain: Indian crypto-paganism was at the root of it. Tituba,\nthe Indian servant of Samuel Parris, the minister of Salem, practised\nwild incantations and imbued the daughter and niece of her master with\nher whole system of diabolism. The strange actions of the children\nexcited alarm. Tituba was arraigned as a witch and confessed her\nincantations; but the devil protects his own. Witchcraft trials began,\nand Tituba and her fellow Indian slaves, who must have quaked for the\nmoment, saw themselves, not punished, but used as witnesses, until more\nthan a hundred women were apprehended and most of them committed to\nprison. It did not end there. The gallows was to play its part. Nineteen\nwere hanged, and one Giles Corey was pressed to death. If Tituba invoked\nher demon to avenge his fallen votaries in her tribe, she was gratified\nby beholding the victorious whites murder each other at her instance.\nNeither Tituba nor any other of the Indians, though they avowed their\nintercourse with the fallen spirits, was tried or condemned for\nwitchcraft. What took place in the Parris household took place in\nhundreds of others where Indian slaves were kept, as in our time in the\nSouth. Thousands of children have there been imbued by their negro\nnurses with the pagan obeah and voodoo superstitions, as doubtless on\nthe Pacific slope many a mother is horrified to find her child\u2019s mind\nfilled with the grossest heathenism by the Chinese servant, and fondly\nhopes she has disabused her little one, when, in reality, the faith and\nthe terror then implanted in the child\u2019s susceptible mind will last\nthrough life, burned into the very soul by the vivid impression\nproduced.\n\nA Catholic may say that the grace of baptism will protect many from this\nevil; but, alas! to how many thousands of families in this land is\nbaptism a stranger! In them there is nothing to check the insidious\nprogress of evil.\n\nThe Huron nation was converted to Christianity by the early Catholic\nmissionaries, and the Iroquois were induced by them to abandon the\nworship of their evil spirit Tharonhyawagon, or Agreskoue, whose name\neven seems to be unknown to the present so-called pagan bands, who\nworship the God of the Christians, but with strange heathenish rites.\nThe vices prevalent among the Hurons of Ohio, nominal Catholics in the\nlast century, show that secret worship of evil spirits still prevailed.\nAll know how the medicine-men have maintained their ground among the\nChippewas, Ottawas, and other Algonquin tribes on the borders of the\ngreat lakes, although Catholic missionaries began their labors among\nthem two centuries ago. Whenever for a time Catholicity has seemed to\ngain a tribe, any interruption of the mission for a brief period seems\nto revive the old diabolism. There are medicine-men now with votaries as\nearnest as any whom Dablon, Marquette, and Allouez tried to convert in\nthe seventeenth century. But data are wanting for a full consideration\nof the subject as to these and other northern tribes.\n\nOf the nagualism in the Texas tribes after their conversion by the\nFranciscan missionaries we have evidence in the life of Father Margil, a\nholy and illustrious laborer in that field. The tribes among whom he and\nhis compeers labored have vanished, but the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico\nstill remain. The succession of missionaries became irregular; no bishop\nvisited those parts to confirm the converts; the revolutions following\nthat which separated Mexico from Spain almost utterly destroyed the\nIndian missions of New Mexico. Then the nagualism which had been\nevidently maintained from the first by a few adepts and in great secrecy\nbecame bolder; and these tribes, whose conversion dates back nearly\nthree centuries, revived the old paganism of their ancestry, mingled\nwith dreams of Montezuma\u2019s future coming, taught them by the Mexican\nIndians who accompanied the first Spanish settlers.\n\nFather Margil once asked some Indians: \u201cHow is it that you are so\nheathenish after having been Christians so long?\u201d The answer was: \u201cWhat\nwould you do, father, if enemies of your faith entered your land? Would\nyou not take all your books and vestments and signs of religion, and\nretire to the most secret caves and mountains? This is just what our\npriests, and prophets, and sooth-sayers, and nagualists have done to\nthis time and are still doing.\u201d Experience showed, too, that this\nworship of the evil spirit assumed the form of various sects, some\nimitating the Catholic Church in having bishops, priests, and\nsacraments, which they secretly administered to consecrate their victims\nto Satan before they received the real ones from the hands of the\nmissionaries.\n\nAll those who have studied at all the pueblos of New Mexico describe to\nsome extent the nagual rites, some of which are indeed hidden under the\nveil of secrecy in their estufas, but others are more open and avowed.\n\nColonel Meline, after noting the execution of two men accused of\nwitchcraft and sacrificing children, says of the Pueblos generally \u201cthat\nthey are more than suspected of clinging to and practising many of their\nancient heathen rites. The estufa is frequently spoken of as their\nheathen temple.\u201d[1]\n\nFootnote 1:\n\n  Meline, _Two Thousand Miles on Horseback_, pp. 225-226.\n\nA report addressed to the Cortes in Spain by Don Pedro Bautista Pino in\n1812 says: \u201cAll the pueblos have their estufas\u2014so the natives call\nsubterranean rooms with only a single door, where they assemble to\nperform their dances, to celebrate feasts, and hold meetings; these are\nimpenetrable temples where they gather to discuss mysteriously their\ngood or evil fortunes, and the doors are always closed on the Spaniards.\n\n\u201cAll these pueblos, in spite of the sway which religion has had over\nthem, cannot forget a part of the beliefs which have been transmitted to\nthem, and which they are careful to transmit to their descendants. Hence\ncome the adoration they render the sun and moon, and other heavenly\nbodies, the respect they entertain for fire, etc.\u201d[2]\n\nFootnote 2:\n\n  _Noticias._, pp. 15, 16.\n\n\u201cThe Pueblo chiefs seem to be at the same time priests; they perform\nvarious simple rites by which the power of the sun and of Montezuma is\nrecognized, as well as the power (according to some accounts) of the\nGreat Snake, to whom, by order of Montezuma, they are to look for life.\nThey also officiate in certain ceremonies with which they pray for rain.\nThere are painted representations of the Great Snake, together with that\nof a misshapen, red-haired man declared to stand for Montezuma. Of this\nlast there was also in the year 1845, in the pueblo of Laguna, a rude\neffigy or idol, intended, apparently, to represent only the head of the\ndeity.\u201d[3]\n\nFootnote 3:\n\n  Bancroft, _Native Races_, iii. 173, 174.\n\nOthers portray their setting up of idols or mementos of their national\ndeities, and surrounding them with circles of stones, repairing to the\nspot regularly to pray.\n\nThe Pueblos thus show, after nearly three centuries of Catholic\ninstruction, almost ineradicable elements of heathenism.\n\nOf the real interior life of other tribes we know comparatively little:\nbut by the example of so-called prophets who arise from time to time in\none part or another, giving new life to the old heathenism, borrowing\nsome idea from Christianity, and using their new creed as a means to\nexcite a great national feeling, we see clearly that in the Indian mind\nthe old worship, though dormant and concealed, has still a power and\nmastery.\n\nTo this deep-rooted feeling the Mormons have appealed, and succeeded in\ndrawing large numbers within the circle of their influence. Almost all\nthe Indian wars are stimulated by some prophet promising victory and the\ntriumph of the old Indian beliefs.\n\nThe Cherokees have embraced many usages of civilization, and the\nChoctaws approach them. The Chickasaws, the other great tribe in Indian\nTerritory, retain more of their old manners. In all these tribes\nProtestantism has gained a hearing and has a few church members; but\nthere are strong pagan parties, and even among the Christian part there\nis undoubtedly a strong old heathen element beneath an outward\nconformity to Christianity. It was strongly urged on Congress a few\nyears since to erect this tract into a recognized territory of Oklahoma,\nwith a government like that of other Territories, preparatory to its\nadmission as a State. The outbursts of savage fury between factions in\nthe tribes, however, made men hesitate to give autonomy to them.\n\nInvestigation will, we think, show that crypto-paganism largely controls\nthis mass of native Indians, and is the great obstacle to their\nimprovement. It is, however, confined to themselves, and we do not find\nthat even in New Mexico the whites of Spanish origin have, during their\nlong residence near the pueblos, adopted to any extent the heathenish\nusages of those tribes. The isolation of the nations in Indian Territory\nhas also prevented any great external influence. Thus this Indian\ncrypto-paganism, though wide-spread and unbroken, seems doomed, unless\ntaken in hand by some master-spirit.\n\nThe voodoo worship of the negroes shows greater vitality and\ndiffusiveness. The slaves taken in early times to St. Domingo came from\nall parts of Africa, some from the fiercest tribes addicted to human\nsacrifices and cannibalism. They brought over their demonic worship, and\nby their force of character propagated it among the negroes generally.\nIt became the great religion of the slaves, was secretly practised, and\nexercised a very powerful influence. As a secret society, with terrible\nforms of initiation and bloody rites, it became a power in Hayti, and\nhas caused more than one revolution. Cases of the offering up of infants\nin sacrifice, and devouring the victims, were exposed a few years since,\nand numbers were arrested. Some were put to death, but the power of the\norganization was unbroken, and Soulouque, if we are not mistaken, was\nsaid to have owed his power to the voudoux.\n\nSt. Domingo was part French and part Spanish, and in time voodooism\nspread from the French portion of the island, where it seems to have\noriginated, to the Spanish division, and thence to Cuba.\n\nIn this latter island it exists to this day, and has found votaries\namong the whites. A recent French traveller\u2014Piron\u2014describes a fearful\nscene which he witnessed in the house of a lady whom he never would have\nsuspected of any connection with so monstrous a sect. A naked white girl\nacted as a voodoo priestess, wrought up to frenzy by dances and\nincantations that followed the sacrifice of a white and a black hen. A\nserpent, trained to its part, and acted on by the music, coiled round\nthe limbs of the girl, its motions studied by the votaries dancing\naround or standing to watch its contortions. The spectator fled at last\nin horror when the poor girl fell writhing in an epileptic fit.[4]\n\nFootnote 4:\n\n  Piron, _L\u2019Ile de Cuba_, pp. 48-52.\n\nWhile France held St. Domingo and Louisiana the intercourse between the\ntwo colonies was constant, and voodooism took root on the banks of the\nMississippi soon after its settlement. The early historian of Louisiana,\nLe Page du Pratz, says: \u201cThe negroes are very superstitious and attached\nto their prejudices and to charms which they call grisgris. These should\nnot be taken from them or spoken about; for they would think themselves\nruined, were they deprived of them. The old negro slaves soon disabuse\nthem.\u201d[5] These old negroes were scarcely, it will be confessed,\napostles to convert idolaters. In fact, their influence extended only to\ninducing the new-comers to practise their rites and use the symbols in\nsecrecy.\n\nFootnote 5:\n\n  _Hist. de la Louisiane_, i. p. 335.\n\nLe Page du Pratz himself, in defeating a negro plot to massacre the\ncolonists at New Orleans as the Indians had done at Natchez, found that\nthey attributed their defeat to his being a devil\u2014that is, possessing\none more powerful than their own. The voodoo rites have been kept up in\nLouisiana from the commencement, and the power exercised by the priests\nand priestesses of this horrible creed is very great. Working in secret,\nwith all the terrors of mystery and threats of bodily harm, it is just\nsuited to the negro mind, and has spread over much of the South. As in\nCuba and St. Domingo, the white children in many cases learn of it from\ntheir negro nurses, and the weak, as they grow up, never shake off its\nhold on their imagination. Human sacrifices are certainly offered in\ntheir infamous rites, and the escape of an old negro doomed to the\nsacrificial altar drew down upon the voodoos the police of New Orleans\nonly a few years ago.\n\nThe Abb\u00e9 Domenech[6]\u2014whom we should hesitate to cite, were not his\naccounts here in conformity with numerous others\u2014represents voodooism as\nhaving not only spread through Texas, but into Mexico where, in a\ndepraved border community, its horrid rites and secret poisonings are\ncarried on. His details as to the mode of worship in New Orleans\u2014the\nnudity, the use of serpents, the dances\u2014correspond with the accounts\ngiven from Cuba. Reports from Mobile attest its existence there with\nsimilar features.\n\nFootnote 6:\n\n  _Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico._\n\nWhere voodooism prevails it has not only its adepts and votaries, but a\nlarge class who, full of terror, buy at exorbitant prices from voodoo\npriests charms against its spells.\n\nThe late war has given the negroes opportunities for education and a\nfuture, but the new prosperity has not broken the power of voodooism. Of\na thing kept secret and hidden, which many will deny and more be ashamed\nof, it is not easy to get precise data or details. Yet from time to time\nrevelations are made attesting its vitality. A negro member of the\nLouisiana Legislature, and a minister in one of the Protestant\ndenominations, was reported within a few years as undergoing certain\nrites to free himself from the spell of a voodoo priestess. We may\ntherefore easily infer that the negroes, being not only self-governing,\nbut governing the whites in many parts by force of numbers, are not\nlikely to be influenced so much by whites as by the crafty and aspiring\namong themselves. They will concentrate, and in their concentration this\nvoodoo power cannot but increase and all vestiges of Christianity\ndisappear. The field upon which it can work\u2014the vast colored population\nof the South\u2014is ready for it. Some may think the whole matter a shallow\nimposture that will soon die out before the effulgence of newspapers;\nbut it really shows no signs of decline, and, if no cases have been\nunearthed which show such frightful enormities as those in Hayti, it is\ncertainly attended with ceremonies which, for their very indecency and\npampering of the worst vices, should cause it to be rooted out, even by\nthose who would regard the direct worship of the devil as something with\nwhich the state cannot interfere.\n\nOpen the map of the United States, and see how a band of country from\nthe Atlantic to the Pacific is thus permeated by heathenism. In the\nSouthern States the voodoo worship; New Mexico and Indian Territory with\nnagualism; Utah with Mormonism; California with Buddhism. Throughout\nthis tract the church planted there from one to three centuries is still\nweak, and, except in California, is not gaining ground with any\nrapidity. Everywhere Catholic influence is less potent than others. The\nvery climate, enervating and disposing to ease and indulgence, seems to\nlend power to systems that gratify the passions which the church teaches\nher children to mortify and control.\n\nIt looks as though the Prince of Evil were seeking to form a kingdom for\nhimself, combining all the elements for his evil spirits to carry on the\nwar of conquest. St. Jude represents Satan as endeavoring to secure the\nbody of Moses, doubtless to lead the Jews into idolatry and make them\nworship him. If he tried to induce even our Lord to fall down and\nworship him, we cannot wonder that he should try to induce weak men to\ndo so. St. Paul constantly represents to us our struggle in life as a\nwar against the evil spirits. St. Ignatius, in the \u201cExercise of the Two\nStandards,\u201d pictures Satan as arrayed against our Lord with all his\nhosts. The battle seems to take actual form, and we should be prepared\nfor it. In this battle we have powerful auxiliaries placed at our\ncommand, in the persons of the angelic powers, and though the church,\nthrough her whole liturgy and offices, reminds us of their ministry and\ninvokes their aid,[7] we seem to be forgetful of their existence, and go\ninto the fight unaided by forces at our command\u2014forces never defeated,\nand ready to meet our call. What wonder that we are often worsted? Our\nbooks of devotion give a single prayer to our guardian angel. Few think\nbeyond this. The angel guardians of the country, of our city, of our\nchurch, our home, of our family, of those committed to our charge, are\nall fighting for us, earnestly if we seek their aid. St. Michael, the\nguardian angel of the Jewish nation, defeated Satan\u2019s attempt to use the\nbody of Moses for his wicked designs. So in our day the greater\nmanifestation of diabolical agencies should lead us to ask God to send\nhis angels to our aid. The parents, in training and protecting from evil\nthe children given to them, have mighty coadjutors in the angels of\nthese very children, the teacher in those of his scholars, the pastor in\nthose of his flock. There may be saints to whom we have a special\ndevotion; but in the angels we have powerful spirits directly deputed by\nGod to aid us, and whose duty it is, as it were, to combat by our side\nagainst the enemies of salvation.\n\nFootnote 7:\n\n  Thus in the Mass she asks that the offerings be carried on high by the\n  angels; in the Asperges, and Complin she begs God to send down his\n  angels to cherish, guard, and protect all within the building; in the\n  Itinerary she calls St. Raphael especially to protect all who travel;\n  in the baptismal service she asks God to send an angel to guard the\n  catechumen and lead him to the grace of baptism; in Extreme Unction,\n  to give all dwelling, in the house a good angel guardian; the\n  Commendation of the Departing Soul is a constant appeal to the holy\n  angels; and the prayer after death asks that the departed soul may be\n  received by the holy angels and brought to Paradise, her real country.\n  She even asks that an angel be deputed to guard the grave.\n\nBut we are not giving a devotional treatise: or attempting to propose\nany new form. Our country is dear to us, and, although it were too\nsanguine to hope that in the days of any now living the true faith will\nreach such a point that its influence will be marked on the public mind\nand heart, we cannot be insensible to the apparently formidable\ngathering of heathen elements in a section of country where the very\nclimate seems to lend them new force in building up a great empire of\npaganism.\n\nA new impulse has been given to our Indian missions, which, owing,\ndoubtless, to causes easy of explanation, have never received from the\nCatholic body at large in the United States the moral and temporal aid\nthey so richly deserved. In fact, the missionaries labored on, almost\nignored and forgotten, so that an attempt was made through the\ninstrumentality of the federal government to crush them out altogether.\nThis has roused Catholics to an interest in them, and this interest\nshould be kept up. By prayer, by alms, by direct aid, we must help the\nmissionaries and their coadjutors, the devoted religious women in the\nmissions, to fight the good fight, and root out, so far as lies in us,\nthe paganism of the Indian tribes, where still avowed or cloaked under\nan external show of Christianity.\n\nOn another paganism, that of the Chinese, and on that of the Mormons, we\ncannot apparently act yet directly, but we can meet them by prayer, and\nin the regions infected Catholics should exercise the utmost vigilance\nthat this pagan influence should never enter their households, lest\ntheir children, if not themselves, may at last imitate the wisest of\nkings, not in his wisdom, but in his idolatry.\n\nThe great and festering sore of voodooism afflicting the negroes calls\nfor all our zeal, as Catholics, to help the bishops and clergy in the\nSouth, and the English society which has entered this field, by prayer,\nby material aid, by earnest and sustained efforts to preserve the purity\nof faith among colored Catholics. The Church in the Southern States,\ncrippled by the disasters of the late war, is entirely unable to cope\nsingle-handed with the new duty imposed upon it by the altered condition\nof affairs. She appeals to us, and as Catholics we cannot remain deaf to\nher call.\n\n\n\n\n                         ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.\n\n\n    O love! you lay the volume by\n      That held you like a holy chime\u2014\n    _Life of St. Francis_\u2014with a sigh\n      Which says: \u201cThat was a pleasant time\n    In old Perugia\u2019s mountain-town\n    On the Umbrian valley looking down\u2014\n      Flushed like an Eden in sublime\n    Environment of mountains vast;\n      And do not you, as I, recall\n    What, morn and even, and first and last,\n        Attracted most of all?\n\n    \u201cThe peaks of Apennine we knew\n      By heart\u2014the many-citied land\n    Where-through the infant Tiber drew\n      A thousand streams in silver band,\n    Filled with the murmur of the pines\n    That told the olives and the vines\n      They heard the sea on either hand.\n    But, kindled on its lofty cape,\n      A light-tower to that inland coast\n    O\u2019er waves of greenwood, corn, and grape,\n        What object charmed us most?\n\n    \u201cAssisi seated in the sun!\n      All round from Monte Sole\u2019s height\n    The insistent fascination\n      Of its white walls enthralled our sight.\n    And moon and starlight on its slope\n    Showed but a dimmer heliotrope.\n      We watched it many a mellow night:\n    Once when a warrior comet came,\n      And flashed, in high heaven opposite,\n    A sheathless sword of pallid flame.\n        Drawn from out the infinite.\n\n    \u201cTo sweet St. Francis\u2019 native town,\n      Alas! we made no pilgrimage;\n    Nor to St. Mary\u2019s, lower down,\n      His Portiuncula hermitage.\n    We knew but by its star-like shine\n    The splendors of Assisi\u2019s shrine,\n      In mystic triple stage on stage.\n    It only asked one summer\u2019s day\u2014\n      How strange it seems in you and me!\u2014\n    That narrow vale of Umbria\n        Made severance like the sea.\u201d\n\n    O gentle wife! I cannot tell\n      To wistful eyes of retrospect\n    What _dolce far niente\u2019s_ spell,\n      In that midsummer, caused neglect;\n    What imp, procrastination hight,\n    Seduced us when we meant no slight.\n      In life, all paradox and defect,\n    Easy is difficult\u2014the friend\n      Next door to visit\u2014duties small,\n    To be done any day, that end\n        In not being done at all.\n\n    \u201cHow can this trite philosophy\n      Console me in my great regret?\u201d\n    Nay, love, look not so tearfully,\n      And we will find some comfort yet.\n    What figure, think you, in those streets\n    The gentle, loving youth repeats,\n      Singing his gay French canzonet?\n    Doth either temple\u2019s sumptuous pride\n      Suit stone and crust for bed and board,\n    And bridegroom joyful in his bride\u2014\n        The poverty of our Lord?\n\n    O brown serge holier than the cope!\n      Was mystery veiled in long-sleeved gown?\n    And awful was his girdle-rope?\n      Were skirts that swept his ankles brown?\n    Bore he, in hands and feet and side,\n    The five wounds of the Crucified?\n      Did high God send his seraph down,\n    On the lone mount, to imprint such sign?\n      His brethren wondered, overawed;\n    Yet not even this made more divine\n        That sweet-souled man of God!\n\n    O happy swallows! circling skim\n      And twitter o\u2019er the gray church-towers.\n    He called you sisters; ye with him\n      Chirped sweetly when he sang the Hours.\n    And ye, his brothers innocent,\n    With whom he talked where\u2019er he went,\n      Play, lamb and leveret, in the flowers!\n    Wise foolishness and melting ruth\u2014\n      That move deep chords, O love! in you\u2014\n    Born of child-instincts, or a truth\n        He and the angels knew!\n\n    \u201cO Sun, my brother above all!\n      Stars, Sister Moon, in praise accord.\n    Chaste, humble, useful, precious, full,\n      O Sister Water, freely poured!\n    Robust and jocund, strong and bright,\n    O Brother Fire! illume the night.\n      Live tongues of beauty, praise the Lord!\n    O Brother Wind! thy wonders weave\n      In clouds and the blue sky above,\n    Wherefrom all creatures life receive,\n        And weave them all of love.\n\n    \u201cConfess the Lord, O Mother Earth!\n      Through whom so beautiful thou art.\n    To herb, fruit, flower, he giveth birth\n      And color from Love\u2019s eyes and heart.\n    Serve God!\u201d he sang. His sermons good,\n    Dear to shy creatures of the wood,\n      Could even to bole and branch impart\n    Their glowing sense: a conscious soul\n      Kin to his own in all things moved.\n    His monument is grand\u2014the whole\n        Creation that he loved.\n\n    O Life, that sought to imitate\n      The one pure type, its perfect Chief,\n    By its own purity separate\n      As is the dew-drop on a leaf,\n    Which yet doth from its luminous veil\n    A glory to the flower exhale!\n      Close sympathy with no touch of grief!\n    Let fair Assisi on its slope,\n      An unremote yet reachless star,\n    Lend to our hearts another trope,\n        So near and yet so far.\n\n    O Poet, who in faltering rhyme\n      First wove the Tuscan into song!\n    O poem and miracle sublime,\n      Thyself, in Dante sweet and strong!\n    To his fourth circle of Paradise,\n    To the King-splendor of the skies,\n      Dost thou, the elder seer, belong.\n    Thee \u201cSister Death\u201d hath glorified;\n      And what an image we have won:\n    Through kindled mists of mountain-side,\n        Assisi in the sun!\n\n                           SIX SUNNY MONTHS.\n    BY THE AUTHOR OF \u201cTHE HOUSE OF YORKE,\u201d \u201cGRAPES AND THORNS,\u201d ETC.\n                              CHAPTER XI.\n                       A MORNING WITH ST. PETER.\n\n\nAs the day approached for their visit to the crypt of St. Peter, Mr.\nVane absented himself very much from the house, and the last day was\nspent entirely away, from early in the morning till late in the evening.\nThey understood that he was to make his First Communion with them, but\nasked no questions, leaving him entirely free, and he gave no\nexplanation. The Signora and the two daughters made a Triduum for him in\nthe mornings; and so deeply did they feel the event for him that they\nlooked forward to their own Communion almost as if it were to be their\nfirst, and lived as though in retreat for two or three days.\n\n\u201cI feel,\u201d Bianca said, \u201cas if I had been having clandestine interviews\nwith some one outside the house, and that now papa were going to invite\nhim home, and make a feast in his honor. Dear papa! how very good he is;\nhow much better than his daughters!\u201d\n\nShe would have been quite shocked and alarmed had any one told her that\nshe entertained such a sentiment, but there was, in fact, in her heart\nan undercurrent of pride in her father\u2019s piety, and a feeling that the\nLord would certainly be particularly pleased with him.\n\nAt length the day dawned, the sweet bells of Santa Maria Maggiore, the\nslipshod bells of Sant\u2019 Antonino, all the bells in hearing, ringing\ntheir three, four, five, and one out of the white silence of the aurora.\n\nThe Signora smiled to hear, through the open doors, Isabel start awake\nat the sound, and exclaim in her clear voice: \u201cThe angel of the Lord\ndeclared unto Mary.\u201d\n\n\u201cI really must not have such a preference for Bianca,\u201d she said to\nherself, \u201cespecially now when Bianca has a lover. Isabel is very honest\nand earnest.\u201d\n\nThe Alba turned to a rosy silver, the silver deepened to gold, the north\nand west were Tyrian purple, and the sun was on the eastern horizon,\npainting the long lines of the aqueducts, and the billows of the\nCampagna, and the towers, high roofs, and cupolas of the city with a\nfiery pencil. A flock of goats pattered by in the street, to be milked\nat the doors; hand-carts piled with fruit were dragged slowly in from\nsome garden near the walls; three men walked slowly past, in single\nfile, with large baskets on their heads piled with rich flowers. The\nperfume of them came up to the window as the Signora leaned out. A\nwine-cart came slowly down from the Esquiline piazza, laden high with\nsmall barrels and half and quarter barrels, brought in by night to the\nRoman shops from cool grottoes in the Castelli Romani, set here or there\non the beautiful mountains that were now a velvety blue under the\neastern sky. At the back of this cart was perched high the little white\ndog, with his nose on his paws, and his eyes half shut, but all ready to\nstart up with a sharp bark if any one but looked hard at his precious\nload. In front, under the side awning, slept the driver. The horse\ndreamed along through the morning, and the little bunch of bells slung\nto the cart jingled softly as they went.\n\n\u201cIt is certainly earth, but a most beautiful earth,\u201d the Signora\nthought, sighing with content, as she went out to fasten the girls\u2019\nveils on for them.\n\n\u201cThere is no need of putting on gloves,\u201d she said, seeing Isabel drawing\nhers on. \u201cDidn\u2019t you know, child, that one should not wear gloves when\ngoing to Communion?\u201d\n\n\u201cLive and learn,\u201d said Isabel, and took her gloves off again. \u201cI have\nhad a doubt on the subject, but I never knew.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnother little item you may not know,\u201d the Signora said. \u201cThe\n_canonico_ being a bishop, you have to kiss his ring before receiving.\nHe will himself touch it to your lips after he has taken the Host in his\nfinger and thumb to give you. When I first came here, I was embarrassed\nby many of these customs, which everybody here takes for granted, you\nknow.\u201d\n\nNothing could be pleasanter than Mr. Vane\u2019s manner that morning\u2014serious\nand quiet, but less grave, even, than usual. Seeing Isabel\u2019s eyes fixed\nanxiously on him while the Signora spoke, he smiled and said: \u201cI am glad\nyour education is not quite finished, my dear. I am still more ignorant,\nand you must all teach me. I wish, Signora, that you would be so good as\nto stay by me this morning, so that, if I should be in doubt, I may look\nat you. I think you would be more correct and prompt than the children\nhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d she said, \u201cI will be near you.\u201d\n\nThe porter had sprinkled and swept the stairs just before they went\ndown, and the place was shaded, fresh, and cool. Carlin was whistling to\nhis baby while his wife prepared breakfast\u2014a whistling as soft and clear\nas the song of a bobolink. The other birds adopted him, and answered him\nback from the garden, a little surprised, it may be, at the length and\nsmoothness of his carol. The air was so richly scented with\norange-flowers that one might almost have thought worth while to bottle\nit, and there was a rustling sound, exquisitely cool and pervading, of\nfalling water. In a shady corner near the door of the porter\u2019s room was\na tiny brazier with a handful of glowing coals in it, and over this\nAugusto was making his early cup of coffee. Out doors everything shone\nwith a golden color\u2014the light, the houses, the streets\u2014and in that frame\nthe sky was set like a gem, so blue that it could be compared to\nnothing, and nothing could approach it.\n\nThey did not look about as they drove slowly through the city, but,\nleaning back silent, had a mingled sense of Rome and heaven. It was\nimpossible for any of them to imagine anything more perfect, or to ask\nfor any addition to their happiness. Earth and heaven had united to\nbless them, and every gift of earth worth the taking was theirs. To have\nbeen sovereigns would have oppressed them; to have had millions at their\ndisposal would have been a care and annoyance. They had enough, and\ntheir cup was running over.\n\nThe narrow streets were beginning to stir as they passed, and some were\ndim, and all were in shade. Not a ray of sunshine touched them, except\nin the piazzas, till they reached the bridge of Sant\u2019 Angelo. Then all\nwas light, for the sun shot straight on through the Borgo, and all the\npiazza of St. Peter\u2019s was in a blaze. They were almost faint with the\nheat as they walked up the ascent; but in a few minutes they were inside\nthe sacred door, where, before entering, summer and winter meet to give\nthe kiss of peace on the threshold, and the one quenches her fiery\narrows, and the other warms his frosty breath.\n\nNot a person was in sight as they went in, but they heard, faintly and\nfar away, the mingled voices of the choir coming and going. The circle\nof ever-burning lamps twinkled like a constellation before them, and\ninvited their steps. Half way up they paused before the chapel of the\nBlessed Sacrament, which is an exception to the cheerful grandeur of St.\nPeter\u2019s. For this dim chapel gives a sense of remoteness and mystery,\nand the inner chamber, from which the eyes can see no outlet, seems to\nlead to some edifice still more vast; as though St. Peter\u2019s were life\nand day, but here was the way to death and night, yet a way not gloomy\nand dreadful, but only solemn and mysterious. The Baptistery is merely\ndark, and produces no such impression.\n\nWhen they reached the bronze statue, the ladies kissed the foot and\npassed on, but Mr. Vane stood thoughtfully there for some time before\nfollowing. And even then he did not pay the accustomed homage to the\nvenerable image. His soul had saluted it, may be; but he was of a\ndifferent sort from those who have the act of reverence always ready,\nwhether the heart move or not; who will kiss the relic between the\nkisses of the shameless, and touch what is holy with lips that have just\nlied, and which are prompt to lie again. This man\u2019s outward devotion was\never the blossom of a plant that grew in his heart, and filled it so\nthat the act was an overflowing.\n\nMarion was already waiting for them at the grand altar. They recognized\neach other silently, and seated themselves on the steps to wait, being\nearly. The Signora placed herself beside Mr. Vane, and, noticing that he\ndrew a deep breath, and looked about with a glance that took in their\nposition there in the centre of that immense cross, she pointed upward\nwhere the dome, glorious with light and color, rested on the legend that\nhad turned the face of the world: \u201c_Thou art Peter, and on this rock I\nwill build my church. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of\nheaven._\u201d The legend ran in a circle of gigantic letters rimmed with\ngold, and the circle and the dome were as the ring and mitre of the\nchurch let down from heaven, and hovering in air over the ashes of the\nfirst pontiff.\n\nA Mass was being said at the altar directly before them, at the end of\nthe south transept, but not a sound of it reached them. They saw\nindistinctly the priest, and the mosaic crucifixion of St. Peter over\nthe altar. They heard the _coro_, now swelling loudly in a brave, manly\nchant as the whole chapter joined, now sinking in a cadence, now fine\nwith a boy\u2019s clear treble. The bronze canopy above them glittered in\nevery gilded point, the twisted columns that supported it soaring like\nflame and smoke entwined. The wreath of lamps about the confession was\nas bright as the ever-burning flames within them, and the polished\nmarble answered them back, blaze for blaze. Below\u2014a frozen prayer\u2014knelt\nthe guardian statue, its face turned to the screen behind which rest the\nrelics of St. Peter. Two or three persons, entering the church, looked\nsmall as mice down the nave, and intensified the sense of magnificent\nsolitude about them. All this light and splendor seemed so independent\nof, so superior to, human presence that human beings appeared to be only\npermitted, not invited, to come. It was a temple for the invisible God.\n\n\u201cThere is no outward difference,\u201d the Signora said to Mr. Vane, \u201cbetween\nCatholicity and Protestantism which strikes me more than our ways of\ngoing to church, and the reasons for going. Protestants go to hear a man\ntalk, and the man goes to talk to them. The affair is a failure if\neither is missing; for the minister needs the people, and the people\nneed him. On the contrary, one person alone in a Catholic church may\naccomplish a perfect act of worship. When the priest has offered up a\nMass, though no one assist, the world is better for it; and when a\nworshipper has prayed all alone in the presence of the Blessed\nSacrament, he has performed a supreme act of piety. There is all the\ndifference between the dwelling-house of God and the house where people\ngo to talk about God.\u201d\n\n\u201cI always felt as if there were too much wind in Protestantism,\u201d Mr.\nVane said.\n\nPresently a little company appeared coming out of the sacristy\u2014two boys\nin white _cotte_, the _canonico\u2019s_ chaplain and another priest, also in\n_cotte_, and, lastly, monsignor the _canonico_ himself, in a purple silk\nsoutane of a color so bright that it was almost red. They passed across\nthe basilica toward the pier of Veronica, and paused there at the\naltar-rail till the Signora and her friends joined them. A pleasant\nsalutation was exchanged, and the Signora managed to whisper to the\n_canonico_ that Mr. Vane was to make his First Communion that morning.\nThe beautiful face of the prelate brightened with a pleased surprise,\nand he turned again and cordially offered his hand to the new convert,\nwho, to the delight of the ladies, bent and kissed the ring on it.\n\nThen the boys lighted their wax tapers, and the party went in behind the\naltar, down the narrow stair, and through the circling corridor, and\nfound themselves in the heart of St. Peter\u2019s.\n\nThis chapel is a tiny place in comparison to the church above, but\ncapable of accommodating many more than the five who are permitted to\nvisit it at a time. Two persons could kneel abreast at each side of the\ncentral passage, and four or five ranks, may be, might find room. The\nend next the screen, visible in the confession from above, is open, the\naltar being at the upper end, and the whole has not a ray of daylight.\nFrom this chapel one can look back and see through the screen Canova\u2019s\nmarble pontiff, and the ring of golden lamps on the railing of the\nconfession, and, perhaps, some worshippers kneeling outside the\nsanctuary which one has had the privilege of entering. Directly overhead\nare the grand altar and the dome.\n\nThe Signora took a _prie-dieu_ near the altar, motioning Mr. Vane to a\nplace beside her; the sisters knelt behind them at either side the\nchapel; and Marion, quite apart, and behind the rest, leaned in a chair\nand hid his face in his hands. He had been surprised into the situation,\nand, though he had tried sincerely to do his best, was still a little\nalarmed by it. Shaken out of his usual artistic mood, which regarded\nfirst what appeared, and then peeped inside from without, he found\nhimself suddenly whirled into the centre, where, either from darkness or\nfrom too much light\u2014he knew not which\u2014he could not see. It was one of\nthose moments of fear in persons who communicate seldom but sincerely,\nwhich presently give place to the most perfect reassurance and peace.\n\nThe Mass was over. Monsignor laid aside his vestments, and knelt at a\n_prie-dieu_ reserved for him; his chaplain placed a book on the desk\nbefore him, and withdrew, and there was silence.\n\nThe church could do no more for them. She had brought them to St.\nPeter\u2019s tomb, and given them the Bread of angels.\n\nIt was impossible that the mind should not shake off the present and go\nback to the time when the dust in the shrine before them lived, and\nmoved, and spoke, and when the invisible Lord in their breasts was the\nvisible Lord in the flesh, teaching, persuading, and suffering. The Lord\nin their hearts said to the apostle in the shrine: \u201cWilt thou also go\naway?\u201d And the apostle answered him: \u201cLord, to whom shall we go?\u201d And\nagain Peter said: \u201cLord, thou shalt never wash my feet.\u201d And Jesus\nanswered him: \u201cIf I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.\u201d The Lord\nin their hearts was he who stood in the palace of the high-priest, bound\nand smitten upon the cheek, and Peter, standing by, denied that he knew\nhim. The pallid lamps shone on the face of the Master turned for one\nreproachful look, and the red light of the coals burned up, as if the\nvery fire blushed, in the face of the cowardly follower. They saw the\nseaside, where the risen Lord stood and called, and Peter, no longer a\ncoward, but on fire with love and joy, flung himself into the sea to go\nto him. And yet again, in this memory which had become a presence and a\nvoice, the Lord spoke to Peter: \u201cLovest thou me?\u201d And Peter answered him\nonce, and again, and, grieving, yet again: \u201cThou knowest that I love\nthee.\u201d And Jesus said to him: \u201cFeed my lambs. Feed my sheep.\u201d\n\nO perfection of power and of obedience; for within this hour, which\nmemory, unrolling again her shrunken scroll, showed to be eighteen\ncenturies distant\u2014within this hour both the sheep and the lambs had been\nfed!\n\n\u201cI feel as though I had a garden in my heart,\u201d Marion said to the\n_canonico_ as they went up into the church again.\n\nThe two were walking slowly and last, and in speaking Marion bent and\nkissed the prelate\u2019s hand.\n\nThe hand held his a moment closely, and the _canonico_ replied: \u201cWhere\nthe Tree of Life is, there is always a garden.\u201d\n\nThis conversation they had listened to between the Master and Peter\nfollowed them down the church, whose splendors seemed rather like\nvirtues made visible than like any work of the hands of man. If they\nshould ever be so lost and ungrateful as to leave this fold, to whom,\nindeed, should they go? And unless the Lord washed them from their sins,\nsurely they could have no part with him. They still saw the lessening\nvision of the high-priest\u2019s dim and solemn house as they passed down the\nchurch and out through the first portal; then the second fell behind\nthem, and an Italian summer day caught them to its glowing breast.\n\n\u201cIt seems to me,\u201d the Signora said, \u201cas if we had just been ordained,\nand were being sent out as missionaries. Of course you go home to\nbreakfast with us, Marion,\u201d she added.\n\n\u201cI was thinking of Fra Egidio this morning,\u201d said Bianca softly, as they\ndrove home through the hot sunshine. \u201cHe used to say, instead of 'I\nbelieve in God,\u2019 'I _know_ God.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cThat blessed Fra Egidio!\u201d struck in Isabel, who had lately been reading\nabout him. \u201cHe used to go into ecstasies, papa, whenever he heard the\nnames of God or of heaven. And when he went into the street, sometimes\npeople would call out, 'Fra Egidio, paradiso! paradiso!\u2019 and instantly\nhe would be rapt into an ecstasy, and perhaps be lifted up into the air.\nWhy doesn\u2019t some one go into ecstasies now at the thought of heaven?\u201d\n\n\u201cNobody prevents you, my dear,\u201d her father said. \u201cIf you will be so lost\nto the world and so given to God that the mere hearing his name will\nlift you from the earth, so much the better.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are quite right, papa,\u201d she answered gently. \u201cI had better look to\nmyself.\u201d\n\nHe smiled and laid his hand tenderly on hers.\n\n\u201cI was particularly pleased with the account of the interview between\nFra Egidio and St. Louis,\u201d the Signora said. \u201cThe king came incognito to\nvisit the ecstatic, and went to the convent in Perugia where he was\nliving. Fra Egidio, knowing supernaturally that he was there, and who he\nwas, went out to meet him. They fell on their knees on the threshold,\nand embraced each other, and, after remaining for some time in that\nsilent embrace, rose and separated, without having uttered a word. That\nwas truly a heavenly meeting.\u201d\n\nTheir attention was here attracted to a clergyman who walked slowly\nalong the shady side of their street, accompanied by his chaplain. This\nprelate, the patriarch of Antioch, was of a venerable age, and wore a\nlong beard. He alone, perhaps, of all the prelates in Rome, appeared in\nthe street with the distinguishing marks of his rank\u2014the chain and\ncross, the red-purple stockings, sash, and buttons, and the green tassel\non his hat.\n\nA little boy on the sidewalk caught sight of him, and instantly snatched\nhis cap off and ran to kiss the patriarch\u2019s hand. The action was\nperfectly natural and simple, and performed with a charming mixture of\nreverence and confidence.\n\n\u201cHow pretty it is!\u201d exclaimed Isabel. \u201cAnd there is another.\u201d\n\nA little girl had left her mother\u2019s side, and run also to kiss the\npatriarch\u2019s hand as he passed. No idea seemed to have entered her curly\nhead that she was approaching too nearly a grand personage, or that he\nwould be annoyed or interrupted by her homage, any more than a crucifix\nor a picture of Maria Santissima would have been.\n\n\u201cThe Roman clergy have the sweetest manners with the poor,\u201d the Signora\nsaid; \u201cand the highest dignitaries, when they are in public, are\napproached with a facility which I found, at first, astonishing. I\nrecollect going to St. Agatha\u2019s, the church of the Irish College, to the\nForty Hours, shortly after I came here. It is in a populous\nneighborhood, as you know, and the streets swarm with children. A\nclergyman came into the church and knelt at a _prie-dieu_ just in front\nof me. There were a dozen or so children wandering about, and presently\nthey collected at this _prie-dieu_, and, sitting on the step or standing\nat the desk, almost leaning on the priest\u2019s shoulder, they stared at the\npeople and whispered to each other. I expected to see him send them away\nor go away himself; but he only put his hands over his face and remained\nimmovable. I had almost a mind, for a minute, to go and speak to the\nchildren, but, fortunately, did not. After a while, nervous, impatient\nYankee though I am, with a passion for an orderliness which strikes the\neyes, I began to see the beauty and true piety of this gentle behavior,\nand to find something more edifying in that priest who suffered the\nlittle ones to come near him, and near the Lord, than I should have\nfound if he had gone into an ecstasy before the Blessed Sacrament. It\nwas the sweetest charity. Indeed, much of that which seems to us to be\ncowardice in the Romans is nothing but a spirit of gentleness fostered\nby religion. They are non-combatants. The church found them a fiery and\nwarlike people, constantly committing deeds of violence, fond of\nconquest, and impatient of control, and she has subdued them to\nchildren. If they are too submissive to usurpation, that is better than\nthe other extreme. The lion has become the lamb, and the lamb is ever\nthe victim. And now here we are at home.\u201d\n\nAnnunciata and Adriano had conspired to make the breakfast as festal as\npossible, and had succeeded perfectly. But for the light west wind that\nfluttered in at the still open windows, the air of the rooms would have\nbeen too fragrant; and but for the long morning fast and drive, the\nbreakfast would have been too profuse. It was, in fact, both breakfast\nand dinner, it being nearly noon when they sat down; and they sat two\nhours talking before they separated. Just before they rose from the\ntable Annunciata came in, bearing a large dish covered with green\nleaves, a smile of triumph on her face. She placed the dish in the\ncentre of the table, and looked at her mistress.\n\n\u201c_Brava!_\u201d exclaimed the Signora. \u201cNow, children, do you recognize that\nleaf?\u201d lifting one from the dish, and holding it up between a thumb and\nfinger. \u201cDo you know what tree grows a hand for a leaf? Do you see the\nshape?\u201d\n\n\u201c'In the name of the prophet, figs!\u2019\u201d quoted Isabel.\n\n\u201cYes, the first figs of the season, and perfect; just soft enough to\nflatten on the plate and against each other, yet firm; and, withal,\nsweeter than honey. You should see the woman who brings them to me\u2014a\nrosy, russet creature, with eyes as black as sloes, and pounds of gold\non her neck and hands. That gold she wears always. It is their way. She\nhas four gold chains, one hanging below the other, and each bearing a\nmedallion. Through these shines a large gold brooch. Her earrings are\nimmense hoops, and she wears gold rings on every finger, piled up to the\njoints. She was once so ill that they thought best to give her Extreme\nUnction, and, when the priest came to administer the sacrament, he found\nher lying, pale and speechless, but with all her rings and lockets on.\nThese people do not value stones, but they glory in pure, solid gold.\u201d\n\n\u201cMight it not be their dowry?\u201d Mr. Vane asked.\n\n\u201cVery likely; sometimes it certainly is. Sometimes the dowry is in\npearls, and a _contadina_ will have strings and strings of them. I am\ntold, however, that the common people in Rome have a saying that pearls\nare for butchers\u2019 wives. I don\u2019t know why, and one has been pointed out\nto me as owning half a dozen strings of them. They are not a good\ninvestment, however, for they are easy to spoil and easy to steal. A\nvery safe and sensible way for providing a girl\u2019s dowry exists in one of\nthe towns near Rome. All along the river-bank is level land divided into\nsmall lots. When a girl is born, the father buys one of these, if he is\nable, and plants it full of a sort of tree that grows rapidly, and is\nmuch used for certain kinds of wood-work. While the girl grows her dowry\ngrows; and when she marries, the trees are cut down and sold. I have\noften wished that American fathers of families would make some provision\nfor their children when they are born, setting aside a sum, if it should\nbe ever so small, to increase with their years, and be a help in giving\nthem a start in the world. It seems a sin that parents should bring a\nfamily of children into the world, all dependent on one life, and, if\nthat life be cut off, be thrown out helpless and unprovided for. How\noften we see, by the death of a father whose labor or salary maintained\nhis family in comfort, the whole family plunged in distress and left\nhomeless! How would Bianca, here, like to have her dowry in pearls?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe has a mouth full of them,\u201d said Marion hastily. He could not bear\nthat his lady should be thought in want of a dowry, when she was a\nfortune in herself. \u201cAnd those are not her only jewels.\u201d He reached,\nand, taking her hand, gathered together the little pink finger-tips like\na bunch of rosebuds. \u201cShe has ten rubies fit for a crown,\u201d he said, and\ntouched his lips to the clustered fingers, while the girl laughed and\nblushed.\n\nMr. Vane seemed to be struck with a sudden recollection. He put his hand\nto his forehead and considered, then rose from his chair. \u201cWait a\nminute,\u201d he said, and went into his own room, where they heard him\nopening his trunk, and searching about in it. Presently he returned with\na tiny morocco case. \u201cIt is the merest chance in the world that I did\nnot leave this in America,\u201d he said. \u201cI did not dream of bringing it.\nBianca\u2019s mother left a pair of ear-rings for the girl who should marry\nfirst.\u201d\n\nHe opened the case and took them out\u2014two large, pear-shaped pearls, of\nexquisite lustre, hanging from a gold leaf, on which a small, pure\ndiamond glistened like a speck of water.\n\n\u201cAnd you could have such a treasure with you, and never say anything\nabout it!\u201d the Signora exclaimed. \u201cO the insensibility of men! And these\ngirls never saw the pearls before!\u201d\n\nShe fastened the jewels in the pretty ears they were destined for.\n\u201cThese are two gems you forgot in your enumeration, Marion,\u201d she said.\n\u201cAnd, by the way, how fitting it is that, when the ears are shells,\nthere should be pearls hung in them!\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m glad you think them so pretty,\u201d Mr. Vane said with compunction. \u201cI\nreally never did think of them before. Perhaps it was very stupid of\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the contrary, it was very wise of you, papa,\u201d Isabel said. \u201cThey are\na great pleasure to us all now; but if we had known of them, I should\nnow feel as if they had been taken away from me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen you are engaged, you shall have a pair as pretty, if they are to\nbe found,\u201d her father said.\n\nThey drank Bianca\u2019s health; and, the talk still running on gems, Marion\ntold an incident of a ring which a friend of his had lost in the snow,\nin some part of Germany, as he stood looking down on the town from a\nhill outside. Several months afterward, going to the same spot, he saw\nthe ring at the top of a little plant. The first sprout had come up\ninside it as it lay on the ground, and, growing, had lifted it, till it\nstood almost a foot high, glistening round the green stem.\n\n\u201cWhat a disappointed little plant it must have been when its gold crown\nwas taken off!\u201d the Signora said regretfully.\n\n\u201cIt no doubt grew better without it,\u201d Mr. Vane replied. \u201cBesides, the\nring did not belong to it.\u201d\n\nIt was the tiniest little intimation of a correction, and the Signora\nwas highly pleased. He saw the smile with which she received it, and was\ncontent. Nothing can express more kindness than a gentle reproof, and\nnothing can show more affection than to take pleasure in such a reproof.\n\nWhen they had separated, the Signora went into the kitchen to give a\nprivate and special commendation to Annunciata for her well-doing that\nmorning, and to glance at that part of her domain. She never omitted\nthis word of praise, and the faithful servant counted herself well paid\nfor any pains she could take when she had been assured that what she had\ndone had given pleasure.\n\nThis Roman kitchen was as little as possible like the New England\nkitchen. Closets and pantries there were none; the single stone walls\ndid not admit of them. Two large cases of covered shelves took their\nplace. Instead of the trim range with its one fire-place, was a row of\nfive little furnaces, over each of which a dish could be set. A\nsheet-iron screen extended out over these, like the hood of a chaise.\nAll the side of the chimney, where it extended into the room, shone with\nbright copper and tin cooking vessels, hanging in rows. Underneath were\ntwo baskets, one with charcoal, another with _carbonella_\u2014the charred\nlittle twigs from the baker\u2019s furnaces, that can be kindled at a lamp.\nOne of the furnaces still had a glow of coals within it, and near by was\nthe feather fan that had been used to kindle and keep it bright. The\nbrick floor was as clean as sprinkling and sweeping could make it. They\nnever wash a floor in Rome, and only the fine marbles and mosaics ever\nget anything better than that sprinkling and sweeping. The one window\nlooked across the court to the Agostinian convent attached to Sant\u2019\nAntonino, and to the little belfry with the two bells that never could\nbe made to strike the right number of times, and into the garden of the\n_frati_, where rows of well-kept vegetables were drinking in the sun as\nif it were wine.\n\nThis kitchen was quite deserted, except for the cat, who was standing,\nwith a very mild and innocent expression of countenance, close to the\nclosed door of a cupboard where meat was kept. She glanced calmly at the\nSignora, and walked away slowly and with dignity.\n\n\u201cWhere is Annunciata, Signor Abate?\u201d inquired the Signora.\n\nThe cat turned and mewed with great politeness, but in an interrogative\ntone, as who should say, \u201cI beg your pardon?\u201d\n\nAnd then a splashing and bubbling of water from without reminded the\n_padrona_ that her handmaiden was washing that day\u2014was \u201cat the\nfountain,\u201d as they express it.\n\n\u201cWhy should I not go down for once and see how it seems there?\u201d she\nthought. \u201cAfter all, this girl is dependent on me, lives with me, serves\nme in everything, is at my call night and day, and I do not touch her\nlife except at certain points\u2014the table, the cleanliness and order of\nthe house, and the errands she does for me outside. I don\u2019t know much\nabout her, after all.\u201d\n\nShe opened a door that she had never passed in the years she had lived\nin that apartment, and descended a narrow stone stair that wound in a\nsteep spiral, lighted at each turn by a small hole pierced in the outer\nwall. Down and down\u2014it seemed interminable, but was, in reality, two\nstories and a half. The landing was in a dim store-room a little below\nthe ground level, and used as a cellar. From this a passage and door led\ninto a small court enclosed between an angle of the house and a high\nwall, like a room with the ceiling taken off. Here a spout of water\nflowed into a double fountain-basin, where the girl stood washing and\nbeating linen on the stone border. As she worked, steadily, and too much\nabsorbed to see her mistress standing near her, tears rolled down her\nface, and dropped one by one on the clothes in her hands.\n\nThe Signora looked a moment, astonished and shocked. Was this the girl\nwho had come and gone from early morning cheerfully at her bidding, and\nwho had smiled as she served the table within half an hour? She stood\nawhile looking at her, then quietly withdrew, and, going up-stairs\nagain, rang a hand-bell from the window. Annunciata came up immediately,\nquite as usual, with no sign of tears in her face, except a slight flush\nof the eyelids, and made her usual inquiry: \u201c_Che vuole?_\u201d\u2014What does she\nwish for?\n\n\u201cI have several things to say,\u201d her mistress replied. \u201cI came out first\nto thank you for having given us such a beautiful breakfast. Everything\nwas well done. I forgot you were at the fountain.\u201d\n\nThe smile came readily, and with it the ready word: \u201cIt pleased\nher?\u201d\u2014always the ceremonious third person.\n\n\u201cAnd now I want to ask you something,\u201d the Signora went on kindly. \u201cSit\ndown. If you do not like to tell me, you need not. But I should be very\nsorry if you had any trouble, especially anything in which I could help\nyou, and did not let me know. You have been crying. Are you willing to\ntell me what is the matter?\u201d\n\nThe girl looked as startled as if she had been caught in a crime, and\nbegan to stammer.\n\n\u201cIf it is something you do not want to tell me, I will not say any more\nabout it,\u201d her mistress went on. \u201cYou have a right to your privacy, as I\nhave to mine. But if there is anything I can do for you, tell me\nfreely.\u201d\n\nThere was a momentary struggle, then the tears started again, and all\nthe story came out. Annunciata had received, three days before, news of\nthe death of her only brother, who had died of fever in some little town\na day\u2019s journey from Rome, and was already buried when she learned first\nthat he was sick.\n\nThe Signora listened with astonishment and compunction. For three days\nthis girl had gone about with a bitter grief hidden in her heart,\nmissing no duty, submitting, perhaps, to a little fault-finding now and\nthen, and weeping only when she believed herself unobserved, and all the\ntime, while she suffered, ministering to and witnessing the pleasures of\nothers.\n\n\u201cMy poor girl, why did you not tell me at first?\u201d she asked gently.\n\n\u201cOh! why should I?\u201d was the reply. \u201cYou were all so happy and you could\nnot bring the dead back.\u201d\n\n\u201cI could have sympathized with you, and given you a few days\u2019 rest,\u201d the\nSignora said. \u201cI would not have allowed you to work.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was better for me to work,\u201d the girl replied, wiping her eyes. \u201cI\nshould only have cried and worried the more, if I had been idle.\u201d\n\nThere seemed nothing that could be done. That class of poor do not adorn\nthe resting-places of their dead, or the Signora would have paid the\ncost; they do not wear mourning, or, again, she would have paid for it;\nand this girl had no family to visit and mourn with. In her brother she\nhad lost all. The only service possible\u2014and that she accepted\ngratefully\u2014was to have Masses said for the dead. That settled, the\nSignora dismissed her to her work again, and shut herself into her\nchamber, but not to sleep.\n\n\u201cO the unconscious, pathetic heroism of the suffering poor!\u201d she\nthought. \u201cWhere in the world have I a friend who would cover such a\ngrief with smiles rather than disturb my pleasure? Where in the world\ndoes one see such patience under pain and hardship as is shown by the\npoor? They sigh, but they seldom cry out in rebellion. They accept the\ncross as their birthright, and both they and we grow to think that it\ndoes not hurt them as it would hurt us. How clearly it comes upon me now\nand then, why our Lord lived and sympathized with the poor, and why he\nsaid it would be so hard for the rich to enter heaven!\u201d\n\nShe was looking so serious and unrefreshed when the family gathered\nagain that they at once inquired the cause, and she told them.\n\n\u201cI feel as though I must have been lacking in some way,\u201d she concluded,\n\u201cor a servant who has been with me so long, and who has no nearer friend\nin the world than I am, would have come to me at once with her troubles.\nIf the relations between servants and employers are what they should be,\nthe servants should go to the master or mistress with all their joys and\nsorrows, just as children go to their parents. I have been thinking that\nthere is one reason why, the world over, people are complaining of their\nservants. They have contented themselves with simply paying their wages\nand exacting their labor. There has been no sympathy. The association\nhas been simply like that of fish and fowl, instead of that of the same\ncreatures in different circumstances.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have always thought that in America,\u201d Mr. Vane said. \u201cThere is not a\ncountry in the world, probably, where families have been, as a rule,\nmore disagreeable toward their servants, and servants so troublesome, in\nconsequence, to their employers. But I believe it is very seldom that a\ngood mistress or master does not make a good servant, so far as the will\ngoes.\u201d\n\nSeeing her still look downcast and troubled, he added: \u201cYou should not\nreproach yourself. It is rather your kindness toward this girl which has\nwon such a devotion from her. If you had lacked in kindness and sympathy\ntoward her, she would have been far more likely to have shown her\ntrouble, and made it an excuse for not attending to her work as usual.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you think so?\u201d she asked, brightening; and thought in her own mind,\n\u201cHow very pleasant it is to be reassured when one is distressed about\nthings!\u201d\n\nAnd then later, when they heard Annunciata in the kitchen, the sisters\nwent out and spoke each a kind and pitying word to her, touching her\nhard hand softly with their delicate ones; and when she came in later to\nperform some service, Mr. Vane had also a word of sympathy. But,\ngreatest comfort of all, the Signora and Bianca went up to the Basilica\nand arranged that a Mass should be said the next morning for the dead,\nand Annunciata was told that she should go with them to hear it.\n\nThat evening the servants were instructed to deny the family to every\none but Marion, and, when the sun was low, they all went out on the\n_loggia_ to see the night come in, and breathe the sweet freshness that\nstill came with it. For it is only in dog-days that the Italian nights\nare too warm for comfort, and not always then. The great heat comes and\ngoes with the sun.\n\nAs they went into the _loggia_, there was a rustling noise in the garden\nunderneath, and out from the trees leaning against the wall flew clouds\nof sparrows, and dispersed themselves in every direction. It would\nappear that every twig must have held a bird.\n\n\u201cI am sorry we have disturbed their nap,\u201d Mr. Vane remarked. \u201cHow\ndisgusted they must be with our curious nocturnal habits!\u201d\n\nThey did not wish to talk, but only to think and see, and speak a word\nas the mood took them. The miraculous shadow of St. Peter still hovered\nabove their spirits. They sat in silence, receiving any impression that\nthe scene might make.\n\nFlocks of birds flew in from the seaward, all hastening to some nest or\ntree-home, their bodies clear and dark, their swift wings twinkling\nagainst the topaz sky. The evening star, at first softly visible, like a\ndiamond against another gem, began to grow splendid, while the glowing\nwest changed by imperceptible degrees to a silvery whiteness, and took\non an exquisite hint of violet, as if it thought, rather than was, the\ncolor. The flowers disappeared in masses of dark green, the gray towers\nand roofs deepened to black, the pure air was delicious and beaded with\ncoolness, like a summer drift sprinkled with snow. The _Ave Maria_ began\nto sound here and there, echoed from one church to another. Now and then\nsome bell, besides the Angelus, rang out with a festal clangor for five\nminutes, a musical chorus coming in from the southward.\n\n\u201cWhat a grand procession of saints walk for ever through the Roman\ndays!\u201d the Signora exclaimed. \u201cIt would be something dazzling to the\nmind, if one could live on a central height, and hear the bells announce\nthe different _festas_ as they come, singly or in groups, and know who\nand what each saint is. For example, this evening we hear from the\nAventine the rejoicing announcement that to-morrow is the _festa_ of St.\nAlexis in his church, and from another church is called out the name of\nSt. Leo IV., and from another St. Marcellina, the sister of St. Ambrose,\nand twelve martyrs will be celebrated in another church. If we should go\nto-morrow to either of those, we should find them adorned, sprinkled\nwith green out into the very street, High Mass or Vespers going on, and\nthe relics exposed on the altars. To-morrow night other bells will ring\nin other saints and martyrs. The night after, from a church in Monte\nCitorio will come the call, _Ecco_ St. Vincent of Paul! and the secular\nmissions and the Sisters of Charity will be doing their best in his\nhonor, and there will be cardinals, and pontifical vespers, and a\npanegyric. Four or five churches will celebrate their special saints the\nnext day, and the next will be St. Praxides, on the Esquiline here; and\nthe day after we shall be invited to pay our respects to St. Mary\nMagdalen. And then on to St. James the Great, which will be a great day;\nand the day after comes St. Anna, the mother of the Blessed Virgin; and,\na little later, St. Ignatius marches by. What it would be to set the\nworld aside, sit aloft on some tower there, listen to the announcements\nrung out from belfry after belfry, meditate, and look with the eyes of\nfaith on what comes! What faces of young maidens, delicate spouses of\nChrist, bent like clusters of living flowers to listen to the voices\nthat praise them, turned again heavenward to ask for blessings on their\nclients! What queenly women incline their crowned heads, when the\nSacrifice goes up in their name, to see who of those who offer it is\nworthy and sincere! What glorious men, strong and shining, gaze down\ninto the battle-field where their triumph was won, to read in the\nupturned faces of the combatants how the fight goes, and who needs their\naid! I sometimes think that the saints look only when they are called by\nname, but that the Blessed Mother looks always. It is the mother who\ngoes after the child who forgets, and watches over it while it sleeps.\u201d\n\nThe flocks of sparrows that had fled at their approach, weary of waiting\nfor them to go away, after peeping and reconnoitring the situation,\nbegan to come back and flutter in under the foliage again. For a few\nminutes the trees stirred all through with them, as if with a breeze;\nthen the little heads were tucked under the tired wings, and they all\nwent to sleep, and, perhaps, dreamed.\n\nThe family smiled and hushed themselves, not to disturb their rest. Each\nheart was softly touched by the nearness of so many tiny sleepers. Peace\nseemed to float silently out from under the thronged branches and laden\ntwigs of those motionless trees, in which no passer-by would have\ndetected a sign of life.\n\n\u201cI think,\u201d the Signora said softly after a while, \u201cthat when the priest\ncomes next Holy Saturday to bless my house, I would like to have him\nbless these trees too, that no net or trap may be thrown over them by\nnight, and no rifle be fired into them by day. The trees and their\ntenants belong to my household.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour house is blessed every year?\u201d Mr. Vane asked.\n\n\u201cYes. On Holy Saturday the priest goes round through every parish, a\nlittle boy with him bearing holy water, and blesses all the houses, if\nthe people desire it. The custom is, too, to have ready on a table a\ndish of boiled eggs, an ornamented loaf of cake, and a plate of\nsausages. These are blessed, to be eaten Easter Sunday. I am not sure,\nbut I fancy that the custom is a remnant of times when the Lenten fast\nwas, perhaps, more strictly and universally observed than now. Now,\nwhether from a deterioration of health or of faith, very few persons\nconsider themselves strong enough to observe the regulations perfectly.\nModern civilization seems to be very weakening in every way.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am inclined to think that good comes, or will come, out of all these\nchanges and seeming failures,\u201d Mr. Vane observed. \u201cIf the races have\nbecome weaker physically, their passions have also become weaker; and it\nmay be that, in order to tame them, it was necessary to reduce their\nphysical strength. We do so sometimes with wild animals. Perhaps when we\nshall have learned better how to live, and, after running the circle of\nfollies, grown soberer and wiser, the increasing vitality will go more\nin the intellectual and spiritual ways than it did before. I am hopeful\nof the human race, from the very fact that it is so uneasy about itself.\nThe audacious boldness of some nations seems to me to spring from\ndesperation rather than confidence. There is no confidence anywhere.\nFear rules the world. Everywhere strong, or even desperate, remedies are\nproposed, and philanthropic doctors abound.\n\n    \u201cMalgr\u00e9 les tyrans,\n    Tout r\u00e9ussira,\u201d\n\nsing the communists; and I believe that things will come out right in\nspite of every difficulty, and be more secure because of the\ndifficulties past. When we shall have looked about in vain in every\nother direction, we shall at last learn to look upward for the solution.\nBut excuse me for talking so long in this beautiful silence. Your Easter\neggs were not meant to hatch such a sermon, Signora.\u201c\n\nThey rose, presently, to go into the house, and, as they loitered slowly\nalong the passages, Mr. Vane remarked to the Signora: \u201cI observe that\nthe natural direction of your eyes is upward.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it?\u201d she asked. \u201cCome to think of it, I believe you are right. It is\nalways cramping for me to look down. I recollect that, when I was a\nchild, if I dropped my eyes on being a little embarrassed, it was almost\nan impossibility for me to raise them again.\u201d\n\nGoing in past the kitchen, they found Adriano in chase of a cockroach\nthat had dared to show itself there, and they stopped to learn the\nresult, feeling that it interested them. It was not successful, and the\nman rose from his knees very much vexed.\n\n\u201cThese _bagarozzi_ don\u2019t know what Ascension day is nowadays, or they\nwould hide themselves,\u201d he said.\n\nMr. Vane asked what connection there was between _bagarozzi_ and\nAscension day, and the servant-man, albeit a little ashamed of having\ncommitted himself to tell a story, explained:\n\n\u201cWhen I was young, it was a custom among the Roman boys, on the vigil of\nthe Ascension, to go down into our cellars, or those of our neighbors,\nand catch as many _bagarozzi_ as we could. When evening came, we fixed\nto the back of each one a bit of wax taper, melting the end to make it\nstick. Half an hour or so after _Ave Maria_ we marshalled our bugs,\nlighted the tapers on their backs, and sent them off in a procession.\nWhile they went we sang a song we had. It was a pretty sight to see the\nlittle tapers scampering off through the dark.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy! I should think it would have scorched them!\u201d Bianca exclaimed with\nsurprise.\n\nThe man laughed at her simplicity. \u201cWho knows?\u201d he said, with a shrug.\n\u201cThey never came back to tell us.\u201d\n\nIsabel inquired what the song was to which this novel procession\nmarched.\n\nThe man laughed again and repeated the doggerel:\n\n    \u201c'Corri, corri, bagarone;\n    Che dimane \u00e8 l\u2019Ascensione;\n    L\u2019Ascension delle pagnotte:\n    Corri, corri, bagarozzi.\u2019\u201d\n\nWhich might be rendered: \u201cRun, run, my noble roach; for to-morrow is\nAscension day\u2014Ascension day of the little loaves. Run, roach, run.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat demons of cruelty children can be!\u201d remarked Isabel as the family\nwent on.\n\nAdriano laughed as he looked after them. \u201cHow queer these _forestieri_\nare!\u201d he said. \u201cThey want to see everything and know the name of\neverything. The signorine here ask me the name of every tree and flower\nin the garden, and every bird and bug that moves. How should I know? My\nniece, Giovannina, says there\u2019s an English-woman going about getting the\npoor old women to tell her fables, and ghost-stories, and all sorts of\nnonsense; and they say that she prints it in a book. They must be in\ngreat need of books to read. Then the _padrona_ will stand and look at\nthe moon as if she never saw nor heard of it before, and expected it to\ndrop down into the garden and break into golden _scudi_. I saw her one\nday this spring, on _Monte Cavallo_, stand half an hour and stare at the\nsky, just because it was red where the sun went down. The sky is always\nred when the sun sets in clouds. Two or three _signori_ thought she was\nstopping to be noticed, and they walked about her, and one of them\nleaned on the railing close to her, staring at her all the time, and by\nand by spoke to her. I went up behind her, but she didn\u2019t know I was\nthere. She hadn\u2019t seen any one till she heard the man say good-evening\nto her. You should have seen the way she looked at him. Then she caught\nsight of me. 'Adriano,\u2019 she said, 'I\u2019ll give you a hundred lire to fling\nthat fellow over the terrace head first.\u2019 I told her that it would cost\nme more than a hundred lire to do it. She put out her lips\u2014I suppose she\nthought I was a coward\u2014and muttered a word in English. Then she said to\nme, as she turned her back on the man, loud enough for him to hear: 'How\ndare such rascals come up when the sun shines!\u2019 But she wouldn\u2019t let me\nwalk beside her, but made me follow her all the way home. And she was so\nmad that, when I started to say something as we reached the door, she\nstopped me. 'When I want you to speak, I shall ask you a question,\u2019 she\nsaid.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Signora is very kind,\u201d Annunciata said.\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t say she wasn\u2019t,\u201d the man replied dogmatically. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t\nbecome ladies to go into the street alone, nor to stop to look at\nanything, nor to glance about them.\u201d\n\nThe girl did not reply. She had been trained in the same opinions, and\ndid not know how to combat them. But sometimes it seemed to her that the\nstreets and the public places were for women as well as for men to see,\nand that a woman should not be a prisoner because she had not a carriage\nor a servant to attend her. Moreover, she sympathized, in her simple\nway, with many of the Signora\u2019s tastes. To her the song of the birds\nthey fed with crumbs from the windows was a sort of thanks, and she\nregarded them as little Christians; and now and then, when she looked at\nthe sky, something stirred in her for which she had not words\u2014a pleasure\nand a pain, and a sense of being cramped into a place too small for her.\nShe could not express it all, and did not quite understand it. But there\nwas just enough consciousness to make Adriano\u2019s _pronunciamiento_ rankle\na little. The inner ferment lasted while she polished the knives and her\ncompanion blacked carefully a pair of boots; then she burst forth with\nan expression of opinion which astonished even herself, for it sprang\ninto speech before she had well seen its meaning\u2014an involuntary\nassertion of nature. \u201cI believe that women should settle their own\nbusiness, and men settle theirs,\u201d she said. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen the man yet\nthat knows enough to teach the Signora how she ought to behave nor what\nshe ought to do; and many\u2019s the man she could teach. Men are poor\ncreatures. Women can\u2019t do anything with them without lying to \u2019em.\nThat\u2019s what gives them such a great opinion of themselves, because most\nwomen flatter them when they want to get anything out of them.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Ma, che!_\u2014well, to be sure!\u201d exclaimed Adriano. It wasn\u2019t worth\narguing about. He merely laughed.\n\nMeantime, gathered in the _sala_, the family made plans for the coming\ndays while they waited for supper. Bianca, seated at the piano, was\ntrying to recall a fragment of melody she had heard a soprano of the\npapal choir sing at a _festa_ not long before. \u201cThe cadence was so\nsweet,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was common\u2014a slow falling from five and sharp four\nto four natural\u2014but the singer put in two grace-notes that I never heard\nthere before. He touched the four natural lightly, then sharped it, then\ntouched the third and slid to the fourth. It was exquisite, and very\ngracefully done. His voice was pure and true, and the intervals quite\ndistinct.\u201d\n\n\u201cI asked his name,\u201d Isabel said, \u201cand was disgusted to hear a very\ncommon one, which I have forgotten. A beautiful singer ought to have a\nbeautiful, birdy-sounding name.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe can make his own name sound 'birdy,\u2019 if you give him time,\u201d Mr. Vane\nsaid. \u201cTake Longfellow as an example. There couldn\u2019t be a more absurd\nname. Yet the poetry and fame of the man have flowed around it so that\nto pronounce the name, Longfellow, now is as though you should say\nhexameter.\u201d\n\nAnd then what were they to do, and where were they to go to-morrow, and\nthe day after, and the day after? They ran over their life like a\npicture-book which was so full of beauties they knew not which to look\nat first. All felt that they were laying up sunny memories for the years\nto come\u2014memories to be talked over by winter evening fires in their\ncountry across the sea; memories to amuse and instruct young and old,\nand to enrich their own minds. And not only were they furnishing for\nthemselves and their friends this immense picture-gallery and library of\ninteresting facts and experiences, but they were expanding and vivifying\ntheir faith. They were making the personal acquaintance, as it were, of\nthe saints, and seeing as live human beings those of whom they had read\nin stories so dry as to make them seem rather skeletons than men and\nwomen. To enter the chamber where a saint had prayed, had slept, had\neaten, had yielded up his last breath; to stand in some spot and think:\n\u201cHere he stood, on these very stones, and saw faces of heaven lean over\nhim, and heard mouths of heaven speak to him; or here, when such\ntemptations came as we weakly yield to or weakly resist, he fought with\nprayer, and lash, and fasting\u201d; to look at a hedge of rose-bushes, and\nbe told: \u201cHere, when he was tempted, a man, weak as other men, flung\nhimself headlong among the thorns\u201d\u2014this was to waken faith and courage,\nand make their religion, not an affair of holidays and spectacles, and\ncommunions of once a year, but of every day, and of private hours as\nwell as of public.\n\n\u201cHalf our Roman holiday is gone,\u201d Mr. Vane said, \u201cand for at least four\nweeks of the other half the heat will allow us to do little or nothing.\nI recommend you girls to treasure all your little pleasures, and keep an\nexact account of them. The more fully you write everything out, the\nbetter. These diaries of yours will probably be the most interesting\nbooks you could have after a few years.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am trying to forget all about America,\u201d Isabel said, \u201cto fancy that I\nhave always lived here, and always shall live here, and to steep myself\nas much as possible in Italian life, so that, when I go back, I may see\nmy own country as others see it, but more wisely. It seems to me that a\ncountry could be best judged so by one who knows it well, yet has been\nso long withdrawn from it, and so familiar with other modes of life, as\nto see its outlines and features clearly.\u201c\n\n\u201cYou are right,\u201d Marion said.\n\n\u201cI never knew how beautiful, how more than beautiful, American nature is\ntill I had seen the famous scenes of Europe. One-half the superiority is\nassociation, and half the other half is because attention has been\ncalled to them by voices to which people listened. Our very climate is\nricher. Here nobody knows how beautiful the skies can be. They like\nsunshine, and rainy weather is for them always _brutto tempo_. The\ngrandeur of a storm, the exquisite beauty of showery summer weather and\nof falling and fallen snow, they know nothing about. They endure the\nrainy season for the sake of the crops, scolding and shivering all the\ntime. To watch with pleasure a direct, pelting, powerful rain would\nnever enter their minds; and if they see you gazing at the most glorious\nclouds imaginable, it would be to them nothing but _curioso_. We do not\nneed to go abroad for natural beauty.\u201d\n\nIt was getting late and time to say good-night. A silence fell on them,\nand a sense of waiting. Then Mr. Vane said: \u201cWe have made a Novena\ntogether for the communion of this morning. May we not once more say our\nprayers together in thanksgiving?\u201d\n\nNo one replied in words; but the Signora brought a prayer-book and\narranged the lamp beside Mr. Vane. He obeyed her mute request, and for\nthe first time, as head of the family, led the family devotions. Then\nthey took a silent leave of each other.\n\n\n\n\n                         NATALIE NARISCHKIN.[8]\n\n\nFootnote 8:\n\n  _La S\u0153ur Natalie Narischkin_, _Fille de la Charit\u00e9 de S. Vincent de\n  Paul_. Par Mme. Augustus Craven. Paris: Didier et Cie., 35 Quai des\n  Augustins.\n\nThe name of Narischkin is in Russia like the name of Bourbon in France,\nPlantagenet or Stuart in Great Britain. The mother of Peter the Great\nwas a Narischkin, and her baptismal name was Natalie. The family have\nalways esteemed themselves too noble to accept even the highest titles,\nregarding their patronymic as a designation more honorable than that of\nprince. Madame Craven has just added to the list of her charming and\nextremely popular works a new one, which is a companion to the _Sister\u2019s\nStory_, by writing the biography of a lady of the Narischkin family who\nwas a Catholic and a Sister of Charity. Natalie was a friend of\nAlexandrine and Olga de la Ferronays. The narrative of her early life\nretraces the ground, familiar to so many, over which we have\ndelightfully wandered in company with the fascinating group of elect\nsouls, whose passage over the drear desert of our age has been like the\nwaving of angels\u2019 wings in a troubled atmosphere.\n\nIt seems scarcely correct to call Natalie Narischkin a convert. Her\nparents belonged to the Russian Church, and of course she was taught to\nregard herself as a member of the same. They resided, however, always in\nItaly, and Natalie was accustomed, in her childhood and youth, to\nassociate freely with Catholic children and young people, and to\naccompany them to the churches and convents where they were wont to\nresort. Russian children receive infant communion, beginning with the\nday of their baptism, several times a year until they attain a proper\nage for confession, when there is a careful preparation and a solemn\nceremony for the first adult communion, as with us. They are confirmed\nimmediately after baptism. We are not told anything about Natalie\u2019s\nreceiving either infant or adult communion, but it is to be presumed\nthat she was made to follow the usual practice, since there are Greek\nchurches in Venice and other Italian cities. Her early associations were\nmuch more numerous, strong, and tender with the church of Italy and\nFrance than with the estranged church of her own nation. There was no\ndifference in faith between herself and her Italian and French\ncompanions to make her sensible that the religion in which she was bred\nwas different from the one in whose sacred rites she was continually\ntaking part, at whose altars and shrines she frequently and devoutly\nworshipped. Even the peculiar ceremonies and forms of the Sclavonic and\nGreek rites were less familiar to her than those of the Latin rite. The\nonly barrier between herself and her Catholic companions which could\nmake Natalie sensibly feel a separation between them was her exclusion\nfrom participating in the sacraments administered by Catholic priests.\nThis separation between priests and people professing the same faith,\noffering the same Sacrifice, administering and receiving the same\nsacraments, could only puzzle and surprise the mind of a child; but it\nrequires a more mature understanding and complete knowledge to\nappreciate the obligation of renouncing all communion with a\nschismatical sect, however similar it may be to the true church. While\nNatalie was a child some of the little boys and girls with whom she\nplayed, particularly one little boy who became afterwards a martyr in\nChina, used to assail her with controversy. Her older friends were more\njudicious, and waited patiently until her ripening intelligence and\nexpanding spiritual life should prepare her for a more complete work of\ngrace and a more perfect understanding of Catholic doctrine. In the\ninstance of Madame Swetchine we see how much study and thought are\nnecessary to produce in the mind of one who has grown up to maturity\nunder the influences of the Russian Church a firm intellectual\nconviction that organic unity under the supremacy of the Roman See is\nessential to the being of the Catholic Church, and not merely the\ncondition of its well-being and perfection. In Madame Elizabeth\nGallitzin we discern how, in another way, national prejudice, and\ntraditional hostility to what is regarded as anti-Russian, caused in her\nbosom a violent struggle against reason and conscience, even though the\nCatholic religion was that of her own mother. The case was wholly\ndifferent with Natalie Narischkin. She did not think about the question\nof controversy at all, and was free from the national prejudices of a\nRussian. Her mother took no pains to instil them into her mind, or to\nplace any obstacle in the way of the Catholic influences around her. She\ngrew up, therefore, a Catholic, with only an external barrier between\nher inward sentiments and their full outward profession. The interior\ncravings of her spiritual life were the chief and real motive prompting\nher to pass over this barrier and find in the true church that which the\nbroken, withered branch could not give. The requisite theological\ninstruction in the grounds of the sentence of excision by which the\nRussian hierarchy is cut off from Catholic communion was a subsequent\nmatter, and not at all difficult to one who was, like Natalie,\nintelligent, candid, and full of the spirit of the purest Catholic\npiety. There was really nothing in the way except the authority of her\nmother, whose chief motive of opposition was the fear of the emperor\u2019s\ndispleasure. When this obstacle was removed, Natalie easily and without\nan effort leaped over what was left of the external barrier.\n\nWe have anticipated, however, what belongs to a later period of her\nhistory. And going back to the time of her childhood, we will let Madame\nCraven herself describe the situation in which she was placed while she\nwas growing up into womanhood. It will be noticed that Madame Craven\nspeaks in the plural number, indicating that Natalie is not the only\nyoung Russian to whom her remarks apply. This will be understood when we\nexplain that her sister Catharine sympathized with her in all her\nreligious feelings, though she delayed, on account of her dread to\nencounter the opposition of her family, until a much later period her\nown formal abjuration.\n\n    \u201cThe entire childhood of these young girls had been passed at\n    Naples, and they had been there environed by impressions which\n    nothing in their Greek faith, no matter how lively it might have\n    been, could counteract. The adoration of Jesus Christ, the\n    veneration of the Holy Virgin and the saints, faith in the power of\n    absolution and the real presence in the Blessed Sacrament, were the\n    grand and fundamental doctrines which they had imbibed with their\n    mother\u2019s milk. Brought up at a distance from their own country, they\n    might almost have believed themselves to be in the centre of their\n    own religion, living as they were within the bounds of that great\n    church which possesses all the gifts claimed by their own, with the\n    added power of distributing and communicating them to all, without\n    distinction of place, language, nation, or race. It is difficult to\n    comprehend how any Russian whose soul is imbued with piety, on\n    returning to his own country after having been brought up abroad,\n    can find himself at ease in the bosom of Greek orthodoxy. In truth,\n    it appears to us that the limits of a national church must seem very\n    suffocating to any one who has felt, even for an instant, the\n    pulsation of that universal life in the heart of the Catholic Church\n    which is unconfined by mountains, rivers, or seas, which is\n    contained within no barriers of any kind whatever, and bears the\n    name of no particular nation, because it is the mother of all\n    nations collectively. Therefore no one ever has been or ever will be\n    able to fasten any denomination of this sort upon the only church\n    who dares affirm that she alone possesses the truth in all its\n    completeness. At the first view one would say that every church\n    ought to make this claim under the penalty of being deprived of any\n    reason for its existence. It is nevertheless true that only one\n    loudly proclaims it; and those who hate as well as those who love\n    the Catholic Church alike declare that she is a church in this\n    respect singular among all others. Thus has she preserved through\n    all ages a designation expressive of the idea realized in herself,\n    and will preserve the same for all coming time! A multitude of her\n    children have separated themselves from her, yet none of them have\n    succeeded in despoiling her of the glorious title which suffices to\n    make her recognized everywhere and by all. As for other churches or\n    sects, when it is not the name of some man or nation which they\n    substitute for her name, it is some kind of term or epithet which,\n    even when it aims at giving a semblance of antiquity, betrays\n    novelty in the very fact that it is necessary to employ it in order\n    to be understood; and this is true in our own day just as much as it\n    was in the time of St. Augustine. The overwhelming force of good\n    sense and all the laws of human language determine _that words\n    express what they designate_! At this day, as well as at that\n    earlier period, neither friends nor enemies will ever give this\n    grand name of CATHOLICS to any except those to whom it really\n    belongs, and the same good sense proclaims as an indubitable fact\n    which is that church whose children these are.\n\n    \u201cNatalie had remained a long time without paying any attention to\n    this controversy. She belonged all the while to the Catholic Church\n    by all her pious habitudes, by all her childlike affections, finally\n    and chiefly by the bond of the true sacraments which the Greek\n    Church has had the infinite privilege of preserving, and which form\n    a tie between ourselves and the Greeks whose value cannot be too\n    highly estimated\u2014a tie so powerful that even in one case where it is\n    only imagined to have a real existence (_i.e._, with those Anglicans\n    who persuade themselves that a chain wanting a multitude of links\n    has not been broken) it has served in our days more than ever before\n    to awaken in their hearts a sentiment inclining them to a nearer\n    sympathy with our own. Belief in the truth of the words of Jesus\n    Christ and in his real presence on the altar, the adoration and love\n    of our Lord, the search after those who have possessed in the\n    highest degree this faith and love, have opened the way by which a\n    great number of souls have come to prostrate themselves before the\n    tabernacles of the Catholic Church who had been previously outside\n    of her visible fold, and had belonged to her only by virtue of their\n    good faith and love of truth.\n\n    \u201cWith how much greater reason must one who belonged to the Greek\n    Church have felt herself closely united to those whose faith was\n    professed and whose practices were approved in respect to such a\n    great number of points by her own church, which has even ventured to\n    adopt the counsels of perfection and to speak of the '_spiritual\n    life_\u2019 and of '_Christian perfection_,\u2019 after the manner of\n    Catholics!\n\n    \u201cBut it is just here that she betrays her weakness; for when it is a\n    practical question of undertaking and nourishing this spiritual\n    life, where can she go to seek the living words, the sermons, the\n    books, the apostolic men whom she requires? Where and from what\n    source can one draw the vital force of this true and daily life, of\n    this _living_ life, if I may hazard the expression, always similar\n    to itself, yet unceasingly renovated like the seasons of the year?\n    Where can this vivifying influence be found, except in that same\n    Catholic Church which, although it makes the mind bend under the\n    necessary and salutary yoke of authority, never permits uniformity\n    to engender tediousness, and possesses in its completeness that\n    deposit a part of which the Greek Church suffered to escape on the\n    day when it broke the bond of unity? Since then, although apparently\n    rich, she has remained empty-handed; and while the Basils, the\n    Athanasiuses, the Gregories, the Chrysostoms, and the numerous other\n    holy and immortal doctors have had immortal successors in the\n    Occident, the church of the Orient, once queen of eloquence and\n    science, has become mute; and her children know not to-day whether\n    she can speak or even write, since it is not given to them to hear\n    her any more break silence; and, if they would warm up their piety\n    by holy reading, and give their minds the sustenance they require,\n    they are forced to have recourse to the Catholic Church, since it is\n    there alone they can find their necessary aliment. Truly, we cannot\n    help thinking that if the barrier which separates Greeks from\n    Catholics were not upheld by hatred, it must fall down in an\n    instant. This hatred is something which has no argument whatever in\n    its justification, and which accepts, in behalf of the church which\n    it covers as a shield of defence, the very conditions of death,\n    immobility and silence, in lieu of a living existence.\n\n    \u201cHowever this may be, and whatever more might be said on this vast\n    and interesting subject, it cannot in any case be disputed that the\n    divergences existing between us and the great Greek Church have\n    nothing in common with those which separate us from Protestantism.\n    Protestantism has tampered with and altered all our articles of\n    faith, demolished the Christian mysteries most sacred to belief and\n    dear to affection. It has retained neither the intercession of the\n    saints, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the sacraments of penance\n    and the Holy Eucharist, nor the veneration of holy images. In fine,\n    apart from the belief in the merits of our Saviour, of which every\n    manifestation is severely restrained, there is nothing in common\n    between Protestants and ourselves.[9] On the contrary, we may say,\n    in respect to the Greeks, that for the simple faithful the\n    difference between them and ourselves is invisible, because they\n    have retained so many things which assimilate their religion to\n    ours, as affecting the mind, the heart, and even the senses.\n    Therefore, for many among them, the barrier does not become sensible\n    until they find themselves disposed to pass over it in order to\n    satisfy the inward need which they experience of participating in\n    the riches of that other church, which seems so like their own, yet\n    differs from it in possessing really what the other offers in a vain\n    semblance.\n\nFootnote 9:\n\n      Our Protestant readers will excuse, we trust, a want of precise\n      accuracy in some of these expressions, very easily accounted for\n      by the fact that Madame Craven is a Catholic Frenchwoman, to whom\n      all the various phases of Protestantism are confused in one vague\n      and indistinct form.\n\n    \u201cWhat, then, must be the sentiments of a sincere, fervent, simple,\n    and upright soul, already bathed in the light which radiates from\n    the great mysteries of the faith, and touched by the infinite love\n    of Jesus Christ revealed in them, when it discovers the nature of\n    the obstacles which lie in her path?\n\n    \u201cShe finds all the articles of her faith more solemnly affirmed; all\n    the practices which her piety demands more numerous and accessible;\n    confession, absolution, communion\u2014all is there; and must she refrain\n    from satisfying her thirst for them?\n\n    \u201cIs it credible that a soul thus thirsty for truth, faith, and love\n    should be much disposed to recoil from the difficulty of accepting\n    one word more in the confession of faith,[10] or of recognizing the\n    head of the _universal_ church as the head of the church in the East\n    as well as of that in the West? Again, is it credible that she will\n    shrink back from the political obstacle, the greatest and most\n    formidable of all\u2014the only one, in fact, which she will find pain in\n    overcoming and need courage to surmount?\n\nFootnote 10:\n\n      Filioque.\n\n    \u201cSuch were the thoughts which importuned the mind of Natalie when\n    she left Brussels, at the end of February, 1843, in order to return\n    with her sisters to Paris, having resolved to ask the consent of her\n    mother to her becoming a Catholic, and fully expecting that this\n    permission would not be withheld.\u201c\n\nNatalie\u2019s father died when she was fifteen years old. Evidently he had\nnot felt any hostility to the Catholic Church, for he was a great\nadmirer of the Jesuits. Madame Narischkin was not prejudiced, as is\nshown by the fact that she never at any time was averse to the perpetual\nintercourse kept up by her family, and especially by Natalie, with the\nmost cultivated and devoted Catholics of Europe, such as the La\nFerronays family, and never hindered her daughters from attending all\nkinds of services in Catholic churches. She undoubtedly looked on the\nGreek and Catholic churches as essentially identical with each other,\nand therefore could not see any reason for passing from the communion of\nthe one to that of the other. She supposed that her daughter\u2019s reasons\nwere rather sentimental than conscientious. She naturally felt unwilling\nto have her take a step which would prevent her from ever again\nreceiving communion at the same altar with the other members of the\nfamily. And she was, moreover, decidedly opposed to any act which would\nexpose the family to the emperor\u2019s displeasure. It is not to be wondered\nat, then, that she positively refused permission to Natalie to be\nreceived into the Catholic Church. Natalie was at this time twenty-three\nyears of age, perfectly well educated, and fully instructed in the\ngrounds of the distinctive, exclusive claim which is made by the Roman\nChurch upon the obedience and submission of all baptized Christians. She\nwas competent to decide for herself, and in possession of a complete\nright to act according to her conscience. It was thought proper,\ntherefore, by the priest who was her spiritual director, and by her\nfriends of the La Ferronays family, that she should be privately\nreceived into the church at Paris. An accident frustrated their plan,\nand Natalie was obliged to leave Paris with her mother without having\naccomplished her intention. The nuncio and other priests of high\nposition at Paris, when they were informed about the matter, disapproved\nof the course which M. Aladel had advised, and reproved severely the\nladies who had been concerned in the unsuccessful attempt to put it in\nexecution.\n\nNatalie accompanied her mother and sisters to Stuttgart, and a few\nmonths afterward to Venice. At her mother\u2019s desire she had several\nconferences with a Greek priest, which served only to strengthen her in\nher well-formed and solid convictions. Nevertheless, she delayed her\nformal reception into the Catholic Church, waiting for a more favorable\nopportunity to accomplish this great desire of her heart. This\nopportunity came very soon, but in a way which was unexpected and, to\nher affectionate heart, most painful. During the summer of 1844 her\nmother was suddenly taken ill and died. The marriage of her two sisters,\nMary and Elizabeth\u2014both of whom had been some time before betrothed, the\nfirst to M. de Valois, the second to the Baron de Petz\u2014was delayed for a\nyear on account of this sad event, and the whole family was invited by\nM. Narischkin\u2019s elder brother Alexis to return to Moscow and reside\nduring the year of mourning in his house. Under these circumstances,\nNatalie resolved to act for herself, and she was accordingly received\ninto the Catholic Church on the 15th of August, although none of her\nfamily were made acquainted with the fact. She accompanied her brother\nand sisters to Moscow, where they met with the most affectionate\nreception from their uncle and their other relatives. Nothing occurred\nto make any disclosure on her part necessary, until the time came for\nall the members of the family to make their Easter communion. In Russia\nthis religious act, and all the preparations for it, are performed with\nso much publicity that it was impossible for Natalie to escape from it\nwithout observation. All the members of the family received the\ncommunion together at the same Mass, with the single exception of\nNatalie, who was nevertheless, as usual, present with the others, and\nobserved the sad and serious look with which her uncle regarded her, as\nshe remained in her place while all the rest of his family approached\nthe altar to receive the sacrament. She now felt that the time had come\nwhen concealment was no longer possible, and naturally feared that a\nsevere trial awaited her. It turned out, however, quite differently from\nwhat she had expected.\n\nAfter their return from Mass her uncle sent for her, and in a most kind\nand paternal manner remonstrated with her on her omission of so grave\nand sacred a duty as the fulfilment of the precept of Paschal communion,\nwhich he attributed to indifference and tepidity, demanding of her, in a\nmost affectionate manner, the reason which had induced her to abstain\nfrom communion. He added, at the same time, that he would much rather\nsee her a Roman Catholic than indifferent to the obligations of\nreligion. Natalie had listened to him with downcast eyes, in silence and\ntrepidation. At these last words\u2014prompted, perhaps, by some secret\nsuspicion that her residence abroad had actually been the occasion of a\nchange in her religion, and spoken with evident emotion and sadness\u2014she\nopened her heart, and gave her venerable uncle a full and unreserved\naccount of her conversion and of all the motives which led her to leave\nthe communion of the Greek Church. When she looked up timidly, at the\nclose of her recital to await her uncle\u2019s answer, she saw his eyes\nfilled with tears and fixed upon her with an expression of tenderness\nwhich banished all fear from her heart, and left upon it an indelible\nimpression of love and gratitude. He opened his arms to embrace her\naffectionately, and assured her of his protection and unalterable\nkindness. Her maternal uncle, Count Strogonoff, a man whose religious\ncharacter was both ardent and severe, and who was a thorough Russian of\nthe old type in all his principles and sentiments, when he was informed\nof the truth, acted towards her in precisely the same manner, and even\ntook pains to distinguish her from her sisters by special marks of\naffection. All her nearest relatives were informed of what had occurred,\nbut the strictest secrecy was enjoined in respect to all others, for\nreasons which are obvious without any explanation. The only great trial\nwhich Natalie had to encounter, now that she was relieved of the pain\nand anxiety of keeping her secret from her nearest relatives, was the\nprivation of all opportunity of going to Catholic churches and receiving\nthe sacraments. Under the circumstances this was a privation she was\ncompelled to endure patiently, and during the year she passed at Moscow\nshe was only able to make one short visit, in company with some young\nfriends, to the French chapel, on Holy Thursday, which was three days\nafter the memorable interview with her uncle.\n\nAt the expiration of the year of mourning the young Narischkins returned\nto Italy for the nuptials of Mary and Elizabeth, and Natalie\u2019s uncle\narranged for her permanent residence with the latter, in order that she\nmight be free to practise her religion without any embarrassment to\nherself or her family. She accordingly bade a final farewell to Russia,\nand with her temporary sojourn in her native country the great trial of\nher life was also terminated. We can easily imagine with what joy she\nagain revisited Italy, which had been the home of her childhood; and on\nthe occasion of this return Madame Craven\u2019s genius has inspired her to\nwrite one of her happiest and most beautiful passages, which we cannot\nrefrain from translating, although without any hope of preserving the\ndelicate aroma of the original.\n\n    \u201cWe do not believe there is a person in the world who has once lived\n    in Italy who does not cherish in his inmost soul the desire of\n    returning there once more, or feel, when he again looks upon its\n    beautiful sky, that wherever his native land may be, he has really\n    come back to his own true country. For its beauty belongs to us as\n    much as to those whose eyes behold it from the day when they are\n    first opened to the light in infancy. It is no more their peculiar\n    possession than it is our own; for to both alike it is only an\n    irradiation from that supreme and essential beauty which is our\n    common heritage and assured patrimony. This is doubtless the reason\n    why we can never see the faintest reflection of this splendor of the\n    eternal beauty without experiencing a sensation which causes the\n    heart to dilate with joy and at the same time to repose in the\n    tranquil security of possession. It seems to us that attentive\n    reflection on what passes within us will show that, whatever degree\n    of admiration any object of this world may awaken in our minds, even\n    if it approaches to _ecstasy_, it is very rarely the case that we\n    feel a positive _surprise_. Even if one who had never seen the\n    glorious light and splendor of a happy clime were suddenly\n    transported from the icy regions of the polar circle to the charming\n    shores of the Bay of Naples, there is a latent image in the depths\n    of the human heart, the original of which external things are the\n    copy, whose presence makes one feel, even at the first glance on the\n    sublime spectacle of the outward world, that all belongs to him and\n    exists within his soul.\n\n    \u201cThis reflection suggests another. We shall doubtless experience\n    something similar to this when we escape from this sphere of shadows\n    and images and emerge into the region of eternal reality. Certainly\n    our hearts will then be opened to receive those unknown enjoyments\n    'which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into\n    the heart of man to conceive.\u2019 Nevertheless, I think it is allowable\n    to suppose that, as we shall see the poor human form clothed in\n    Jesus Christ with all the glory of the divinity, so we shall also\n    find the reality of all those shadows which in this lower world\n    charm our eyes and fascinate our hearts. Happy will it then be for\n    those who have not suffered themselves to be captivated by these\n    shadows, when they are able to exclaim in a transport of ineffable\n    happiness: 'Behold at last those objects too beautiful and too\n    transitory to be loved on the earth by our souls, because they must\n    either suffer the loss of these or be lost themselves! Here they\n    are\u2014real, substantial, enduring, transfigured, unfading! We have\n    found all those things which we desired and sought for, and amid all\n    these possessions is our eternal abode!\u2019\u201d\n\nNatalie found a very pleasant home with her brother-in-law, the Baron de\nPetz, during the next three years. It does not appear from the narrative\nwhether he was a Catholic or a Greek in religion. He was certainly a\nmost kind and affectionate brother, and her sisters were always loving\nand considerate, so that no alienation ever separated the hearts of her\nnear relatives from her own so long as they lived. We shall see\npresently how noble and tender was the conduct of her brother Alexander.\nAnd we anticipate the regular order of events in order to mention in\nthis connection another near relative, Prince Demidoff, whose affection\nfor Natalie was extraordinary, and who acted with singular and admirable\ngenerosity not only toward herself, after she had become a Sister of\nCharity, but also to other members of the same congregation. While he\nwas residing in Italy he established a spacious hospital at his own\nexpense, which he confided to the care of these religious. At Paris he\nauthorized Sister Natalie to draw on him without limit, at her own\ndiscretion, for charitable purposes. It is extremely delightful to\nwitness and record actions of this kind, so honorable to human nature,\nand showing what a high degree of intellectual and moral refinement, as\nwell as how much of a truly Christian and Catholic spirit, is to be\nfound among a certain class of the ancient Russian nobility. And what a\ncontrast do they present to the ignoble persecutions, the mean and petty\ndefamations, to which so many even of those who attempt to assume the\nguise of Catholics have descended in respect to converts in England and\nthe United States. We do not forget, however, that there are many\ninstances among ourselves of a similar conduct to that of the\nNarischkins, as there are doubtless others of an opposite kind in\nRussian families under similar circumstances.\n\nNatalie Narischkin, in the midst of the splendors, gayeties, and most\nrefined enjoyments of the world, during the period of her peaceful,\nhappy youth, ere the severe trials of life had cast their shadow upon\nher spirit, had been pious, reserved, pearl-like in her purity of\ncharacter, always aspiring after Christian perfection. After she had\nbegun to participate in all the spiritual advantages thrown open to her\nby her Catholic profession, her distaste for the world and attraction\nfor the spiritual life increased rapidly, and an inclination toward the\nreligious state gradually matured into a certain and settled vocation.\nHer friends made some opposition for a time, though not so much as is\nfrequently encountered in the bosom of pious Catholic families. Her\nbrother Alexander examined carefully her reasons and motives, and, being\nconvinced that she was acting with prudence and deliberation, gave his\nfree consent and the promise of his assistance in carrying out her\nintention, accompanied by the singular request that she would leave the\nchoice of an order to his decision. She had made no choice herself, and\nwhen her brother selected the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity\nof St. Vincent de Paul, she was quite satisfied. In fact, she had a\npredilection for the Convent of the Rue de Bac in Paris, which had been\none of her places of favorite resort in former years. Her brother\ndiscussed the whole matter with M. Aladel, a Lazarist priest of Paris,\nand Natalie conferred not only with him but with several other\nexperienced directors, who concurred in approving her vocation as a\nSister of Charity. Here, accordingly, she entered, in her twenty-eighth\nyear, and here she worked and suffered, as one saint among a thousand\nothers, in an institute where heroism is as common as the ordinary\nvirtues are elsewhere, and sanctity is the universal rule. During her\nreligious life, which had twenty-six years of duration, she was first\nthe secretary of the superior-general, and afterwards the superior of a\nsmall community in the Faubourg St. Germain. She died in 1874.\n\nThe narrative of Natalie\u2019s religious life, enriched as it is with\ncopious extracts from her letters and numerous personal anecdotes, is\ninteresting and edifying as it is presented in the pages of Madame\nCraven\u2019s biography. No doubt an English translation will soon place it\nwithin the reach of all our readers; and as it is precisely just one of\nthose histories which is spoiled by condensation, we will not attempt to\ngive it in an abridged form. Leaving aside, therefore, all further\npersonal details, we shall confine our attention to that one aspect of\nour subject which has the most general interest and importance\u2014viz., the\nposition and attitude of the members of the national church of Russia in\nreference to the Catholic Church. As an illustration of this topic we\nhave presented the history of the conversion of a Russian lady of high\nbirth and education\u2014one specimen of a number of equally choice souls\nwhom the Russian Church has produced but has not been able to retain,\nand who are, we trust, the precursors of all the people of their nation\nin returning to the bosom of Catholic unity. Although Natalie Narischkin\nhad lived so very little in her own country, she was nevertheless an\nardent and patriotic Russian in her sentiments, and of course, as a\nwell-instructed and devout Catholic, had very much at heart the\nreligious welfare of her own nation. Among all the illustrious Russian\nconverts, Count Schouvaloff, who became a Barnabite monk, was the most\nzealous in promoting the great work of the reconciliation of the Russian\nChurch to the Holy See. Madame Craven tells us how enthusiastic Natalie\nwas in her interest in the cause which this good man consecrated by the\noblation of his own life as a sacrifice for its success\u2014a sacrifice\nwhich he offered in obedience to the counsel of Pius IX., and which was\naccepted by God.\n\n    \u201cWhen Father Schouvaloff\u2014who, like herself, was a Russian, a\n    convert, and devoted to the religious life\u2014had given a definite form\n    to this desire, and had founded an association of prayers in aid of\n    this object which all Catholics were invited to join, there was not\n    a single person in the world who responded more fervently to this\n    appeal than Sister Natalie. The desire of propagating the truth,\n    natural in the case of all who have embraced it, is particularly\n    strong in those who have come from the Greek Church. To see the\n    fatal barrier which separates the Eastern from the Western Church\n    fall down, and to hear henceforth these two communions designated\n    only by one common name: _The Church!_\u2014no one else can comprehend\n    the ardor of this desire in the hearts of those Russians who are\n    animated both by the love of the truth and the love of their\n    country.\n\n    \u201cWhile we are on this topic we cannot help remarking how surprising\n    are the tentative advances toward union between the Greek Church and\n    Protestantism which we have recently witnessed. Such an alliance the\n    clear mind of Natalie, even before her conversion, rejected with\n    repugnance as impossible and absurd. Does not, in fact, the most\n    simple reflection suffice to demonstrate that by uniting herself to\n    the Catholic Church the Greek Church would preserve the traditions\n    of her venerable antiquity together with the august dogmas which she\n    holds, and would, at the same time, in ceasing to be local and\n    becoming universal, recover the power of expansion and\n    evangelization which she has lost by her schismatical isolation? In\n    this case she might be compared to a princess of high lineage\n    regaining, by a return to the bosom of the family to which she\n    belonged, the royal rank from which she had fallen. But, in truth,\n    to make a union with Protestantism would be for her the worst of\n    misalliances, for she would then resemble a princess marrying a\n    _parvenu_ and with the utmost levity renouncing all the rights of\n    her high birth and illustrious descent.\u201d\n\nSome of our readers may find it difficult to understand the anomalous\nposition in which the Russian Church stands, so completely different\nfrom that of any of our Western sects, and requiring only the one act\nnecessary for its corporate reunion to the Catholic body for its\nrectification, and yet so completely severed from the true church in its\nactual state that it is not a branch, a limb, or any kind of part or\nmember of the same, but only a sect, completely outside of the universal\nchurch. Some Catholics may suppose the Russian Church in a worse\ncondition than it is in reality. They may not understand that its\npriesthood and sacraments are any better than those of the English or\nScandinavian churches, which have an outward form of episcopal\nconstitution. Or, if better informed on this head, they may ascribe to\nit heresy, and regard some of its differences of rite and discipline as\nvitiating essentially the Catholic order. On the other hand, these\nmisapprehensions being set aside, and the likeness of the Russian Church\nto the Catholic Church clearly understood, they might find it difficult\nto perceive that essential difference which, as Madame Craven remarks\nwith truth, is to most of the Russian laity invisible. Still more will a\nProtestant having a tincture of Catholic opinions and sentiments fail to\nsee why a member of the Russian Church should be convinced of the\nimperative obligation of abjuring the Greek schism and passing over to\nthe communion of the Roman Church.\n\nThe question of heresy is easily settled by the way of authority. We\nhave only to inquire, therefore, whether the Holy See has ever condemned\nthe adherents of the schism begun by Photius and renewed by Michael\nCerularius, of heresy as well as schism, and whether the standard\nauthors in theology consider them as heretics in view of their\necclesiastical position and in virtue of general principles, although no\nformal judgment has been pronounced by the Holy See. It is certain that\nno such formal sentence has ever been pronounced by the Holy See. The\nNestorian and Monophysite sects of the East have been formally condemned\nas heretical. But the _soi-disant_ Orthodox Church likewise condemns\nthese and all other heretical sects condemned by the Roman Church before\nthe time of the schism. At the Council of Florence the Greeks were not\njudged to have professed any heresy, the Council of Trent was specially\ncareful to abstain from any such condemnation, and the Council of the\nVatican equally refrained from it. The same is true of all the official\npronouncements of the popes. In the exercise of practical discipline,\nwhen it is a question of reconciling Greeks, whether they are in holy\norders or laymen, they are treated as schismatics, but not as heretics.\nTheologians also, in treating of the doctrine of the several national\nchurches in communion with the schismatical patriarchate of\nConstantinople, which they hold in common as their profession of faith,\nregard it as orthodox, conformed to the doctrine of the Catholic Church,\nand consequently free from any mixture of heresy. The only doctrines in\nregard to which any one could suppose the Greek Church to be heretical\nare the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, and the supreme,\ninfallible authority of the Pope. The Greek Church has never, by any\nsolemn, synodical act, denied the procession of the Holy Spirit from the\nSon. The omission of the _Filio-que_ from the Creed is not in itself\nequivalent to such a denial, and the Roman Church has never required the\nOrientals to insert it as a condition of communion. Neither has the\nGreek Church ever by any solemn act denied the supremacy and\ninfallibility of the Pope. The liturgical books, and specifically those\nof the Russian Church, contain abundant testimonies to the Catholic\ndoctrine on this head. The heretical doctrines of individuals, whether\nprelates, priests, or laymen, are therefore their own personal heresies,\nand not the doctrine of the public formularies of faith, which remain\njust what they were at the time of the separation. The only conciliar\ndecrees of a dogmatic character which have been enacted since that time\nby a synod which could be regarded as representing the so-called\nOrthodox Church are those of the Synod of Bethlehem, in which the\nprincipal heresies of Protestantism are condemned. There is only one\nessential vice, therefore, in the constitution of the Russo-Greek Church\nwhich needs to be healed, and that is its state of rebellion against the\nSee of Peter. The one act of abjuring the schism implies and involves in\nit the recognition of all the decrees of the Holy See and of \u0153cumenical\ncouncils during the period which has elapsed since the rebellion of\nPhotius, by virtue of the doctrine of the infallibility of the Catholic\nChurch which the Greek Church professes.\n\nAny Catholic can understand from this explanation how completely\ndifferent is the position of the people of Russia who belong to their\nnational church from that of the Protestants of Western Europe and the\nUnited States. They have the Catholic faith explicitly taught to them,\nand believed as firmly as it is by ourselves in all those things which\nrelate to the great mysteries of religion and its practical duties and\ndevotions. They hold implicitly, so long as they are in good faith, all\nthat the Catholic Church believes and teaches, although they are\nignorant of the full and complete doctrine of the centre of unity and\nchief source of authority in the church. They have bishops and priests\nwhose ordination is valid, the sacrifice of the Mass, the seven\nsacraments, the fasts, feasts, ceremonies, and outward forms of worship\nwhich they had before the schism. In fact, as Mrs. Craven remarks, the\ndifference between their church and the Catholic is invisible to the\neyes of the majority, and, if they were to-day to be restored to their\nancient union with the universal church, there would be no perceptible\nchange in their customs. There are differences in discipline and ritual\nbetween the Latin and the various Oriental rites, but it is a fixed\nmaxim of the Roman Church not to require the Eastern Christians to adopt\nthe discipline and ritual of the Western church in matters which are not\nessential, when they are received into her communion.\n\nThese things being as they are, it becomes naturally somewhat difficult\nto those who have not carefully studied the question to understand why\nit is a strict obligation, and necessary to salvation, for a member of\nthe Greek Church who discovers that it is in a state of schism to abjure\nits communion. We can see, in the case of Anglicans believing in nearly\nall Catholic doctrine so far as even to acknowledge the primacy of the\npope and desire a corporate reunion with the Catholic Church, that, so\nlong as they believe in the validity of their own orders and other\nsacraments, it is very hard for them to realize that they are not in the\ncommunion of the true church. They generally find their ground of\nsecurity give way under their feet by their loss of confidence in the\nvalidity of their ordinations. But it is not easy to convince them that,\napart from this essential defect in their church, and apart even from\nthe question of its heretical doctrine, the mere fact of schism makes an\necclesiastical society, no matter how much it resembles a church in\noutward appearance, as really a mere sect as amputation makes the most\nperfect and beautiful hand a mere piece of dead matter. A mere\ncollection of bishops, priests, and baptized persons, professing the\ntrue faith, administering and receiving the true sacraments, is not a\nportion of the Catholic Church, if the organic, constitutive principle\nof lawful mission and jurisdiction is wanting, which gives pastoral\nauthority to the persons who possess the episcopal and sacerdotal\ncharacter, and thus makes the collection of people under their rule a\n_lawful_ society, under _lawful_ pastors, and under the supreme rule of\nthe _Chief Pastor_, who is the Vicar of Christ. It is not enough,\ntherefore, for a person to profess the faith and receive the sacraments\nin order to keep fully the law of Christ. It is necessary to profess the\nfaith in the external communion of the lawful pastors, and to receive\nfrom them, or priests whom they have authorized to minister within their\njurisdiction, the sacraments. Bishops and priests who exercise their\nfunctions in a manner contrary to the law sin by doing so, and those who\ncommunicate in their unlawful acts also sin, and thus both parties\nprofane the sacraments and incur the censures of the church.\nNevertheless, if they act in invincible ignorance and good faith, they\nare excused from sin and escape the censure. And, in case of necessity,\nthe church even dispenses from her ordinary laws. Any priest is\nauthorized to administer sacraments in any place, to any person not\nmanifestly unworthy, in case of necessity. So, also, one may receive the\nsacraments in a similar case from any priest, if there is nothing in the\nact which implies a direct or tacit participation in heresy, schism, or\nmanifest profanation of sacred things.\n\nThe Russian clergy and people, we must suppose, are generally in good\nfaith, and therefore innocent of any sin in respect to the schism of the\nnational church. There is, therefore, no reason why they should not\nadminister and receive the sacraments worthily, so as to receive their\nfull spiritual benefit, and thus sustain and increase the living\ncommunion with the soul of the church and with Christ which was begun in\nthem by baptism. The external irregularity of their ecclesiastical\nposition cannot injure them spiritually when there is no sin in the\ninward disposition or intention. Moreover, it is morally and physically\nimpossible for the Russian clergy and people, generally, to alter their\nposition. They are, therefore, really placed in a necessity of\nadministering and receiving the sacraments without any further and more\ndirect authority from the Holy See than that which is virtually conceded\nto them on account of the necessities of their position. Since the\nchurch always exercises her power, even in inflicting censures and\npunishments, for edification and not for destruction, we may suppose\nthat she tolerates the irregular and disorderly state into which they\nhave been brought by the fault of their chief rulers, so long as it is\nout of their power to escape from it, and are not even aware that the\nirregularity exists.\n\nIt is plain, however, that every one who knows that the Russian\nhierarchy is destitute of ordinary and legitimate authority, and has the\nopportunity of resorting to the ministry of lawful Catholic pastors, is\nbound, under pain of incurring mortal sin and excommunication, to comply\nwith this obligation. The excuse of ignorance and good faith is no more\navailable after the law is made known. The reason of necessity ceases as\nsoon as recourse is open to the authority which has a claim on\nobedience. The censures pronounced on the authors and wilful adherents\nof schism take effect as soon as one knowingly and wilfully participates\nin and sustains or countenances rebellion against the supreme authority\nof the Catholic Church.\n\nThe position of the Russian Church is utterly self-contradictory and\nuntenable. By a special mercy of divine Providence it has been kept from\ncoming to a general and clear consciousness of the fundamental heresy,\nwhich lies latent in the Byzantine pretence of equality to the Roman\nChurch, from which the schism took its rise. The immobility which has\ncharacterized it, and to which the privation of all authority\nindependent of the state has greatly contributed, has kept it from\ncommitting itself to any formal heresy. It has broken its connection,\nbut it has not run off the track or fallen through a bridge. We cannot\nsuppose that it will long remain stationary on the great road along\nwhich the march of events, the progress of history, is proceeding. It\nseems to be awaiting the propitious moment when, reunited to the source\nof spiritual power, it shall again move on in the line of true progress.\nWhen this event takes place, we may safely predict that the name of\nNatalie Narischkin will be honored in Russia together with that of\nAlexander Newski, the special patron of the imperial family; and that\nthe empire will be filled with convents of the Daughters of Charity, the\ncountrywomen and imitators of her who, more illustrious by her virtue\nthan by her descent, was appropriately named \u201cThe Pearl of the Order.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                              UP THE NILE.\n                                  III.\n\n\nWe had a letter of introduction to the Governor of Assouan from a person\nwe had never seen. It came about in this way: Ali Murad, our consul at\nThebes, sent by Ahmud a letter to his friend, the governor of Edfoo,\nasking him to give us a letter to his excellency at Assouan. This\nletter, worded in the usual extravagant style of the Orient, stated that\nthe dahabee\u00e1h _Sitta Mariam_ contained a party of distinguished\ntravellers who were in high favor at Cairo, and should everywhere be\nreceived with the greatest kindness and attention. His excellency was a\nfine-looking negro, well dressed in European style, patent-leather\nboots, fancy cane. I looked at first for eye-glasses, but on second\nthought concluded that this was too much to expect from him. He came on\nboard to visit us, accompanied by his secretaries and servants, very\npompous and haughty in his bearing towards the crew, polite\u2014nay, almost\nobsequious\u2014to us. Head sheik of the cataracts is on board; a deal of\ntalking by every one at the same time; no one listening; a lull;\ngovernor lights a fresh cigar; secretaries, servants, and crew roll\ncigarettes; Reis Mohammed appears with the certificate of tonnage. There\nis no fear of obliteration or erasure in this; no danger of wearing out\nor the characters fading by lapse of time. It might have belonged to the\npleasure barge of antiquity-hidden Menes or one of the corn-boats of the\nHyksos. It was a bar of solid iron three inches wide, four long, and\nhalf an inch in thickness. Deeply-cut figures showed the boat to be of\n380 ardebs burden. An agreement was finally entered into: Ahmud was to\npay the sheik nine pounds and ten shillings to take the boat up and down\nthe cataracts, exclusive of backsheesh. Out of this the governor\nreceived two pounds and ten shillings as his commission. This making\narrangements for ascending the cataracts is the most serious drawback to\nthe pleasure of a Nile voyage. True, the dragoman undertakes this, but\nthe howadjii are present and witnesses of the altercations, the loud\ntalking, and the great noise and confusion attendant upon it. We being\nsuch distinguished travellers on paper, and the governor being impressed\nwith that fact, our contract was entered into with less confusion than\nis usually incident to this arrangement. Four sheiks or chiefs of the\ncataract control the proceedings. This office is hereditary, and\nformerly they were despotic in the exercise of their power. Twenty\nEnglish or American sailors could take a boat up the cataract in\none-third the time it took nearly two hundred natives to perform that\noffice for us. But no dragoman would dare incur the enmity of these\npowerful sheiks by attempting the ascent without their permission. Their\npower is somewhat curtailed now by orders from the viceroy, so that\ninstead of, as heretofore, extorting as much as possible from the\nfrightened dragoman, their prices are regulated by a fixed tariff\u2014so\nmuch for every hundred ardebs.\n\nWe are now fairly started on the ascent; it is early in the morning, and\na light breeze is blowing from the north. The head sheik is on board.\nWhat an appropriate name he has! Surely his father was a prophet and\nforesaw the future life of his son\u2014Mohammed Nogood! Not the slightest\nparticle of good did he do. He squatted on a mat, smoked his pipe, and\ntook no heed of what passed around him. Old Nogood, as we called him,\nwas with us for three days, and during that time he never opened his\nmouth unless to grumble, and never raised his hand except to remove the\npipe from his mouth, being too lazy even to light it; a sailor performed\nthat onerous duty for him.\n\nWe sailed through narrow, tortuous channels against a rapid stream to\nthe island of Shey\u00e1l at the foot of the first bab or gate. The first\ncataract, as it is termed, is a series of five short rapids on the\neastern shore, where the ascent is made, and one long and one short one\non the western shore. These rapids are called gates. We stopped at the\nfoot of the first. Three finely-built Nubians, _in puris naturalibus_,\nsave turbans on their heads, came sailing down the turbulent and surging\nwaters astride of logs. Borne on with great velocity, they seize hold of\nour boat as they reach it, in a moment are on deck, their heads bare,\nthe turbans girded around their loins. \u201cBacksheesh, howadjii!\u201d They\ndeserve it for this feat. It made the howadjii shudder to see them in\nthese raging waters. An impromptu row now springs up between our pilot\nand old Nogood. The boat is aground, and more help is needed to push it\noff. Here is the dialogue, as translated by Ahmud:\n\nPilot (old man with gray whiskers, costume soiled and tattered\ncoffee-bag): \u201cO Mohammed Nogood! send some of your people to move the\nboat.\u201d\n\nOld Nogood: \u201cO pilot, you jack-ass! why do you not attend to the helm\nand mind your business?\u201d\n\nIntense excitement on board, during which the pilot swears by Allah and\nthe Prophet that he will not stay on the boat after such an insult, and\ngoes off in high dudgeon. The howadjii, having locked up everything\nportable below stairs, are seated on the quarter-deck enjoying the scene\nin a mild manner, and waiting to see what will come next. The prospects\nof being kept here for an indefinite time are delightful. The head sheik\nis angry and the pilot has disappeared. But the silver lining of the\ndark cloud soon shines out. The second sheik takes command, and Nogood\u2019s\nson comes aboard as pilot\u2014very unlike his father, a hard worker and a\nquiet sort of man. We are ready to start now, but where are the men to\npull us up? None can be seen. The river is here filled with broken and\ndisjointed rocks\u2014small islets. A great fall was here once, no doubt;\nhence the rapids now. The sheik throws two handfuls of sand in the air.\nImmediately from all sides, like the warriors of Roderick Dhu, rise the\nShellallee. From behind every rock come forth a score or more. Three\nlong ropes are made fast to the boat. A hundred men take hold of two;\nthe third is turned two or three times around a rock, the end being held\nby a dozen men. This rope is gradually tightened as the boat moves up,\nto hold it in case the others should break. By the united help of the\nwind and this struggling mass of naked humanity we move slowly up the\nfirst gate, not ten yards long. In the same manner we pass the second\nand third gates. Our friends the log-riders are useful to us now.\nPlunging into the boiling, seething waters, that rush with such force it\nseems impossible for man to struggle against them, they make ropes fast\nto this rock; now they detach them, and, taking the end between their\nteeth, swim to another and make fast again. Picture to yourself such a\nscene, if you can. I cannot describe it satisfactorily to myself. Hear,\nif you can, nearly two hundred men all shouting at the same time, giving\norders, suggesting means, no one listening, no one obeying, each acting\nfor himself\u2014Old Nogood alone seated quietly on the deck smoking his\npipe; our boat possessed by four score of these black Shellallee,\nhalf-naked, running to and fro, shouting and yelling, but doing nothing\nto help us. Pandemonium itself could scarce furnish such a scene of\nconfusion. Babel was a tower of silence compared with this discord.\nAfter passing the third gate we sailed into a quiet haven and moored\nthere for the night. It was only three P.M. But they are five-hour men\nhere, commencing work at ten and stopping at three. We were kept waiting\nall the next day, as two other boats were ahead of us, and they took\nthem up first. On the third morning we left our moorings and sailed\nunder a fresh breeze about one hundred yards up the stream to the fourth\ngate. The fourth and fifth are in reality but one continuous rapid; but\nas a stoppage is made when half-way up to readjust the ropes, the\nnatives divide it into two gates. The water rushes here with great\nrapidity\u2014more so than in the other gates, as these are narrower. A stout\nrope was made fast to the cross-beams of the deck on the starboard bow,\nand the other end carried around a rock some distance off. Owing to some\nmistake there was no rope on the port side. The men were pulling on a\nrope carried directly ahead, when it suddenly parted; the boat swung\naround to starboard and struck a rock with great force, knocking off\nseveral planks six inches thick and seven feet long. They were picked up\nby the felluka, which floated around promiscuously, manned by five small\nboys. These planks were carved in scroll-work, and painted in bright\ncolors. Reis Mohammed had carefully bound straw around them before\nstarting, so that they might not even be scratched. He clenched his\nteeth and swore like a trooper; the only words intelligible to us were\n\u201cAllah,\u201d \u201cMerkeb,\u201d \u201cMohammed.\u201d Reis Mohammed Hassan, Nogood\u2019s successor,\nwas standing on the awning piled up on the front of the quarter-deck.\nEvery one else began to shout, gesticulate, and run around to no\npurpose; but he, shouting while he undressed, threw off his gown and\nturban, and, with his drawers on, jumped overboard, swam to a rock on\nthe port side, and made fast a rope. A Nubian, attired in a girdle, now\nwaded out into the rapid as far as he was able, and a rope was thrown\nhim from the rock against which the boat rested. After three attempts he\ncaught it and made it fast some distance ahead. A fourth rope was\ncarried ashore and seized hold of by sixty men. We were then pulled into\na narrow pass, through which the water dashed like a mill-race, and so\nnarrow that the boat grazed the rocks on either side. For a moment we\nremained stationary; the next the strong wind and the efforts of the men\novercame the force of the current, and we moved slowly on. Shortly after\nwe reached the head of the rapids, the ropes were withdrawn, the Nubians\nleft us, and we sailed gallantly up to Phil\u00e6 the beautiful.\n\nWe are now in Nubia, among a different race of people. We have passed\nthe cataract. Hear the concise account given by the father of travellers\nconcerning this ascent: \u201cI went as far as Elephantine,\u201d he says, \u201cand\nbeyond that obtained information from hearsay. As one ascends the river\nabove the city of Elephantine the country is steep; here, therefore, it\nis necessary to attach a rope on both sides of a boat as one does with\nan ox in a plough, and so proceed; but if the rope should happen to\nbreak, the boat is carried away by the force of the stream.\u201d This land\nof Cosh is very different in appearance from the one we have just left.\nThe hills are mostly of granite and sandstone, and they approach nearer\nthe river. In some parts the mere sloping bank, not more than ten feet,\ncan be cultivated in a perfectly straight line; on its top the golden\nsands meet the growing crops. The river is filled with sunken rocks. Had\nwe struck here, it might have been serious, unlike running on the\nsand-banks in the lower country. Reis Dab, our new pilot, knew the river\nwell and kept a sharp lookout; so on we sailed day after day without\nstopping. There are no printed newspapers along the Nile, but the\nnatives have a cheap, primitive method of journalism. They need no\nexpensive press, no reporters to search far and wide for news. As soon\nas another boat appears in sight all is excitement on board. When we\ncome within hailing distance the journals are exchanged as follows: Far\naway over the waters comes a voice from the approaching boat: \u201cHow are\nyou all? Who are you? All well?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe are dahabee\u00e1h _Sitta Mariam_, Father H\u2014\u2014 and party on board. Who are\nyou?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow is Mohammed? Fatima has a sore foot. Ali has gone up the river on a\ncorn-boat.\u201d And thus they go on telling all the news. \u201cHow many boats up\nthe river? What is going on further down?\u201d The shouting is kept up until\nthe boat passes out of hearing. When we reached Syria, in April, our\ndragoman there, who had never been in Egypt, knew all about our\nmovements on the Nile. They were communicated from one to another simply\nby word of mouth, and finally reached his ears.\n\nIt is a bright, beautiful moonlight evening. The glittering\nconstellations are reflected deep down in the calm waters beneath us, so\ndistinctly that they seem to have fallen there. Not a ripple disturbs\nthe surface of the water, scarce a breath the stillness of the air. It\nis a gala night. Ahmud has distributed candles and hasheesh to the crew.\nThey have illuminated the deck and are playing, singing, and dancing.\nReis Ahmud, with a sober face, beats the drum, his whole soul seemingly\nconcerned in his occupation. Abiad has the tamborine, a pretty one,\ninlaid with mother-of-pearl. He has been smoking hasheesh\u2014his favorite\npastime. His eyes are closed, his head sways backwards and forwards as\nhe sings; he seems to pour out his very life\u2019s spirit in the song. The\nrest of the crew group around, squatted on the deck, joining in the\nchorus. Reis Mohammed sits apart; he is fishing. Ahmud, Ali, Ibrahim,\nand the Nubian pilot look on. Now they become excited; the hasheesh is\nworking on them. Louder, still louder the singing. Abiad surely will not\nlive long; he must be in Paradise now. His soul is going out piece by\npiece from his lips. The funny little old cook jumps up, puts a wooden\nspoon in his belt for a pistol, some sugar-cane stalks for swords and\ndaggers. He is a Bedouin. More uproarious the shouting, intermingled\nwith catcalls. He dances the war-dance of the nomadic sons of the\ndesert. The howadjii have come out now; they are interested in this\nstrange, picturesque scene. The excitement is at its height. A lighted\ncandle is placed upon a small stick and put in the river; the current\ncarries it down still burning. There is not wind enough to blow out the\nflame, and as it floats onward it looks like some will-o\u2019-the-wisp or\nfairy spirit of the waters reposing serenely on their bosom. The second\nstage of the hasheesh now comes on; one by one they quiet down. Soon\nAbiad falls asleep; some of the others follow; a strange stillness\nsucceeds this hilarious uproar. To-morrow will come the reaction, and\nfor a few days they will do but little work.\n\nWe have had great trouble to keep our birds. We have now preserved some\nseventy specimens, from the small black chat to the large crane. The\nrats will carry them off. So now we suspend them from the centre of the\nceiling. The same rat never carries away two birds. I cannot identify\neach particular rat, and yet I am morally certain of the truth of the\nabove proposition. The skin, when taken off the bird, is covered on the\ninside with a heavy coating of arsenical soap containing a large amount\nof arsenic, enough to cut short the career of at least one rat. So if\nthey did carry off our birds, we had the satisfaction of knowing that\nthe birds carried them off in turn. We have been very anxious to kill a\ncrocodile; they are very scarce below the first cataract, but as soon as\nwe passed Phil\u00e6 we promulgated the following general offer: To the first\nman who points out a crocodile to any of the howadjii we will give a\nhalf-sovereign. If the pilot, or any one in his stead, brings us within\nreasonable shooting distance, we will present him with one pound; if we\nkill and secure the crocodile, we will make presents all around. This\noffer kept them on the alert. Every eye was strained to see the first\ncrocodile\u2014and it takes a practised eye to discern one; for to the\nuninitiated they appear to be logs of wood lying on the sand. Early on\nthe morning of January 15 the pilot came to us with eyes aglow and\npointed out a timsah (crocodile). We were tied up on the west bank, and\nthe reptile was lying on a sand-bank near the eastern shore. There was\nconsiderable difference of opinion among the crew, many of them\ninsisting that it was not a timsah. \u201cBut,\u201d asks the pilot, \u201cwhat is it,\nthen? There are no rocks on the sand-banks; it can scarcely be a log,\nfor these are rarely met with in this part of the river.\u201d A council of\nwar was held, and a plan of attack was determined on. Mr. S\u2014\u2014 and I,\nwith Ali, the pilot, and four sailors, crossed the river to the\nsand-bank about half a mile below the spot where slept the timsah in\nblissful unconsciousness of the fate awaiting him. Bent almost to the\nground, we crawled cautiously along. When we had proceeded about a\nquarter of a mile we found, to our disgust, that the bank upon which we\nwere was separated from the bank on which lay the timsah by twenty yards\nof water of some depth. The pilot now asked us to fire, but the distance\nwas too great, and we began to be suspicious. The timsah did not move;\nit was almost too quiet to be real. Mr. S\u2014\u2014 and I placed ourselves in\nthe bow of the boat, covered the object with our double-barrelled guns,\nand ordered the sailors to pull directly towards it. For a few moments\nthe excitement was intense. At the first movement of the timsah four\nbullets would have shot forth on their death-errand. Nearer and nearer\nwe came. A moment more, and Abiad jumps from the boat, and with a loud\nshout rushes up the bank and catches hold of the supposed timsah. \u201cCome\nhere, O Reis Dab!\u201d cried he, \u201cand skin your timsah. Stop, I will do it\nfor you.\u201d And he holds up to our astonished eyes a sheepskin. How\ncrestfallen was the pilot, and how the others joked him! It was a\nchicken-coop covered with a sheepskin, containing three putrid chickens,\nwhich had fallen from some dahabee\u00e1h, and, carried by the current on the\nbank, became embedded there, and was left high and dry when the waters\nreceded.\n\nWe have a number of pets on board: a live turtle, a soft-shelled fellow,\nin color like the mud of its own Nile; a hawk who does not reciprocate\nour friendship, and snaps at us when we go near him; six chameleons\u2014what\nstrange creatures these are! We have had some twenty of them at\ndifferent times. As far as we could observe, they ate nothing, and yet\nthrove well as long as we were in their own latitudes. As we returned\ntowards the north they died one after the other. The chameleon is formed\nsomewhat like a lizard, about eight inches in length. Their feet look\nlike a mittened hand\u2014that is to say, a large toe corresponds to the\nthumb, and the rest of the foot, being solid, appears like the hand\nenclosed in a mitten. They have very large heads compared with their\nbodies, and eyes like a frog. They change their color, and, under my own\nobservation, made the changes from light green to yellow, black, brown,\nblue, and dark green. We would tease them sometimes, and, when\nirritated, yellow spots would appear over their bodies, and they would\ntry to bite us as we placed our fingers in their large mouths. Their\nfavorite pastime was to climb to the top of a palm branch fastened in\nthe deck; here the first one would remain. The second would hang from\nthe tail of the first, and the third support himself from the second in\nthe same manner. In this position they would remain for hours. If\nanother one wanted to reach the top of the branch, he would crawl\ndeliberately up the backs of the others, who regarded this conversion of\nthemselves into public highways with perfect indifference. Sometimes one\nof them would roam away and be lost for a day or two, and then be\naccidentally found in the centre of a basket of tomatoes or on the\nsummit of the main-yard.\n\nOn January 17 I strolled into a small village. The houses consisted of\nfour walls of sun-dried clay with a small opening for a doorway; some\nfew had palm branches stretched from wall to wall\u2014apologies for roofs.\nAs I walked on I met a group of young girls; one was reclining on the\nground, while the others were dressing her hair. This operation is a\nvery tedious one, and is not repeated oftener than once a month. The\nhair, which falls to the shoulders, is twisted into numerous braids, the\nends of which are fastened with small balls of mud; and to complete the\ntoilet oil is poured over the head. The hair being black and coarse, and\nthe oil giving it a glossy appearance, it presents the effect of braided\nblack tape. Although many of these girls had beautiful eyes and handsome\nfeatures, yet the howadjii never cared to approach too near them; for\nthe oil runs down in little streams from the crown of their heads to\ntheir feet, and their faces appear as if polished with the best French\nvarnish. Our young Nubian cook left us here. This is his home, and he\nwill remain here until we return. He is only twenty years of age, and\nhas not seen his wife for three years. So he takes out of the hold some\nbracelets, a dozen or two made of buffalo horn, all for his wife, and\nshe will wear them all at the same time, half on each arm. How her eyes\nwill brighten when she sees those bright tin pots and those robes,\ngreen, yellow, blue! Surely Suleym\u00e1n must love his dark-eyed, oily-faced\nwife. From Assouan to Wady Sabooa, about one hundred miles, no Arabic is\nspoken. Thence to Wady Halfa it is spoken in many towns. When we pass\nthrough a town the whole population turn out _en masse_, preceded by a\nleader, who carries on his shoulder the town gun, an old flint-lock\nmusket, generally marked Dublin Castle, carried, mayhap, at Yorktown or\nBrandywine. A barrel of great length is secured to the stock by six or\nseven brass bands. Powder is scarce, and the first demand\u2014the gun being\nput forward to show the need\u2014is always the same: \u201cBarood ta howadjii\u201d\n(Powder, O howadjii!) We used cartridges altogether, and sometimes, when\nthey were particularly green, we imposed upon them in this way:\n\nScene, the river-bank. Howadjii has just fired and brought down a bird.\nLarge numbers of Nubians surround him. Gunman comes forward: \u201cBarood ta\nhowadjii.\u201d \u201cMafish barood ta Wallud\u201d (I have no powder, O boy!) \u201cSee\nthese green boxes\u201d (showing cartridges). Wallud looks attentively at\nthem. \u201cInside each is an afreet [spirit or devil]; we put this in the\nend of the gun, point it at the bird, 'Imshee y afreet\u2019 (Go, O spirit!),\nthen off he flies and kills the bird.\u201d This ruse was successful two or\nthree times; they looked with awe upon the green boxes, and made no\nfurther demands. Often, however, a shout of derision followed this\nrecital. They knew what cartridges were as well as we did. Reis Ahmud\npointed out the first real timsah, and received the promised\nhalf-sovereign.\n\nOn January 19, 1874, at three P.M., we made fast beneath the ever-open\neyes of the giant guardians of rock-hewn Ipsamboul. To my mind\nIpsamboul, or Aboo-Simbel, is the most interesting temple on the Nile,\nnot even excepting majestic Karnak; for most of the other temples are\nbuilt in the same manner in which the edifices of the world have been\nconstructed from the earliest ages down to the present time, by stones\ncut and squared, placed one upon another and held together by clamps,\ncement, or other means. True, the style and shape in which these stones\nare cut and arranged differ very much in Egypt and in Greece, in ancient\nand in modern times; but the taking of numbers of small pieces, and, by\njoining them together, forming a whole, is common to them all.\nAboo-Simbel is not constructed in this way. The side of the mountain\nfacing the river was cut to form a right angle with the surface of the\nplain, and made smooth and even as a wall, save some projections\npurposely left at regular distances, and which afterwards were shaped\ninto gigantic figures of victorious Rameses; a small hole was pierced\ninto this surface a few feet above the ground; it was made larger, and\ncarried in further and further full two hundred feet, its roof seemingly\nupheld by Osiride columns. A similar gallery was cut on either side of\nthis main one. Transverse galleries crossed these, leading to rooms ten\nin number, and all this cut out of the solid rock, no cement, no clamps,\nnot a joint anywhere\u2014a huge monolithic temple. The inside of the roof is\nperfectly regular in its lines, with a smooth, even surface; the outside\nis the rugged mountain top. Surely this was the way to build for\nimmortality.\n\nThis style of building, although rare, is not confined to Egypt alone,\nbut was most probably copied from it. I have since seen it in the\nBrahmin caves of Elephanta in Bombay harbor, and on a small scale in the\ntombs of the Valley of Josaphat. The temple faces the river and stands\nclose to the bank. As we approach we are struck by the magnitude of the\nfour colossal figures of Rameses II. They are seated on thrones, and the\nfaces that remain are quite expressive. The height without the pedestal\nis sixty-six feet; the forefinger is three feet in length. Father H\u2014\u2014,\nMadam, and I seated ourselves comfortably on the big toe, and, as I\nlooked upwards into that gigantic face, I thought of the myriads of\nevents, marking epochs of time, that had happened in the great world\noutside since first the sculptor\u2019s hand had changed the rugged mountain\nside into these semblances of their warrior-king. The overturner of his\ndynasty, the illustrious Sesac, had led the victorious Egyptians into\nthe very heart of the Holy City, and carried off from the Temple the\ngolden shields which Solomon had there hung up. Cambyses had marched\nwith thundering tread, laying waste on every hand with fire and sword\nfrom Pelusium to Thebes, making this once mighty kingdom a province of\nfar-off Persia. Greece rose from a handful of half-savage shepherds to\nbe the focus of intellect, art, and science, around which clustered the\nshining lights of the world. Alexander overran the whole of Western\nAsia, and established in the Delta his mighty race of Macedonian\nemperors. Rome was founded, sat on her seven hills the proud mistress of\nthe world, fell, and was swallowed up in the rush of succeeding\ngenerations. Christianity, starting from its humble Judean home, spread\nfrom sea to sea, from the peasant\u2019s hut to the royal palace,\nrevolutionized the world, civilized nations, and, encircling the globe,\nled back its proselytes to unfold its sacred truths to the descendants\nof its apostles. Mohammedanism carried its bloody and relentless arms\nover the vast plains of Asia, through the fruitful valley of the Nile,\nto the centre of Continental Europe, and was driven back, tottering and\ngradually receding, to its Eastern cradle. The great republics of the\nmiddle ages lived their short span of power, and were lost in the mighty\nempires that absorbed them. A new world was discovered, and new\ngovernments founded therein. And during all this, unshaken by war or\ntempest, unmoved by change or revolution, these giant figures gazed with\nnever-closing eye upon the swift-flowing river at their feet. Those who\ngive themselves the trouble to inform the world that a perfectly unknown\nperson has visited a monument, and that that unknown person has\nmutilated it by inscribing his name thereon\u2014a reprehensible practice\nunfortunately so common in Egypt\u2014may study here the earliest known\ninscription of this kind. On the leg of one of the figures is cut in\nrude characters the following inscription in Greek: \u201cKing Psamatichus\nhaving come to Elephantine, those that were with Psamatichus, the son of\nTheocles, wrote this. They sailed and came to above Kerkis, to where the\nriver rises ... the Egyptian Amasis. The writer was Damearchon, the son\nof Amoebichus, and Pelephus, the son of Udamus.\u201d This was written at\nleast six hundred and fifty years before Christ, and the scribblers,\ndesirous of cheap notoriety, are as unknown as their numerous followers\nwho now disfigure the monuments of the world.\n\nOver the entrance is a statue of the god Ra (Sun), to whom Rameses\noffers a figure of truth. We enter a grand hall supported by eight\nOsiride pillars, pass through it to a second of four square pillars\nwhich leads to the _adytum_. A number of small chambers are found on\nboth sides of the main hall, and the interior of the walls is covered\nwith intaglio figures and hieroglyphics. At the end of the _adytum_ are\nfour figures in high relief. There is but one opening to the temple\u2014the\nentrance door\u2014through which alone light can enter. As the first rays of\nthe morning sun were peeping over the Arabian hills, we climbed the\nsteep bank and entered the temple. A flood of golden light poured in,\nsearching every corner, lighting up the figures at the end of the\n_adytum_ full two hundred feet from the entrance. It seemed as though\nmighty Ra, as each morn he rose to shower his beneficence upon the\nworld, looked first with soul-melting tenderness upon the home where he\nwould love to linger; slowly he moves on, and with a last fond, longing\nlook he leaves it in darkness till he return next morn. Bats swarm now\nin its gloomy chambers, and dispute the right of entrance with the\nhowadjii. Alongside the large temple is a smaller one of the same\ndescription. A night or two after this we had an altercation on board\nwherein Reis Mohammed met his match. It was about nine o\u2019clock on a\nbeautiful moonlight night. We were sailing before a light breeze, when\nsuddenly the boat struck a rock. Reis Mohammed winced as though it were\nhimself grating on the rock, and, rushing up to the Nubian pilot who was\nat the helm, swore by Allah that he would beat him with a stick. The\npilot was not at all intimidated. He said in a quiet way that he was\nsorry, but reminded the irate captain that he was now in his\u2014the\npilot\u2019s\u2014country, and that if he struck him he would call out to his\npeople on the bank, who would come aboard and kill the captain. This\nended the affair. On January 22 Ahmud brought a beautiful little gazelle\non board, for Madam to play with, as he said. She named it Saiida, and\nit soon became a great favorite with us all. At four P.M. of the same\nday we reached our destination and tied up at Wady Halfa, a\nlong-stretched-out line of mud-built houses on the east bank. We had\ntravelled seven hundred and ninety-eight miles in forty-one days,\nincluding stoppages. A two hours\u2019 donkey-ride over the sands of the\ndesert, and we reached the Ultima Thule of Nile travellers\u2014the rock of\nAbooseer, overlooking the second cataract. This is much more wild,\nrapid, and turbulent than the first, and, excepting when the Nile is at\nits greatest height, is impassable. Almost every traveller who has been\nhere has left his mark upon this rock\u2014a custom which is to be approved\nhere; for no beauty is defaced, but a register of travellers is kept\nwhich possesses interest to their friends who may subsequently visit\nthis place. There were six dahabee\u00e1hs there on our arrival, four of them\nflying the United States flag. We made our presents to the men. They\nbrought us in safety up the Nile; will they do the same going down? So\nwe gave Reis Mohammed one pound, Reis Ahmud ten shillings, one pound\neach to Ali, Ibrahim, and the cook; and two pounds and ten shillings to\nbe divided among the crew. While we were lying at Wady Halfa the crew\nprepared the boat for the downward voyage. They took down the trinkeet\nor large yard from the foremast, and placed in its stead the smaller one\nfrom the stern. There are three modes of progression in descending. If\nthere be no wind at all, the men row, five oars on each side; but when\nthe surface of the stream is ruffled by the slightest breath of wind,\nthe men immediately stop rowing, and the boat drifts down with the\ncurrent. If the wind blow from the south\u2014which is very unusual during\nthe winter\u2014we sail, using, however, only the small balakoom, swung, as I\nhave said, from the mainmast. Some of the planks of the deck are taken\nup, and an inclined plane made by resting one end of a plank against the\ncross-beams on a level with the floor of the deck, and the other\ntouching the bottom of the hold. In rowing the men start from the top of\nthis inclined plane, and, walking backwards down it, make five distinct\nmovements in each stroke. As their feet touch the hold they sit down and\npull out the stroke.\n\nOn January 25, at one in the morning, we left Wady Halfa on the homeward\nvoyage. Ahmud requested us to permit him to bring a slave on the boat.\nHe told us that he had no children, and that he had seen a very fine\nlittle boy of nine years whom he could purchase for seventy dollars. His\nrequest was refused. We spent an hour or more one beautiful moonlight\nnight seated on the sand beneath the colossi of Aboo-Simbel. We engaged\na celebrated hunter to assist us in crocodile-hunting\u2014Abd-el-Kerim,\nslave of the god, a Nubian with a huge flat nose. The dress of this man\nof prowess was not elaborate, consisting of a skull-cap and a pair of\ndrawers. He carried the flint-lock musket which I have before described.\nThe lock was carefully bound up in a piece of cloth. We moored the\ndahabee\u00e1h on the west bank about four miles below Aboo-Simbel. We then\nrowed about a mile up the river in the small boat, and landed on a\nsand-bank. Abd-el-Kerim constructed a crocodile of sand\u2014head, tail,\nlegs, and all. We had laid a systematic plan of attack. At sunrise the\nnext morning we were to conceal ourselves behind the sand timsah and\nwait the coming of the natural ones, thinking that they would take our\nsand-constructed reptile for one of the family, and go quietly asleep\nalongside of it. I rose before the sun the next morning, but Kerim did\nnot make his appearance until eight o\u2019clock\u2014he called it sunrise\u2014when\nthe sun was pretty well up in the heavens, and the day began to grow\nwarm. As I stood on the forecastle waiting for him, two Polish\ndahabee\u00e1hs hove in sight. I knew the party on board; they were\ndistinguished naturalists who were collecting specimens for the museum\nat Warsaw. They hunted in the most thoroughly systematic manner. The\nyoung count, who was not as deeply engaged in the study of natural\nhistory as the others, spent an evening with us a week or two afterward,\nand told us a very amusing story about the rest of the party. They were\nanxious to secure a certain species of bird. After consulting their\nbooks and putting together the general knowledge they possessed\nconcerning the habits of this bird, they established as a positive fact\nthat the said bird would appear on the banks of the Nile at ten o\u2019clock\nto perform his morning ablutions. So at half-past nine they went out to\nmeet him, but, to their intense astonishment, he did not appear until\nhalf-past eleven\u2014overslept himself, no doubt, not being aware of the\ndistinguished company awaiting him. They have been in a great state of\nexcitement ever since, said our young friend, endeavoring to study out\nthe cause of this strange proceeding, as they termed it, of the bird\nbeing one hour and a half behind time. As I watched the boats came on,\nand our sand timsah caught the eye of their dragoman. He rushed\ndown-stairs, woke up the howadjii, who soon appeared on deck. Telescopes\nwere levelled, and, having satisfied themselves that it was a crocodile,\nthey jumped into the small boat and made straight for it. Two of them\nwere in the bow with their rifles cocked covering the timsah. The\ngreatest care and caution were observed. Only a small portion of the\nheads of the men were visible above the gunwale, and occasionally I\ncould see the dragoman wave his hand as a signal of caution. Finally\nthey stepped on the bank, cautiously approached, saw the deception, and\nin quick haste retired in evident disgust. I enjoyed this scene all the\nmore as it partially recompensed me for the failure of my first attempt\nat shooting a crocodile.\n\nAbout half-past eight Kerim and I concealed ourselves behind the sand\ntimsah, lying flat on our backs. Besides his old flint-lock, which would\ndo good service, we had two double-barrelled guns loaded with heavy\nballs, and a six-barrelled revolver. I lay in this position for two\nhours, not even daring to indulge in a cough, which I was sorely tried\nto repress, and even breathing as quietly as possible. Kerim touched me\nand told me to peep over the back of the timsah; I did so, and saw ten\ncrocodiles, some swimming in the water and others on the banks, but none\nnear enough to shoot at. I then turned on my face and lay down again.\nAlmost immediately an enormous crocodile stepped out of the water on the\nbank where we were, within ten feet of us, but seemed to be frightened\nat something and immediately plunged in again. About two o\u2019clock Kerim\nturned over, and in so doing spied a flask protruding from my pocket. He\ntook it out, offered it to me, and said, \u201cTake a drink!\u201d\u2014a delicate hint\nthat he wanted some himself. He did not refuse when I offered it, but,\nfilling the cup with twice as much as an ordinary drink, he swallowed it\ndown, rolled his eyes, and ejaculated, \u201cTaib\u201d (good). We found it would\nbe of no avail to wait longer here, so we called the felluka and rowed\nvery quietly a short distance down the stream to a bank upon which two\ntimsahs were lying asleep; at the other end were some rocks. We crept\nover the rocks until we reached the one nearest the reptiles. At least\none hundred yards still separated us from them. Resting my gun on a\nrock, I took careful aim, fired, and saw the ball strike the side of one\nof the crocodiles; but its only effect was to hurry him into the river,\notherwise he paid no attention to it. We concluded to give up\ncrocodile-hunting now, so we sailed on. At one point a little below this\nI counted thirty-eight sawagi in sight at one time. These sawagi\n(singular sag\u00e9ar) are to Nubia what the shawadeefs are to Egypt. They\nare of Persian origin, and consist of an endless chain, to which are\nattached buckets made of burnt clay. The chain passes over a wheel at\nthe top, which is made to revolve by another wheel driven around by\nbuffaloes. These wheels are of wood and never greased. Their creaking\nand straining are music to the owner\u2019s ears, who in some instances will\ntravel many thousand miles riding the buffaloes round the well-worn\ncircle of their own loved sag\u00e9ar.\n\n\n\n\n              LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.\n                            FROM THE FRENCH.\n\n\nJULY 28, 1869.\n\nLord William is in England, and baby Emmanuel in vain asks for \u201cpapa.\u201d\nWhat a beautiful child he is! My Guy is very handsome also, and I am\nproud of him. Johanna yields up to me all her prerogatives, and, were it\nnot that he resembles Paul, I could persuade myself that he is quite my\nown, my dear godson.\n\nBerthe intends to go to Lourdes, to obtain from Mary Immaculate the cure\nof her daughter. Poor mother! she deceives herself; the child cannot\nremain in this world, and the day approaches when we shall say,\nYesterday the bird was in the cage, but is now flown hence! This morning\nAnna and the sick girl were leaning over my balcony, looking at the blue\nsky, over which light clouds were flying. \u201cHow beautiful the sky is!\u201d\nsaid Anna. \u201cVery sweet, very beautiful, very good,\u201d answered Picciola,\njoining her hands. \u201cThe beauties of nature are admirable, but\u2014\u201d \u201cKiss\nme, dear, and don\u2019t look up to heaven in that way; one would think you\nwere going there!\u201d \u201cThe truth is that I shall go soon; dear Anna, pray\nGod to comfort my mother!\u201d Anna flew into the room: \u201cMadame, O madame!\nis this true that Madeleine is telling me?\u201d And she was sobbing.\nPicciola covered her with kisses, saying: \u201cWhy will no one listen when I\nspeak of my happiness?\u201d When Anna was more calm I sent her to her\nmother, and said to my darling: \u201cThen let us talk about heaven\ntogether.\u201d \u201cBut, aunt, it grieves you also. Yet I, although the pain of\nthose I love goes to my heart\u2014I feel in myself an indescribable\ngladness. Oh! if you knew how I thirst for heaven.\u201d \u201cAnd who tells you\nthat you are going to leave us, dear child? Our Lady of Lourdes will\ncure you.\u201d \u201cIf you love me, do not ask me this; I must not be cured,\u201d\nshe murmured, with a sort of prayerful expression. What do you think\nabout this child, dear Kate?\n\nOur thoughts are much taken up, as you may imagine, with the Council and\nwith Ireland. Adrien has read to us from a goodly folio, come from the\nThebaid of our _saint_, the most sinister predictions with reference to\nthe present time.\n\nGood-by for a little while; I slip this note into Margaret\u2019s envelope.\n\n\nAUGUST 1, 1869.\n\nSt. Francis of Sales used to say: \u201cPeople ask for secrets that they may\nadvance in perfection; for my own part, I know of only one: to love God\nabove all things, and my neighbor as myself.\u201d And Bossuet, that other\ngreat master of the spiritual life, said: \u201cGive all to God, search to\nthe very depths, empty your heart for God; he will know very well how to\nemploy and to fill it.\u201d This is what Gertrude has done, who just now\nquoted these two thoughts to console me. Alas! yes, I cannot resign\nmyself to see her depart, this enchanting soul, so worthy of love.\n\u201cRemember,\u201d Gertrude said to me, \u201cthat God undertakes to give back\neverything to those who have given him all. I perceive many sacrifices\nfor you, dear Georgina; be worthy of God\u2019s favors, for suffering is one\nof these.\u201d And she quitted me. She lives so near to God that every word\nshe utters seems to me an oracle, and now I am afraid. O poor soul!\u2014a\nreed bending to every wind.\n\n\u201cTurn thee to Him who comforts and who heals.\u201d Help me, dear Kate! Ren\u00e9,\nMargaret, and Marcella agree in diverting my attention, but the blow has\nbeen given! O my God! If a whole family might but enter heaven all at\nthe same time! if there were no tears of departure! I communicated this\nmorning, and promised our adorable Jesus in the Blessed Eucharist to\nsacrifice my heart to him.\n\nBerthe, Raoul, and Picciola set out to-morrow for Lourdes; we have not\nventured to dissuade the poor mother from this idea. I had a foolish\nlonging to follow them, but I saw in this a first sacrifice, and offered\nit to obtain courage. If, however, Mary would be pleased to cure her!\nThey will make a novena there, and not return until the 16th. What a\nlong time without seeing her!\n\nOur country neighbor has installed himself, and yesterday paid us his\nfirst visit. My mother gave him a more than amiable reception. We all\nthanked him for the care with which he had attended Anna, who threw her\narms round his neck with the greatest simplicity. Marcella replied\ngracefully to the civilities of the good doctor, who accepted an\ninvitation to dinner. My mother finds him very well bred. He is fifty\nyears of age, very tall, with an open and expressive countenance, most\nextensive learning, skill, wit, fortune, and above all _faith_; he is\nthus in every way worthy of my friend. Ren\u00e9 has explained this to me,\nand has ended by requesting me to favor this marriage.\n\nMargaret, on leaving me this evening, whispered in my ear: \u201cDear, will\nour fair Roman be insensible? The aspirant belongs _to the very first\nquality of nature\u2019s noblemen_.\u201d\n\nGood-by, dear Kate; pray much!\n\n\nAUGUST 6, 1869.\n\nPicciola is at this moment at the miraculous Grotto. Impossible to turn\nmy thoughts away from this child; I see her everywhere. Nevertheless, I\ncannot complain of any want of distractions; we are out continually.\nThree days ago M. de Verlhiac (the doctor) gave us a princely reception\nin his _divor_. What life! what gayety! Marcella is very pensive and\nseeks to be alone. Margaret raves about the doctor, and will have him at\nall our parties; Anna can no longer do without him, my mother likes his\nconversation, the gentlemen seize upon the slightest pretext for going\nto the _Blue Nest_\u2014the name given by Margaret to the dismantled manor of\nM. de V. You see, dear Kate, all is for the best. Your advice is not,\nhowever, useless to me. Oh! how well you have realized what Marcella is\nto me. But I am not so selfish as to place my affection in the way of\nher happiness, and I shall know how to make the sacrifice. M. de V.\nrequested an interview with me yesterday. I had remained alone with my\nmother, who feared to take so long a drive, and it was in her presence\nthat I received our new neighbor. He appeared greatly embarrassed\u2014he,\nwho is so fearless! At last, after a great deal of circumlocution, he\nrelated how he had become acquainted with our dear Italians; how much he\nfelt interested in the pretty invalid, whom he had attended with truly\npaternal solicitude; how the desire had arisen in his heart to become\nthe father of this attractive young creature; and how we had unknowingly\ndestroyed the fragile edifice of his dreams by carrying away from him\nMme. de Clissey and her daughter. Their sojourn of last winter had\nconvinced him that without this union he could not be happy. Marcella\nhad answered his proposal by a refusal, which he does not know how to\nexplain.\n\nMy mother looked at me, and M. de V. continued: \u201cI know not, madame,\nwhether I am mistaken, but I am persuaded that you have some influence\non this determination which crushes my life. Madame de C. does not wish\nto separate from you.\u201d I was much moved by this confidence, and so much\nthe more because my mother, who had formerly been acquainted with the\nmother of the good doctor, had told me that morning that she looked\nforward to this union with pleasure. I promised to do _my duty_. This\nconversation lasted three hours. M. de V. is really a remarkable man,\nand I cannot understand Marcella\u2019s singular behavior. Margaret advises\nme to speak to her about it; but I think it more prudent to wait. The\npretty little Anna unconsciously enlightened me somewhat. This morning,\nin my room, she was caressing her mother and saying: \u201cWhy, then, are you\nso cold to this good doctor, who likes you so much and who is so like\npapa? If you knew how affectionately he kisses me!\u201d Marcella blushed and\nspoke of something else.\n\nDear Kate, my heart is full; M. de V. has only one dream after that of\nmarrying my friend, which is to settle at Naples. It would then be a\npermanent separation! \u201cYou are in your spring-time, my daughter,\u201d my\nmother said to me; \u201cbeware of the autumn! The lightest breath then\ncarries away by degrees our happiness and our hopes.\u201d\n\nGod guard you, dearest!\n\n\nAUGUST 9, 1869.\n\nThe doctor has become our habitual companion. He loves poetry, \u201cthis\nchoice language, dear to youth and to those whose hearts have remained\nyoung\u201d\u2014another connecting link with Marcella. \u201cBut they are made for\neach other,\u201d says Margaret. This southerner shivers at the most delicate\nbreeze of the north. \u201cGood friend, what will you do in winter?\u201d exclaims\nAnna on seeing him hermetically enfolded in a mantle lined with fur when\nhe arrives of an evening. \u201cDear, I shall do as the swallows do.\u201d \u201cBah!\nyou will not go to Athens.\u201d \u201cAnd why not, if you will go with me?\u201d \u201cOh!\nI do not travel without my mother.\u201d\n\nThis fragment of conversation shows you that M. de V. is always driving\nat the same point. Every one rivals the other in extolling the loyalty,\nthe learning, the distinction of the doctor. He must be immensely rich,\nfor he throws gold with open hands among our poor, builds up cottages,\ngives work to all. Gertrude says: \u201cThere is in this man an apostle and a\nSister of Charity.\u201d Marcella never utters a word about our dear\nneighbor, but appears to suffer when others speak of him. Yesterday\nMargaret wanted to get my mother to promise that we should spend the\nsummer of 1870 in England. \u201cWill you not come also, monsieur?\u201d The\nhandsome countenance of the doctor darkened, and he answered briefly:\n\u201cWho can promise?\u201d \u201cOh! _do_ promise, good friend,\u201d exclaimed Anna; \u201cyou\ntold me you wished not to leave me!\u201d \u201cAnna, will you water my verbenas?\u201d\ntranquilly asked Marcella. The child bounded into the garden.\n\nBerthe writes to me every day. The horizon is dark there; the poor\nmother perceives the full truth.\n\n_A Dieu_, Kate; may he alone be all to us!\n\n\nAUGUST 16, 1869.\n\nRen\u00e9 has written to you, dear sister; thus you know how my time has been\noccupied. Oh! what a beautiful procession. What singing! What\ndecorations! A corner of Italy in Brittany, to believe the good doctor,\nwho has valiantly paid with his person.\n\nPicciola is here. I have just been to kiss her under her curtains. This\npilgrimage has produced a double benefit: it gave the poor parents a few\ndays of hope, and the Immaculate Virgin has caused them to understand\nall. \u201cShe belongs to God before she belongs to us.\u201d Are not these truly\nChristian words the acceptance of the sacrifice? And Picciola: \u201cHow\nsweet it would have been to die there, dear aunt! But I am very happy to\nsee you again.\u201d O my God!\n\nMargaret is expecting Lord William. Can you picture to yourself the\naspect of our colony\u2014our numbers, the noise and movement, the joyous\nvoices calling and answering each other, the animation, the eagerness,\nof this human hive? Our Bretons say they wish we were here always.\n\nEdith writes often. Lizzy is somewhat silent; the saintly Isa is too\nmuch detached from earth to think of us in any way except in her\nprayers. My letters to Betsy have produced an unexpected effect, thanks\nto your prayers; this good and charming friend assures me that going to\nholy Mass and visiting the poor help her marvellously, and that now the\ndays appear too short.\n\nYesterday we were talking on the terrace\u2014talking about all sorts of\nthings. The word _ideal_ was pronounced. \u201cWho, then, can attain his\nideal?\u201d exclaimed M. de Verlhiac. \u201cLife almost always passes away in its\npursuit; an intangible phantom, it escapes us precisely at the moment\nwhen it seems within our grasp.\u201d \u201cIt is, perhaps, because the ideal does\nnot in reality exist on earth,\u201d said Gertrude. \u201cThe Christian\u2019s ideal is\nin heaven!\u201d Whereupon the meditative Anna cried out: \u201cOh! if only the\ngood God would make haste to put us into his beautiful heaven all\ntogether, the _south_ and the _north_! You would not feel cold up there,\ngood friend!\u201d \u201cThen will the angels place us thus by families?\u201d asked\nAlix timidly. \u201cHem! hem! the house is large,\u201d said the doctor; \u201cand, for\nmy part, I see no inconvenience that this 'corner of Italy in Brittany\u2019\nwould suffer by arranging itself commodiously there on high.\u201d\n\nAt this moment Adrien took up a newspaper and read us a fulmination in\nverse against the centenary of Napoleon, by a writer whose independent\npen \u201cis unequalled in freedom and boldness,\u201d according to the ideas of\nsome. M. de V. disapproves strongly: \u201cCannot a man be of one party\nwithout throwing mud at the other? May not the sufferings on St. Helena,\nthe torture more terrible than that of the Prometheus of antiquity, have\nbeen accepted by God as an expiation? How far preferable would a little\nChristian moderation be to all this gall so uselessly poured out into\nthe public prints! And what do they attain, republicans or royalists,\nafter so many words and so much trouble? Great social revolutions arrive\nonly at the hour marked by Providence.\u201d \u201cAt all events,\u201d said Johanna,\n\u201cit is this much-boasted printing which enables us to read so much that\nis good and so much that is hurtful.\u201d \u201cO madame! Writing, printing! What\nfavors granted to man! What feasts for the understanding and the heart!\nThe genius of evil has known how to draw from these admirable sources\nthe means of perdition; what is it that man has not turned against God?\nBut the divine mercy is greater than our offences, and the Christian\u2019s\nlife ought to be a perpetual _Te Deum_. Providence pours out in floods\nbefore us joys, favors, enjoyments without number, as he scatters\nflowers in the meadows, birds in the air, angels in space; he has given\nus poetry, this eternal charm of the earth:\n\n    \u201c'Langue qui vient du Ciel, toute limpide et belle,\n    Et que le monde entend, mais qu\u2019il ne parle pas.\u2019\u201d[11]\n\nFootnote 11:\n\n  Language which comes from heaven, limpid and beautiful, And which the\n  world understands, but does not speak.\n\nYou perceive, dear Kate, that I want to make you acquainted with the\ndoctor. But good-night.\n\n\nAUGUST 22, 1869.\n\nWell, dearest, the marriage is arranged. Let me, however, first speak to\nyou about Picciola. She is an angel! She invariably forgets herself, and\nthinks only of the happiness of others. It is she who organizes our\nfestivities. Dear, delicious child! Th\u00e9r\u00e8se and Anna know not how to\nshow her tenderness enough. I forget what day it was that Marcella said\nto me: \u201cI think that now I need not be any longer uneasy about my\nchild\u2019s health; there has been no change since that beneficial winter.\u201d\nPicciola was by me. I looked at her; her eyes shone with a singular\nbrightness, and she said almost involuntarily, and so low that I alone\nheard her: \u201cOh! she will be no longer ill.\u201c Marianne was right: there is\na mystery in this, and I want to know what it is. I shall question Mad;\nshe will not resist me. I have entreated the doctor to cure her, and his\nanswer was: \u201cWho can arrest the flight of the bird?\u201c Thus all is in\nvain; and yet, in spite of myself, I have moments of wild hope. What a\nlarge place this child has taken possession of in my heart!\n\nM. de V. had placed his interests in my hands; it was therefore your\nGeorgina herself who renewed his _proposal_. At the first word Marcella,\nmuch moved, formally refused, begging me to speak to her of something\nelse. Then we had a long explanation. This dear and excellent friend did\nnot want to separate herself from us, out of gratitude! And she was\nsacrificing her heart; for the devotedness and high character of M. de\nV. inspire her with as much sympathy as respect. It needed all my\neloquence to convince her. In accepting she secures her daughter a\nprotector; the increase of her fortune will allow her still more\nlatitude for the exercise of her benevolence. I know that she loves\nItaly, and dreams of seeing it again, which would be impossible were she\nto remain with us; by refusing she crushes out the life of M. de V.,\netc., etc.\n\nBy way of conclusion I drew her into my mother\u2019s room, where we also\nfound Ren\u00e9 and Edouard, and all four of us together succeeded in\nobtaining her _consent_. All, then, is well as regards this matter. Anna\nis in a state of incomparable joy, as the old books say. We are all\nhappy at the turn affairs have taken, but each in our different degrees.\nAnd you, dear Kate? Ah! news of Ireland and again of Edith: Mary is not\nwell. Poor Edith! Good-by, dearest; Ren\u00e9 calls me, and I must send to\nthe post.\n\n\nAUGUST 25, 1869.\n\nYesterday\u2019s _f\u00eate_ was admirable, according to the doctor, who is a good\njudge. How impatient he is to carry off Marcella from us! The wedding is\nfixed for the 20th of September, and the same day the happy couple are\nto start for Italy. Thus I have not even a month in which to enjoy the\nsociety of this delightful friend, so truly the sister of my soul, whom\nGod gave me almost on the grave of Ellen. I busy myself with her about\nthe preparations. Gertrude, the austere Gertrude, sets out to-morrow for\nParis with Adrien and M. de V., whom she will direct in the choice of\nthe _corbeille_. Don\u2019t you admire that? Marcella is calm, serious, but\nalso, she owns to me, profoundly happy.\n\nThere will be no more meeting again, I foresee plainly; they will _cast\nanchor_ down there, but our spirits will be always united before God.\nMargaret greatly rejoices in the happiness of our dear Roman. Lord\nWilliam arrived yesterday, and joyous parties are going on. The _little_\nangel of the good God is always on the point of taking her flight.\n\n    _Ah! mon \u00e2me voudrait se suspendre \u00e0 ses ailes\n              Et la garder encore!_[12]\n\nFootnote 12:\n\n  Ah! my soul would fain cling to her wings, and keep her still!\n\nRen\u00e9 procures me the most agreeable surprises. There has never yet been\nthe least shadow of a cloud between us. You say well, dearest, that with\nhim I shall have happiness everywhere; why, then, should I have\nhesitated to procure a like happiness for Marcella? I did not tell you\nthat about a year ago this dear friend lost nearly the whole of her\nfortune, which was in the hands of a banker? Happily, we were the first\nto hear of it, and have concealed the disaster. Gertrude desired to join\nus in this hidden good work, and I have with all my heart paid the half\nof the amount. I am still more glad now to have done so. Hitherto the\ninterest has been sufficient, but, lest the secret should be discovered,\nGertrude undertook to arrange the matter with her banker. As it is a\nconsiderable sum, we are selling our carriages and one of Ren\u00e9\u2019s farms,\nlest it should make too much difference to our poor; my mother is\nsurprised, but asks no questions. We shall try to live without\ncarriages\u2014so many people live happily, and yet always go on foot! I am\ncertain that you will approve of this, dear Kate. Marcella is too proud\nto consent to marry M. de V. without any fortune of her own. Ren\u00e9 is\ndelighted with this arrangement; I believe that he also is in love with\nthe poverty of St. Francis. Oh! how good God is to us! All my kisses to\nyou.\n\n\nAUGUST 28, 1869.\n\nRead yesterday some pretty things on Montaigne. The author of the\n_Essays_ loved \u201cwith a particular affection\u201d poetry, \u201cin which it is not\nallowable to play the simpleton.\u201d Marcella presented me with a charming\npoem on Friendship. Oh! I know very well that her warm affection is\nmine. Listen to this passage taken from a dramatic story which has come\ninto Brittany: \u201cThere are redeeming souls, born for salvation. In the\npath of the divine Crucified One walk silent groups whose mission is to\nsuffer for those who enjoy all the good things of life, to weep for\nthose who sing at feasts, to pray for those who never open their lips in\nprayer. A large number of these mysterious flowers which perfume the\nKing\u2019s House are even unconscious of their destiny. They follow it,\nwithout asking what end is answered by their solitude, and to what\npurpose are their tears.\u201d\n\nYou write to me too deliciously, dear Kate! It is very kind of you to\nask after the two _adopted_ little girls. They have been claimed by a\nrelation, and left us after having remained a week. This fresh eclogue\ncould not have had a better ending. The dear children write to Picciola.\nThey are happy; their relative gave us a most favorable impression.\n\nYesterday a long walk with Margaret, who loves our heaths, our fields of\nbroom, our reedy places, our customs, and who is always ready when there\nis a good work to be done. My mother is not well\u2014\u201cThe effect of old\nage,\u201d she says. Would that I could keep away all pain from that dear\nhead! Mme. Swetchine says: \u201cAll the joys of earth would not assuage our\nthirst for happiness, and one single sorrow suffices to fold life in a\nsombre veil, to strike it throughout with nothingness.\u201d How true this\nis!\n\nSt. Augustine is one of Ren\u00e9\u2019s patrons; you may imagine whether we have\nnot prayed to him very much. Gertrude writes to me: \u201cHere are some lines\nwhich I commend to your meditations: 'All passes, all vanishes away, all\nis carried away by the river of Eternity. The most sacred and sweet\naffections we see broken, some by absence\u2014that sleep of the heart\u2014others\nby a culpable inconstancy; many, alas! by death. The days of our\nchildhood, the years of our youth, the friendships begun in the cradle,\nthe more serious attachments of riper age, the affections of home, the\nbonds formed at the altar\u2014all are touched, withered, annihilated by the\ninexorable hand of time.\u2019 Dear Georgina,\u201d continues Gertrude, \u201call lives\nagain, all arises from its tomb, all becomes again resplendent with God!\nHope, then! _Excelsior._\u201d\n\nLord William has brought us a most interesting book\u2014_Our Life in the\nHighlands_, by Queen Victoria. What soul! What heart! Why is she not a\nCatholic? My poor Ireland, when wilt thou recover thy freedom? O\nIreland! _patria mia!_\n\nTh\u00e9r\u00e8se regrets Anna\u2019s approaching departure, but she is courageous. The\n_babies_ do not take it in the same way, and Margu\u00e9rite told Anna\nplainly: \u201cAll that you may say to me is of no use. I know Italian,\nmademoiselle: _Chi sta bene, non si muove._\u201d[13] I had to preach for an\nhour before I could persuade Margu\u00e9rite to consent to apologize to the\ndear little Italian, who cried so much at being accused of inconstancy.\nThese little people!\n\nFootnote 13:\n\n  \u201cHe who is well off stays where he is.\u201d\n\nGood-by, dear Kate; Picciola sends you a kiss.\n\n\nAUGUST 30, 1869.\n\nI have just been telling the children the beautiful story of St. Felix\nand St. Adauctus, as the charming imagination of Margaret had arranged\nit at the convent. How they listened to me. On turning round I was taken\nby surprise: Ren\u00e9 was there! You know that I like to be alone when\nfulfilling the functions of _professor_\u2014a title which I usurp from the\ngood _abb\u00e9_, whose charity frequently takes him from home. \u201cAre you\ndispleased?\u201d asked _my brother_. _Displeased!_ But he and I are\naltogether one\u2014one and the same soul. Picciola makes profound\nobservations thereupon. Margaret tells me that she said to her: \u201cThe\nsoul ought in this world to be with God as Uncle Ren\u00e9 is with Aunt\nGeorgina, and as you and Lord William.\u201d Margaret was delighted with this\ncomparison.\n\nLetter from the saintly Isa; one might call it a song of heaven. \u201cO\ncharming felicities which I find in this paradise of intelligence and\nfriendship, incomparable joys of the religious affections, delights of\nthe sensible presence of Him who is my all, how dear are you to me!\u201d\n\nPicciola is sleeping in an easy-chair two steps from me. She seems to\nhave scarcely a breath of life left. I questioned her as discreetly as\npossible; she understood immediately: \u201cLater, aunt, I will tell you.\u201d\n\nWhat! have I not told you about my six children? The eldest has been\ntaken as _femme de chambre_ by Margaret, the second occupies the same\npost for Anna, and Th\u00e9r\u00e8se claims the third. The youngest go to school.\nJohanna wished to take charge of them, but I said, \u201cNo, thank you\u201d; she\nhas a family and I am free. Ren\u00e9 wants to talk business to you. I give\nup my sheet of paper to him. May God be with us!\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 5.\n\nOnly a fortnight more to enjoy the presence of Marcella! The\n_travellers_ are home again. The _corbeille_ is splendid; but the pious\nprojects of M. de V. are still more so. Did I tell you that he had been\nconnected with M. de Clissey, in a journey the latter took to Naples? M.\nde C. loved Marcella then, and spoke only of her. He was on the eve of a\ndangerous expedition. \u201cPromise me,\u201d he said to M. de V., \u201cthat in case\nof my death you will marry her!\u201d M. de V. promised. This is like the\ntales of knight-errantry. M. de Verlhiac was unable to be present at his\nfriend\u2019s marriage, and, as he was at that time of an adventurous turn of\nmind, he went away to New York and had no news of the De Clisseys. It\nwas only on Marcella\u2019s account that he settled temporarily at Hy\u00e8res.\nYou see, this is altogether a romance, but in the best taste possible.\nM. de V. told us all this after his proposal had been accepted.\n\nAll France is interested in the Council; we are praying for this\nintention. What times we live in, dear Kate! The church is on the eve of\nterrible trials, say the _seers_.\n\nPicciola wishes to write to you; but will her poor little hand have the\nstrength to do so? Oh! how touching she is in her serenity. She\ncommunicates with great fervor twice a week.\n\nLizzy, the happy Lizzy! has a son! _Gaudete et l\u00e6tare!_ I rejoice in her\njoy! Edith is ill; Mistress Annah says seriously so. Always a shadow!\n\nFarewell, dearest. I have quantities of things to attend to. A thousand\nkisses.\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 10, 1869.\n\nM. de Verlhiac overwhelms us with presents\u2014no means of refusing them.\nMarcella appears very happy, although as the time of departure\napproaches there is an occasional shade upon her brow. The health of M.\nde V. cannot accommodate itself to Brittany, and the _Blue Nest_ was\nonly a pretext. My mother is purchasing this well-named habitation, to\nsell it when an opportunity offers. Since we have launched out so\nstrongly in good works, no one allows superfluities.\n\nGertrude saw Karl, who sighs for the day when he shall offer up at the\naltar the true and spotless Victim. I love what you tell me of your\nthoughts on seeing our sister. Ah! dearest, all that God does he does\nwell; great sacrifices suit great souls.\n\nMy mother gives _f\u00eates_\u2014to us, you understand. But what _f\u00eates_! What a\nlarge share is left for the poor! What a still larger part given to God!\nLucy, the amiable Lucy, gives herself unheard-of trouble for our\npleasures. Gertrude gracefully lends herself to our passing follies, to\nwhich her dark toilet makes a contrast. I asked her two days ago if she\ndid not sometimes regret the luxuries to which she was accustomed.\n\u201cRegret, Georgina! Listen to Ludolph the Chartreux: 'The Christian is\nhappy, for, whatever may be his poverty, he has always in himself\nwherewith to buy the pearl and the treasure; no other price is asked but\nhimself.'\u201d\n\nSarah is in Spain, whence she sends me magnificent descriptions of the\nPyrenees. \u201cWhen will you come and gather roses on the banks of the\nMancanares?\u201d asks my lively friend.\n\nPicciola is asking for me. You would be uneasy. May God have you in his\nkeeping!\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 18, 1869.\n\nRen\u00e9 has replaced me in my assiduous correspondence\u2014I have so much to\ndo! Will these words make you smile? Nothing, however, is more true; in\nour hive every bee has its share of work. M. de V. can no longer keep\nhimself quiet; Marcella weeps at the thought of going away for ever.\nRen\u00e9 mentions the possibility of our again visiting Hy\u00e8res, and I want\nto persuade the future couple to give their solemn promise to go\nthither. It seems as if a part of my heart were going to leave me.\n\nThe Bishop of \u2014\u2014 will bless the marriage. Oh! would that I could put off\nthis date. It is so sweet to have them here, these dear friends and the\ncharming little Anna! Good-by, Homer! Good-by, our studious hours, our\nintimate conversations, our so perfect friendship! _Her_ room will\nremain furnished just as it now is; I shall make it a museum of\nsouvenirs. You know that I have taken the portraits of all three. They\nwished for copies; so you see why I was too busy to write to you. Only\ntwo days more\u2014two days: what is that?\n\nMy mother is very thoughtful on my account. For my sake she dreads this\ndeparture, this great void; but Ren\u00e9 is at hand, so ingeniously good and\ndevoted, so attentive, so fraternal! Dearest, pray that _they_ may be\nhappy!\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 21, 1869.\n\n_She_ is gone! These two days have passed away like a dream. I cannot\nbring myself to realize this idea. Oh! what difference there is between\nthe apprehension and the reality, from the expectation of sorrow to\nsorrow itself! But _she_ will be happy! How beautiful she was; Anna so\ngraceful, and all three so affectionate! I am now counting the hours\nuntil I receive a letter. I am going to occupy myself\u2014study with Ren\u00e9,\npray with Picciola, meditate with Gertrude. And Margaret\u2014oh! I must make\nup to her all the time given to Marcella, whom she regrets almost as\nmuch as I do.\n\nPicciola occupies me, and very much. She has felt this separation\nexceedingly, being very fond of Anna. Good-by till to-morrow, dear Kate;\nI feel myself incapable of writing.\n\n22d.\u2014A word from Mme. de Verlhiac\u2014a greeting written yesterday morning\nin the carriage. They go farther and farther away. How could I flatter\nmyself that I should be able to keep for myself alone these two Italian\nflowers? Gertrude has asked me to aid her in a singular operation: the\naccounts of all her farmers have to be clearly arranged. Adrien does not\nlike these commonplace details. He found yesterday in the woods a little\nfellow of six years old, roguish as an elf, his hair a tangled bush, his\nface, hands, and feet alarmingly dirty. \u201cWill you take charge of this\nchild for an hour?\u201d Ren\u00e9 asked me, as he had letters to write to his\nbrother. What trouble I had to make the little savage clean! Margaret\nacted as currier; I was quite alone, dreaming of the past. This awoke\nme, I can assure you. When he was _white_, I went to find Johanna, who\ngave me a whole suit of clothes. This little wilding was the torment of\nhis mother; we are going to tame him. As a beginning I have put him to\nschool. He is enchanted to see himself so _fine_, and looks at himself\nas if he were a relic. At the same time he is greedy, untruthful,\nobstinate, lazy\u2014all vices in miniature.\n\nWe are going to-morrow to the town; this always amuses the _babies_.\nHappy age, when every little change is a festivity! If you knew what a\nstrange sensation I experienced this morning on entering the\ndrawing-room and not finding the two dear faces so long visible there! I\nthought I should have wept or cried out\u2014it would have done me good\u2014but\nGertrude began to converse with me, and the feeling passed away.\n\nI never talk to you now either about my godson or the beautiful\nEmmanuel; it is very remiss. Both are charming and do not make much\nnoise. Dear little beings! And the day will come when they will be our\nprotectors, these two little nestlings whose warblings are so charming a\nharmony to our ears. I wish you could hear Margaret say, \u201cMy son!\u201d This\nword has in her mouth such a penetrating sweetness!\n\nDear Kate, may God be with us!\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 28, 1869.\n\nCan it possibly be true? P\u00e8re Hyacinthe quits his convent and in some\nsort separates himself from the Roman Catholic Church. The bad\nnewspapers vie with each other in their applauses, while the good ones\ngroan. Louis Veuillot energetically blames. Pride has much to do with\nthis great fall. Let us pray that he may come back, this apostle who has\nlost his way! Another star fallen!\n\nPicciola daily grows weaker, and I now know, alas! why she is dying. I\nwould fain give the account with her touching simplicity, but this charm\nbelongs to her alone.\n\nThis morning I was in her room; she has not got up since the 22d. \u201cAre\nyou alone, aunt?\u201d \u201cYes, dearest.\u201d \u201cBecause I have something to say to\nyou. I have to ask your pardon.\u201d Poor angel! \u201cMy life was my own, was it\nnot, aunt? I could give it away?\u201d \u201cAnd why, then, did you give it away,\nmy child?\u201d \u201cAunt, do not be so distressed. You love Mme. Marcella very\nmuch, and Anna also. Well! last year, at Orleans, during the winter,\nAnna had the fever. The doctor came; he examined her a long time, and it\nwas I who conducted him to the door. I asked him if my little friend was\nvery ill. 'She is consumptive, this beautiful child, and will not be\ncured without a miracle.\u2019 I was very much struck, but did not show it in\nany way, and from that day I offered all my prayers for her recovery.\nThe day of my First Communion, O aunt! I was so happy. The good God had\ngiven me everything. I tried to find a sacrifice to offer to him, and I\nhad nothing but my life; so I asked him to take this in exchange for\nthat of Anna. I felt at the same moment that I was heard, that my prayer\nwould be fully granted. Oh! how happy I was. But, my poor dear aunt, I\nsee you so sad that I am almost sorry; but then you have other nieces,\nand Mme. Marcella has only one daughter. Do you forgive me?\u201d\n\nMy God! my God! Can you understand, Kate, what I felt? \u201cMy mother must\nnot know of this,\u201d continued the gentle victim, after a long effort.\n\u201cYou will comfort her, dear aunt! Oh! it is so consoling to die for\nothers. I have a confidence that I shall go to heaven. Monsieur le Cur\u00e9\nhas told me not to be afraid. I have always suffered ever since my First\nCommunion; but my cross was not heavy like that of our Lord! Oh! I long\nso for heaven. On earth it is so difficult to keep one\u2019s self always in\nthe presence of God; we shall see him on high. Aunt, what joy it is to\ndie!\u201d\n\nBerthe came into the room, from which I hastened precipitately to hide\nmy tears. I felt thoroughly overcome. What self-devotion! What angelic\ndesires! I told all to Ren\u00e9, who had already his suspicions: Anna had so\ndelicate a chest, while our Mad\u2019s constitution was so strong. God has\naccepted the exchange. Poor Berthe! When she received Marcella with so\nsisterly a welcome, how little she imagined that with her death entered\nour dwelling! I am proud of Picciola\u2014but I weep!\n\nAh! dear Kate, let us bless God for all.\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 30, 1869.\n\nI live as in another world since this revelation. \u201cThe holy angels will\ncome and take me,\u201d said Picciola. Margaret, Berthe, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, Gertrude,\nand I succeed each other in watching by her. \u201cAll my body is broken!\u201d\nshe exclaimed in her delirium; otherwise, never a complaint. She prays,\nand likes to hear singing; she is full of tenderness. I have no news of\nEdith. Anna has written from Lyons.\n\nPray for those who remain, dear Kate!\n\n\nOCTOBER 1, 1869.\n\nShe has received the last sacraments; her room exhales the perfume of\nincense. We are all there, whispering prayers.\n\n_2d October._\u2014She is in heaven! \u201cDear angels, thanks, I come!\u201d And her\nsoul fled away. Oh! how I suffer. I loved her too much! I write to you\nnear to _her_\u2014near to _her_ who is no longer there. I could have wished\nto follow her when the _abb\u00e9_ said: \u201cGo forth from this world, Christian\nsoul!\u201d\n\nDid you know her well, this flower of heaven whose fragrance was so\nsweet; this soul, open to every noble sentiment; this exceptional\nunderstanding, which assimilated everything and was ever advancing?\n\nMy mother is well-nigh broken down; Berthe is kneeling, and still\nkissing this brow so pure, these eyes whose gaze we shall behold no\nmore.\n\nRaoul and Th\u00e9r\u00e8se weep together; Gertrude occupies herself in attending\nto the sad details; and as for me, I would pour upon this paper all the\ndesolation of my heart.\n\nShall I have the courage to paint her thus\u2014inanimate\u2014dead? O my God! it\nis, then, true? That caressing arm will never again pass itself round my\nneck. That beloved voice will no longer resound in my ears. That a\u00ebrial\nfootstep will no more reveal her presence. She is gone! She was full of\nlife, and freely, voluntarily she has accepted death and has left us\nalone.\n\nKate, how shall I pray, how shall I bless God? If you knew how I loved\nher!\n\n\nOCTOBER 12, 1869.\n\nI am beginning to rise up. For ten days I have been in a state of\ndelirium. I saw Madeleine constantly by me, spoke to her, told her to\nwait for me\u2014that I did not wish to live without her. Ren\u00e9 was in\ndespair; but his prayers and yours have been heard. A strange calm has\nsucceeded to the disorder of my thoughts; I have the certainty that\nPicciola and Edith have entered into everlasting rest. Yes, Edith! How\ndid I learn that she was dead? I do not know, but Ren\u00e9 saw that I knew\nit and no longer sought to hide it from me. Adrien leaves us to-day to\ngo and bring hither Mary and Ellen, and also Mistress Annah, who is\nwanted by Margaret. They compel me to stop. I love you.\n\n\nOCTOBER 20, 1869.\n\nI am still weak, dear Kate, but my soul is strengthened. Let us love\nGod, let us love God! I went at noon to the cemetery, to the beloved\ngrave. Ren\u00e9 accompanied me. Oh! how he also loved her. How sweet she was\nwhen she spoke of him! Raoul has taken Berthe and Th\u00e9r\u00e8se into Normandy\nfor a fortnight; their intense grief made him anxious. It is all like a\ndream; but, alas! _she_ is no longer here. Let us so live that we may\nrejoin her!\n\nA friend of Ren\u00e9\u2019s gave Edith the comfort of embracing her son; our dear\nfriend\u2019s will is addressed to me. Ren\u00e9 is utterly opposed to the young\ngirls being brought up with us, and we shall no doubt place them at the\nSacred Heart. Ren\u00e9 is right: no one could ever take the place of\nPicciola in my heart.\n\nMargaret and Gertrude have been angels of consolation to me. How shall I\never repay their tenderness! Ah! it is good to be so loved. Let us\nalways love each other in Jesus, dear Kate!\n\n\nOCTOBER 25.\n\nThe orphans are come, very touching in their mourning garments. The good\nMistress Annah has grown ten years older. Edith died the death of a\nsaint! How painfully this word death sounds in my heart!\n\nMy mother does not wish that Berthe should see _them_ here; the generous\nAdrien offers to accompany them, but Margaret solicits this privilege,\nwith the secret intention, we believe, of paying the first year\u2019s\nexpenses. Kind Margaret! I should like to have kept these children, but\nin every point of view it is impossible. Ren\u00e9 fears that I may love them\ntoo much\u2014and you also, dear Kate. Thus it is decided that they are to\nleave us on the 5th.\n\nI send you the _journal_ of the last days of Edith; Mistress Annah\nwished to give me this consolation, sweet and bitter at the same time.\nDear old friend! what good care we are going to take of her. I should\nlike to have her here. Karl will be made a priest on Christmas Eve; we\nshall therefore be in Paris towards the 10th of December. For how long?\nI do not yet know. My mother has changed very much since our _angel_ is\nno longer here. O Christ! O Saviour! O Sovereign Friend of our souls!\ntake compassion on our sorrows.\n\nJohanna is here, by me, with my beautiful godson on her knees, smiling\nand playing with him in a thousand ways. Oh! how sweet was Picciola in\nthis same place. Alix and Margu\u00e9rite come every minute to talk to me, to\namuse me. Margaret occupies herself in reading to me serious and\nabsorbing things; but\u2014I constantly see _her_, my little dove that is\nflown away.\n\nMarcella is at Naples; the letter of mourning reached her there. She\ndoes not know what her daughter\u2019s life has cost us, nor will she ever\nknow it. Ah my God! who would have believed that?\n\nSend me your good angel, dear, beloved sister!\n\nTO BE CONTINUED.\n\n\n\n\n                  PRESBYTERIAN INFIDELITY IN SCOTLAND.\n\n\nThe people of England, as his Eminence Cardinal Manning is fond of\nsaying, never abandoned the Catholic faith; it was torn from them by\nviolence. The people of Ireland were made of sterner stuff; they clung\nto the faith, successfully resisting the pitiless persecutions to which\nthey were subjected. But the people of Scotland joyfully received the\nnew gospel and took it into their hearts with zealous ardor. In England\nthe sovereign imposed the new religion upon the people, and they\nsubmitted to it; in Ireland the whole authority of the civil power,\nexercised in the most cruel forms, was exhausted in vain attempts to\ncompel the apostasy of the people. In Scotland the people apostatized by\ntheir own motion and the Reformation there was essentially a popular\nmovement. The late Archbishop Spalding, in his _History of the\nProtestant Reformation_, says that the Reformation in Scotland spread\nfrom low to high; that it \u201cworked its way up from the people, through\nthe aid of the nobles, through political combinations and civil\ncommotions, to the foot of the throne itself, and, after having gained\nthe supreme civil power and deposed first the queen-regent and then the\nqueen, it dictated its own terms to the new regent and the new\nsovereign; and thus, by the strong arm, it firmly established itself on\nthe ruins of the old religion of the country.\u201d The true explanation of\nthe fact that the Reformation in Scotland was a popular movement is to\nbe found in the words of a Protestant writer[14] quoted by Archbishop\nSpalding: \u201cScotland, from her local situation, had been less exposed to\ndisturbance from the encroaching ambition, vexatious exactions, and\nfulminating anathemas of the Vatican court\u201d than other countries; that\nis to say, the authority of the Holy See for a long time prior to the\nReformation had been scarcely felt in Scotland; the wise and wholesome\nprovisions of the canon law had fallen into disuse; the civil power had\nthrust its own creatures into benefices and bishoprics; and the people\nhad become disgusted by \u201cthe scandalous lives, ostentatious pomp, and\noccasional exactions of the unworthy men who had been thus unlawfully\nfoisted into the bishoprics and abbeys.\u201d\n\nFootnote 14:\n\n  Thomas McCrie, minister of the Gospel, Edinburgh.\n\nIn England and Ireland the influence and authority of the popes had\nnot been thus disregarded; the church there had been kept tolerably\npure, and the affection of the people had not been alienated by the\nfaults and crimes of prelates and priests. In Ireland to-day, after\nthree hundred and thirty-six years of Protestant assaults upon the\nfaith, Catholic truth remains as firmly as ever rooted in the hearts\nand exemplified in the lives of the people. In England the effects of\nthe retention of Catholic tradition are still to be seen: some of the\ngreat fasts and festivals of the church are observed as legal\nholidays; marriages are not solemnized at a later hour than that which\nformerly was fixed for the celebration of the nuptial Mass; and\nrespectable Protestants, belonging to the Nonconformist societies as\nwell as to the Established Church, abstain from marrying or giving in\nmarriage during Lent.[15] But in Scotland the \u201cblessed Reformation\u201d\nswept away all these \u201crags of Popery\u201d; it had full course to run and\nbe glorified; and it made such thorough work that, for example, only\nwithin the past few years has even the most modest recognition of\nChristmas day as a festival been permitted. The Scottish Reformers,\nhaving burned the religious houses, stripped and disfigured the\nchurches, and driven the priests from the land, set up the Bible as\ntheir fetich, and ordained that it should be worshipped in conformity\nwith the precepts embodied in certain creeds and confessions of faith\nwhich they framed to suit themselves. For three hundred years the\nScottish Presbyterians have been the most ardent Protestants in the\nworld, and have boasted most loudly of their devotion to, and their\nimplicit faith in, the written Word of God. This, and this alone,\ncontained in itself all that was necessary for salvation; and it were\nbetter that a man should never have been born rather than that he\nshould take away from, or add one word to, what was written in this\nbook. God had not on the day of Pentecost called into being, by the\npower of the Holy Spirit, a body commissioned \u201cto teach all whatsoever\nhe had commanded until the consummation of the world\u201d; he had simply\ncaused a book to be written. \u201cIn the books of the Old and New\nTestaments,\u201d they declared in their \u201cStandards,\u201d \u201cthe revelation of\nGod and the declaration of his will are committed wholly unto writing\n... and they are all given by inspiration of God to be the only rule\nof faith and life.\u201d This has been the nominal faith of the Scotch\nPresbyterians ever since the dawn of the Reformation, and it is their\nnominal faith to-day. It has long been difficult, however, for the\nadmirers of Scotch Presbyterianism to reconcile the fact that they\nwere at once \u201cthe most Bible-loving and whiskey-loving people on the\nface of the earth\u201d; that their sexual immorality was threefold that of\nthe English, and tenfold that of the Catholic Irish; and that marriage\namong them had become divested of every form of religious sanction.\nClose observers of what was going on in Scotland had, indeed, from\ntime to time perceived evidences of the existence and extension of a\ncurious phase of scepticism among the people\u2014a hypocritical and\nspeculative scepticism. The leading journal of the country had for\nmany years, with great skill and with the evident approbation of its\nconstantly-increasing circle of readers, devoted itself to the\nstealthy inculcation of rationalism and of secularism in education. In\nprivate, and sometimes in public, leading members of the various\nbranches of the Presbyterian Church had indulged in covert sneers at\nthis or that article of faith, and every attempt to reprove or punish\nthese heresies by the discipline of the church resulted in failure.\nEvents have now occurred which reveal in a startling manner the extent\nto which infidelity has made conquest of the Scotch Presbyterian\nministers, and which show that those among them who still care to\nprofess their adherence to their standards of faith are unwilling or\nafraid to attempt either the correction or the expulsion of their\natheistic brethren.\n\nFootnote 15:\n\n  Moreover, the favor with which that parody of Catholic ceremony and\n  Catholic truths known as ritualism has been received in England,\n  especially among the common people, is an evidence of the imperfect\n  manner in which the Reformation there has done its work.\n\nA new edition of the _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_ has lately been\npublished, the article \u201cAngels\u201d and the article \u201cBible\u201d in which work\nwere written by Professor W. R. Smith, of the Free Church College of\nAberdeen. Both these articles contained statements which, in the\nmoderate language of the official report before us, and from which we\nshall quote, \u201cawakened anxiety in the minds of ministers and members of\nthe church.\u201d The affairs of this college are managed by a committee, who\nare authorized to \u201coriginate and prosecute before the church courts\nprocesses against any of the professors for heresy or immorality,\naccording to the present laws of the church.\u201d On the 17th of May last\nthis committee \u201chad their attention called\u201d to these writings of\nProfessor Smith; on the 19th of September they appointed seven of their\nnumber\u2014Mr. Laughton, Principal Rainy, Principal Douglas, Sir Henry\nMoncreiff, Professor Smeaton, Dr. Gould, and Professor Candlish\u2014to\nconsider the two articles, and to report to the committee what action,\nif any, should be taken upon them. On the 17th of October the\nsub-committee, two members dissenting, reported that they did not find\nit necessary to say anything about Professor Smith\u2019s views concerning\n\u201cangels,\u201d but that it would be advisable in the first instance to ask\nthe professor if he had any explanation or apology to offer respecting\nhis article upon the Bible. On the 14th of November the committee\nreceived a communication from Professor Smith not at all in the nature\nof an apology; and on the 17th of January\u2014eight months having been taken\nfor consideration of the matter from the commencement\u2014the committee made\ntheir report, which is addressed to the General Assembly of the church.\nThey state that \u201cafter carefully examining the article 'Bible,\u2019 and\nconsidering with attention the explanations which Professor Smith has\nbeen good enough to furnish,\u201d they have not found in the article\nsufficient ground \u201cto support a process for heresy\u201d\u2014a conclusion from\nwhich one member of the committee, Dr. Smeaton, dissents, as will\nappear, with good reason. It is true, the committee go on to say, that\nProfessor Smith\u2019s statements relating to \u201cthe date, authorship, and\nliterary history\u201d of certain books and portions of books in the Bible\nnot only \u201cdiffer from the opinions which have been most usually\nmaintained in our churches,\u201d but are \u201csuch as have been maintained by\nwriters who treat the Scriptures as merely human compositions.\u201d But the\ncommittee magnanimously decline to \u201cassume that this circumstance is of\nitself a ground either of suspicion or complaint,\u201d inasmuch as \u201cmuch\nliberty of judgment should be maintained.\u201d They confess, again, that\nthey \u201chave observed with regret that the article does not adequately\nindicate that the professor holds the divine inspiration\u201d of the Bible,\nand that he does not \u201cadequately state the view of the Bible taken by\nthe Christian church as a whole.\u201d \u201cA clear note on this point\u201d was much\nneeded, but the professor would not give it, and \u201cthe committee are\ncompelled to regard this feature of the case with disapprobation,\u201d since\nit would have been so easy for the professor, by \u201ca single sentence or\nclause of a sentence, at successive stages of his argument,\u201d to have\n\u201cprevented the injurious effect which the committee deprecate.\u201d The\nprofessor gave \u201cdecided opinions in favor of some of the critical\npositions maintained by theologians of the destructive school,\u201d and he\nconsistently refrained from blowing hot and cold, as the committee\nwished him to do, \u201cby showing decisively that he did not agree with\ntheir destructive inferences.\u201d But since, in his communication to the\ncommittee, Professor Smith \u201cadmits direct prediction of the Messias in\nthe Old Testament,\u201d and receives three of the four gospels as \u201cauthentic\nand inspired,\u201d the committee\u2014Professor Smeaton again dissenting\u2014did not\nthink it wise to prosecute him for heresy on these points. They stumbled\nsadly, however, in their attempts to explain why they resolved to acquit\nhim of flagrant heresy in the expressions of his views \u201cwith respect to\nportions of the Pentateuch, and more particularly to the Book of\nDeuteronomy.\u201d It would be bad enough, they say, had Professor Smith\ncontented himself with maintaining that the Book of Deuteronomy in its\npresent form could not have been written, for philological reasons,\nuntil eight hundred years after the death of Moses. But this would not\nnecessarily prove that the author of the book was not inspired and did\nnot faithfully record the history as it occurred. Professor Smith did\nworse than this; for he affirmed \u201cthat instructions and laws which, in\nthe Book of Deuteronomy, appear as uttered by Moses, are certainly\npost-Mosaic, and so could not, as a matter of fact, have been uttered by\nhim.\u201d Professor Smith, say the committee, holds:\n\n    \u201c1. That various portions of the Levitical institutions, to which a\n    Mosaic authorship is assigned in the Pentateuch, are of later date,\n    having come into the form in which they are exhibited only by\n    degrees, and in days long subsequent to the age of Moses. This is\n    held to be established by discrepancies between different parts of\n    Scripture, which are held to arise when the Mosaic origin is\n    assumed.\n\n    \u201c2. In particular, the Book of Deuteronomy, in portions of it which,\n    _ex facie_, bear to be the record of utterances by Moses, makes\n    reference to institutions and arrangements much later than his time.\n\n    \u201c3. This is to be accounted for by assuming that some prophetic\n    person, in later times, threw into this form a series of oracles,\n    embracing at once Mosaic revelations, and modifications, or\n    adaptations which were of later development; all together being\n    thrown into the form of a declaration and testimony of Moses.\n\n    \u201c4. That, viewed especially with reference to the literary\n    conceptions and habits of that time and people, the method thus\n    employed was legitimate, and was such as the divine Spirit might\n    sanction and employ. It was designed to teach that the whole body of\n    laws delivered were the fruit of the same seed, had received the\n    same sanction, and were alike inspired by the Spirit which spake by\n    Moses.\n\n    \u201c5. The sub-committee do not understand the professor to mean that\n    this involved any fraud upon those to whom the book was delivered.\n    It was given and taken for what it was; however, it may subsequently\n    have been misunderstood, in the professor\u2019s view, in so far as it\n    came to be believed to be an ordinary historical record of actual\n    Mosaic utterances.\u201d\n\nThe committee found themselves \u201cobliged to regard this position with\ngrave concern.\u201d They did not feel willing to admit the force of the\nevidence which Professor Smith relied upon as establishing the\nnon-Mosaic character of some of the Deuteronomic laws; and \u201cthe\nhypothesis of inspired personation applied to such a book as\nDeuteronomy\u201d appeared to them \u201chighly questionable in itself and in its\nconsequences.\u201d This is stating the case very mildly, especially as they\ngo on to say that the so-called \u201cexplanations produced by Professor\nSmith in his statement have not relieved the apprehensions of the\ncommittee,\u201d but, on the contrary, have rather served \u201cto make more\nevident the stumbling-block for readers of the Bible arising from a\ntheory which represents a book of Scripture as putting into the mouth of\nMoses regulations that are at variance with institutions which the same\ntheory supposes him to have actually sanctioned.\u201d This theory is \u201cliable\nto objection and is fitted to create apprehension.\u201d It ascribes to the\nauthor of the book \u201cthe use of a device which appears unworthy and\ninadmissible in connection with the divine inspiration and divine\nauthority of such a book as Deuteronomy.\u201d... \u201cThe admissions that the\nstatements of the book regarding Moses are not true in the obvious sense\nwill operate in the way of unsettling belief.\u201d The committee are\ncompelled to admit that the article is \u201cof a dangerous and unsettling\ntendency.\u201d Nevertheless, they declare that they cannot and will not\nexercise the rights and discharge the duties of their office by\ninstituting a process against Professor Smith for heresy. He has written\na most heretical, dangerous, and really blasphemous article, and has\ncaused it to be published in a book of the highest character and of the\nmost extensive circulation. But they have \u201ca cordial sense of his great\nlearning,\u201d and he has been good enough to say that although he has\nproved that the Holy Spirit lied in certain portions of Deuteronomy, and\nlent himself to the perpetration of a fraud in other portions, still he\ncan accept the book \u201cas part of the inspired record of revelation, on\nthe witness of our Lord and the _testimonium Spiritus Sancti_\u201d\u2014the\ntestimony of the same Holy Spirit to whom he has imputed the crimes of\nfalsehood and of fraud! Therefore they declare that they find no fault\nin Professor Smith other than that of being a little too free in the\nutterance of his opinions, and, accordingly, they decide to let him go.\n\nFrom this free and easy deliverance four members of the committee\ndissented, but on different grounds. One of them thought that Professor\nSmith\u2019s views respecting angels were as \u201cdestructive\u201d and as full of\n\u201cnegations\u201d as were his statements concerning the Bible, and that he\nshould have been arraigned for heresy on this ground. Another\u2014Professor\nCandlish\u2014was of the opinion that there was no \u201cground in the articles\nfor concern about Professor Smith\u2019s views\u201d; and a third\u2014Mr.\nWhyte\u2014insisted that, instead of indulging in \u201ctimid and cautious\u201d blame,\nthe committee should have expressed their real feelings of approbation,\nand given utterance to \u201ca hearty and grateful acknowledgment of the\ngoodness of God to their church in the succession of eminent theologians\nand teachers he was raising up among them,\u201d and of whom Professor Smith\nwas the chief! The fourth dissentient was Dr. Smeaton, of whom we have\nalready spoken, and who, save the member who was distressed about\nProfessor Smith\u2019s opinions respecting angels, seems to have been the\nonly orthodox person upon the committee. An appendix to the report sets\nforth the reasons for his dissent at great length, but their purport may\nbe given in a few words. The finding of the committee was \u201cwholly\ninadequate to the gravity of the offence\u201d; Professor Smith had offered\nno retractation of his heresies, and he should have been arraigned at\nthe bar of the church. It is absurd for the committee to avow \u201cregret\nand grave concern\u201d at the expression of heresy by a luminary of the\nchurch, and then to \u201caccept a mere profession of loyalty as a sufficient\nreason for abstaining from further action.\u201d He exposes the inconsistency\nof the committee\u2019s statement that the professor\u2019s views, while\n\u201cinjurious,\u201d \u201cdestructive,\u201d and \u201cnaturalistic,\u201d are still compatible\nwith the belief that the book which he declares to be a forgery was\ninspired by the Holy Ghost.\n\n    \u201cI hold,\u201d says Dr. Smeaton, \u201cthat the doctrine of inspiration and\n    Professor Smith\u2019s views are irreconcilable, and that this will be\n    evident if, for example, we take account of his theory of\n    Deuteronomy or of his conception of the Song of Solomon. The view\n    which he propounds as to the origin of Deuteronomy is that it is a\n    fictitious personation of Moses by another man, in the unspeakably\n    solemn position of professing to receive and communicate a divine\n    revelation, and that the book was not composed until many centuries\n    after Moses\u2019 death. The point at issue is not alone the age and\n    Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, but whether this book of Scripture\n    is supposititious, and whether it was after a great interval of time\n    composed and put into the mouth of Moses by another. This fraudulent\n    personation-theory is the lowest depth of criticism; for, as has\n    often been said, the mythical criticism had still this redeeming\n    point, that it did not impute to the writers conscious fabrication.\n    The supposititious or personation-theory, on the contrary, is not in\n    keeping with the character of an honest man, and wholly inconsistent\n    with that of an ambassador from God; and the attempt to exculpate\n    the writer who is said to have put his words into the mouth of\n    Moses, on the supposition that it was well known at the time, only\n    widens the sphere of the fraudulent deception, and makes the\n    receivers of the book act in collusion with the writer in his crime.\n    This theory, which I never expected to encounter in Scotland,\n    overlooks the important fact that, in the very book to which such an\n    origin is ascribed, we find the repeated condemnation of false\n    prophets, of false testimony, and of adding to, or diminishing from,\n    the Word of God; and we must therefore suppose the writer practising\n    deception while exposing falsehood in every form. Professor Smith\n    must make his choice between the reception of the book as an\n    inspired revelation, with all that it purports to be, as written in\n    the time of Moses, and as the work of Moses, or reject it altogether\n    as a fraud and entitled to no respect. There is no middle way. He\n    cannot maintain its fictitious origin, and yet assert its\n    inspiration. However convenient it may be for a speculative\n    theologian to oscillate between the two ideas, as the necessities of\n    a daring criticism may suggest, the notion of a fabricated prophetic\n    programme or of an inspired forgery will be regarded by the general\n    community, as it has always been regarded by me, as no better than\n    the very quintessence of absurdity. The robust common sense of\n    mankind scouts the possibility of the combination. For my part, I\n    could not stultify myself before the church and the world by\n    allowing such an incoherent and self-contradictory juxtaposition of\n    terms. But such a theory, if it could be endured for a moment,\n    would, it is evident, render inspiration incapable of vindication or\n    defence. And the enemies of revelation, I believe, could desire no\n    more effective weapon in their warfare than the power to proclaim\n    that a Christian church permitted a theological teacher to represent\n    any one book of Scripture as an inspired fabrication. But the\n    question forces itself on our minds: If one book may be so\n    described, what is to be the limit of this license, and how far is\n    the concession to be extended in the way of giving a chartered right\n    to similar caricatures of the sacred oracles? I am obliged to add\n    that, in my judgment, Professor Smith\u2019s treatment of the Book of\n    Deuteronomy is tantamount to dropping it from the inspired canon.\n    And the same thing may be said of his mode of representing the scope\n    and purport of the Song of Solomon, to which he denies the spiritual\n    sense, and all that allusion to the communion between the Bridegroom\n    and the Bride which the church of all ages\u2014notwithstanding the\n    wayward tendencies of a few individual writers\u2014has always regarded\n    as immediately connected with its divine origin; for no reason can\n    be shown for its inspiration and canonical rank if it is to be\n    interpreted on the low exegetical conception that it is an earthly\n    love-poem. It will not do to say that this is a dispute about the\n    authorship of a book, and that the authorship of a book is of small\n    moment. I have already stated how much more is involved. But the\n    references to the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, not only by\n    Peter and Paul (Acts iii. 22; Rom x. 6; x. 19), but by the Lord\n    Jesus Christ himself (Matt. xix. 8), are so express and definite\n    that the denial of that one accredited fact tends to shake the\n    inspiration of many other books of Scripture which explicitly assert\n    or imply it. In conclusion, I regret that the committee, fettered by\n    the interpretation which they have put upon their functions, have\n    not sent up with their report a strong recommendation to the\n    Assembly to deal effectually with the negative and destructive\n    opinions brought to light in Professor Smith\u2019s articles as wholly\n    inconsistent with our recognized doctrines, and contrary to the\n    genius of every Reformed Presbyterian church. This is the first\n    instance that has occurred in any Scottish church of an attack on\n    the genuineness of any book of Scripture on the part of an\n    office-bearer within the church. And the question now raised, and\n    which must be decided one way or other, is whether the negative\n    criticism, with the rationalistic theology which uniformly goes\n    along with it, is to claim a legitimate position within the pale of\n    the Free Church of Scotland? To that I cannot consent. The\n    Continental churches, having neither our spiritual independence nor\n    our Scriptural discipline, can be no guide to us in this matter.\n    Under the control of the state, they are obliged to allow all manner\n    of latitudinarian opinions, and have ceased to put forth any\n    ecclesiastical testimony on great questions. We have what they want,\n    and are bound to call the spiritual independence and Scriptural\n    discipline, which are our distinctive privilege, into active\n    exercise or the side of the divine authority of Scripture.\n    Unfaithfulness or weak concession at this juncture would allow two\n    classes of professors, students, and preachers antagonistic to each\n    other, and end in the long run, as all such false alliances must\n    end, in an ultimate separation between the rationalistic and\n    evangelical elements, as incapable of existing together. Any man of\n    long views, or who has looked into the history of the church, must\n    see this; and, therefore, in the exercise of that inherent authority\n    which we possess, the church must at once nip these opinions in the\n    bud, and do so effectually. On one point I have not the shadow of a\n    doubt. An attack on the genuineness and authority of Scripture,\n    whether dignified by the title of the higher criticism or prompted\n    by the lower scepticism, ought never to be permitted within the\n    church on the part of any office-bearer. We can keep criticism\n    within its proper limits, and this occasion may have been permitted\n    to occur that we may show to other churches how we can act in the\n    exercise of our independent jurisdiction.\u201d\n\nThese bold and true words of Dr. Smeaton had no effect upon the decision\nof the committee; and, so far as that decision goes, it must now be\ntaken for granted that it is _not_ heresy for a minister of the\nPresbyterian Church to teach that portions of the Holy Scriptures are\nfictitious, supposititious, fraudulent, and deceptive. By the same\ndecision the Free Church of Scotland has \u201crendered inspiration incapable\nof vindication or defence,\u201d and has placed it within the power of the\nenemies of revelation to say that a Christian church permits a\ntheological teacher to represent Scripture as an inspired fabrication.\nIt might have been expected, however, that this decision would have been\nreceived with horror and consternation by the Bible-loving laity of\nScotland. The very contrary has proved to be the case, and the only\nreproof which the committee seems to have received is in the nature of a\nreproach for their weak affectation of disapproval of Professor Smith\u2019s\nheresies while really sympathizing with them. The ministers of the Free\nChurch of Scotland are wholly dependent upon the laity for their\nsupport, and the control of the laity over them is far-reaching, if it\nbe not absolute. The decision in the case of Professor Smith would have\nbeen different had not the laity of the church long since ceased, in a\ngreat measure, to cherish that reverence for the written Word which\ndistinguished their ancestors. The Edinburgh _Scotsman_ expresses its\nbelief that there will be \u201cvery extensive satisfaction\u201d at the decision\nof the committee, and confidently assumes that \u201cit will ultimately\nbecome the collective judgment of the Free Church.\u201d Dr. Smeaton, it\nsays, is the one member of the committee belonging to the old orthodox\nparty in the church\u2014\u201ca party whose diminishing numbers entirely preclude\nthe possibility of any view springing out of their turn of mind\nsuccessfully asserting itself against the influence of the majority that\nhas enjoyed so long and mollifying an experience in turning closed into\nopen questions.\u201d Open questions! The inspiration and authenticity of the\nBible have become an open question among the Scotch Presbyterians, with\nthe probability that it will soon be decided by a verdict against the\nbook. The _Scotsman_ ridicules the committee for pretending to regard\nProfessor Smith\u2019s position with \u201cgrave concern\u201d while they themselves\n\u201csubstantially sympathize with him,\u201d or else know that so many of the\npeople agree with him that to prosecute him for heresy would be\ndangerous.\n\nNor is it the Free Church of Scotland alone which has thus, to all\nappearance, lost its faith in the Scriptures and in the \u201cStandards.\u201d The\nRev. David Macrae, of Gourock, one of the most talented and popular\nministers of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, declared\nrecently in the presbytery of that body that he and very many\u2014almost\nall\u2014of his fellow-ministers had ceased to believe, and in some cases to\npreach, the traditional creed of the church. He, for one, was henceforth\nresolved to be honest, and was determined no longer to profess what he\nhad ceased to believe, but the majority of his brethren, he thought,\nwould continue for some time to be hypocrites. \u201cThe relation of the\nclergy to the Standards was not an honest one,\u201d he said; \u201cthe professed\nwas not the actual creed of the church; our church is professing one\ncreed while holding, and to a large extent preaching, another. I am\ndetermined to strike a blow, even though it should be my last, to\nliberate the church I love from the tyranny of a narrow creed and the\nhypocrisy of a professed adherence to it.\u201d\n\nThe lapse of the Scotch Presbyterians into infidelity may seem to be a\nstartling event, but it was inevitable. If the Bible could have saved\nthem, they would have been safe; but the Bible in itself never yet saved\nany one, for God did not ordain that it should be written and preserved\nfor that purpose. The Bible, indeed, points out the way to salvation; it\nis a finger-post directing men to the gate of heaven, but it is not that\ngate itself, nor even the key which opens it. All non-Catholic sects are\ncertain, sooner or later, to lead their adherents to that pit of\nperdition on the brink of which the Scotch Presbyterians now seem to be\nstanding\u2014the blind lead the blind, and both fall into the ditch. The\nCatholic Church in Scotland is small and weak; it is only within a very\nfew years that her growth there has been at all perceptible, and the\nhierarchy has not been re-established there since it was swept away by\nthe Reformation. But the rapid decline of Scotch Protestantism into\npractical infidelity may have a favorable effect upon the interests of\nthe church. The really pious of the people\u2014and there are many such\u2014may\nnow begin to turn their eyes towards the living Teacher of God\u2019s word,\nand listen to her unerring voice; and when they enter her fold they can\nsay that they have abandoned the church of their fathers in order to\nreturn to the church of their forefathers.\n\n\n\n\n                  HOW PERCY BINGHAM CAUGHT HIS TROUT.\n\n\nOne lovely evening towards the end of the month of June, 187-, an\noutside car jingled into the picturesque little village of\nBallynacushla. The sun had set in a flood of golden glory; purple\nshadows wooed midsummer-night dreams on crested hill and in hooded\nhollow; a perfumed stillness slept upon the tranquil waters of the\nKilleries, that wild but beauteous child of the Atlantic, broken only by\nthe shrill note of the curlew seeking its billow-rocked nest, or the\ntinkle of the sheep-bell on the heather-clad heights of\nCarrignagolliogue. Lights like truant stars commenced to twinkle in\nlonely dwellings perched like eyries in the mountain clefts, and night\nprepared to don her lightest mourning in memory of the departed day.\n\nThe rickety vehicle which broke upon the stillness was occupied by two\npersons\u2014a handsome, aristocratic-looking young man attired in\nfashionable tourist costume, and the driver, whose general \u201cget-up\u201d\nwould have won the heart of Mr. Boucicault at a single glance.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a nate finish, yer honner,\u201d he exclaimed, as, bringing a wheel\ninto collision with a huge boulder which lay in the roadway, he decanted\nthe traveller upon the steps of the \u201cBodkin Arms\u201d at the imminent risk\nof breaking his neck.\n\nThe \u201cBodkin Arms,\u201d conscious of its whitewash and glowing amber thatch,\nstood proudly isolated. Its proprietor had been \u201cown man\u201d to Lord\nClanricarde, and scandal whispered that a portion of the contents of\n\u201cthe lord\u2019s\u201d cellar was to be found in Tom Burke\u2019s snuggery behind the\nbottle-bristling bar.\n\nThe occupant of the car was flung into the arms of an expectant waiter,\nwho, true to the instincts of that remarkable race, had scented his prey\nfrom afar, and calmly awaited its approach. This Ganymede was attired in\na cast-off evening dress-coat frescoed in grease; a shirt bearing traces\nof the despairing grasp of a frantic washerwoman; a necktie of the\ndimensions of a window-curtain, of faded brocade; and waistcoat with\ncontinuations of new corduroy, which wheezed and chirruped with every\nmotion of his lanky frame. His nose and hair vied in richness of ruby,\nand his eyes mutely implored every object upon which they rested for a\nsleep\u2014or a drink.\n\n\u201cYou got my note?\u201d said the traveller interrogatively.\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir.\u201d Of course they had it. The post in the\nwest of Ireland is an eccentric institution, which disgorges letters\njust as it suits itself, and without any particular scruple as to dates.\n\n\u201cHave you a _table d\u2019h\u00f4te_ here?\u201d\n\nThis was a strange sound, but the waiter was a bold man.\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir! Would you like it hot, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cHot! Certainly.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir! With a taste of lemon in it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI said\u2014Pshaw! Is dinner ready?\u201d said the traveller impatiently.\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir; it\u2019s on the fire, sir,\u201d joyously responded\nthe relieved servitor, although the fowls which were to furnish it were\nengaged in picking up a precarious subsistence at his very feet, and the\ncabbage to \u201cpoultice\u201d the bacon flabbily flourishing in the adjoining\ngarden.\n\n\u201cGet in my traps and rods\u201d\u2014the car was laden with fishing-tackle of the\nmost elaborate description. \u201cHave you good fishing here?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir\u2014the finest in Ireland. Trouts lepping into\nthe fryin\u2019-pan out of the lake foreninst ye. The marquis took twoscore\nbetween where yer standing and Fin Ma Coole\u2019s Rock last Thursday; and\nMr. Blake, of Town Hill\u2014more power to him!\u2014hooked six elegant salmon in\nthe pool over, under Kilgobbin Head.\u201d\n\n\u201cI want change of a sovereign.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir\u2014change for a hundred pound, sir. This way,\nsir. Mind yer head in regard of that flitch of bacon. It gave Captain\nBurke a black eye on Friday, and the county inspector got a wallop in\nthe jaw that made his teeth ring like the bell in the middle o\u2019 Mass.\u201d\nAnd he led the way into the hotel.\n\nThe charioteer, after a prolonged and exciting chase through several\ninterstices in his outer garment, succeeded in fishing up a\nweather-beaten black pipe, which he proceeded to \u201cready\u201d with a care and\ngravity befitting the operation.\n\n\u201cHave ye got a taste o\u2019 fire, Lanty Kerrigan?\u201d addressing a diminutive\npersonage, the remains of whose swallow-tailed frieze coat were\nconnected with his frame through the medium of a hay-rope, and whose\ngeneral appearance bore a stronger resemblance to that of a scarecrow\nthan a man and a brother. \u201cI\u2019m lost intirely for a _shough_. The\nforriner [the stranger] wudn\u2019t stand smokin\u2019, as he sed the tobaccy was\ninfayrior, but never an offer he med me av betther.\u201d\n\n\u201cHowld a minnit, an\u2019 I\u2019ll get ye a hot sod.\u201d And in less than the time\nspecified Lanty returned with a glowing sod of turf snatched from a\nneighboring fire.\n\n\u201cMore power, Lanty!\u201d exclaimed the car-driver, proceeding to utilize the\nburning brand. \u201cDon\u2019t stan\u2019 too nigh the baste, _avic_, or she\u2019ll be\nafther aiting yer waistband and lavin\u2019 ye in yer buff.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat soart av a fare have ye, Misther Malone?\u201d asked Lanty, now at a\nrespectful distance from the mare.\n\n\u201cWan av th\u2019 army\u2014curse o\u2019 Crummle an thim!\u2014from the barrack beyant at\nWestpoort.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it a good tack?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve me doubts,\u201d shaking his head gravely and taking several wicked\nwhiffs of his _dhudheen_. \u201cHe\u2019s afther axin\u2019 for change, an\u2019 that luks\nlike a naygur.\u201d\n\n\u201cThrue for ye, Misther Malone! Did ye rouse him at all?\u201d asked the other\nin an anxious tone. He expected the return of the \u201cforriner\u201d and was\ntaking soundings.\n\n\u201cRouse him! Begorra, ye might as well be endayvorin\u2019 to rouse a griddle.\nI\u2019m heart scalded wud him. I soothered him wud stories av the good\npeople, leprechauns, an\u2019 banshees until I was as dhry as a cuckoo.\u201d\n\n\u201cMusha, thin, he must be only fit for wakin\u2019 whin _you_ cudn\u2019t rouse\nhim, Mickey Malone.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019d as lieve have a sack o\u2019 pitaties on me car as\u2014\u201d He stopped short\nand plunged the pipe into his pocket, as the object of the discussion\nsuddenly appeared upon the steps.\n\n\u201cHere is a sovereign for the car and half a sovereign for yourself,\u201d\nexclaimed the young officer, tossing the coins to the expectant Malone.\n\n\u201cShure you won\u2019t forget the little mare, Captain?\u201d\n\n\u201cForget her? Not likely, or you either, Patsey.\u201d\n\n\u201cYe\u2019ll throw her a half a crown for to dhrink yer helth, Major?\u201d\n\n\u201cDrink my health? What do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cBegorra, she\u2019d take a glass o\u2019 sperrits wud a gauger, Curnil; an\u2019 if\nshe wudn\u2019t I wud. Me an\u2019 her is wan, an\u2019 I\u2019ve dacent manners on my side,\nso I\u2019ll drink yer honner\u2019s helth an\u2019 that ye may never die till yer\nfit.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat sentiment is worth the money,\u201d laughed the traveller, tossing the\nhalf-crown in the air and disappearing into the hotel.\n\n\u201cWell, be the mortial frost, Misther Malone,\u201d cried Lanty Kerrigan in an\nenthusiastic burst of admiration, \u201cbut yer the shupayriorest man in\nConnemara.\u201d\n\nPercy Bingham, of the \u2014th Regiment of the Line, found Westport even more\ndreary than the Curragh of Kildare. From the latter he could run up to\nDublin in the evening, and return next morning for parade, even if he\nhad to turn into bed afterwards; from Westport there was nothing to be\ndone but the summit of Croagh Patrick or a risky cruise amongst the\nthree hundred little islands dotting Clew Bay. \u201c_Lasciate ogni speranza\nvoi ch\u2019entrate_\u201d was written upon the entrance to the town. All was\ndreariness, dulness, and desolation, empty quays, ruined warehouses, and\nsqualid misery. The gentry, with few exceptions, were absentees, and\nthose whom interest or necessity detained in the country spent \u201cthe\nseason\u201d in London or Dublin, returning, with weary hearts and empty\npockets, to the _exile_ of their _homes_, there to vegetate until spring\nand the March rents, wrung from an oppressed tenantry, would enable them\nto flit citywards once more. To Bingham, to whom London was the capital\nof the world, and the United Service Club the capital of London, this\nphase in his military career was a horrid nightmare. Born and bred an\nEnglishman, he had been educated to regard Ireland as little better than\na Fiji island, and considerably worse than a West African station; and,\nfilled to the brim with Saxon prejudice, he took up his Irish quarters\nwith mingled feelings of disgust and despair. An ardent disciple of\nIzaak Walton, he clung to the safety-valve of rod and reel, avenging his\nexclusion from May Fair and Belgravia by a wicked raid upon every\ntrout-stream within a ten-mile radius of the barracks, and, having\nobtained a few days\u2019 leave of absence, arrived at Ballynacushla for the\npurpose of \u201cwetting his line\u201d in the saucy little rivers that joyously\nleap into the placid bosom of the land-locked Killeries.\n\n\u201cSo my dinner is ready _at last_,\u201d exclaimed Bingham pettishly. A good\ndigestion had waited two mortal hours on appetite.\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir!\u201d replied the waiter. \u201cA little derangement\nof the cabbage, sir, lost a few minutes, but\u201d cheerily \u201cwe\u2019re safe and\nsnug now anyway. There\u2019s darling chickens, sir! Look at the lovely\nbacon, sir! Survey the proportions of the cabbage, sir!\u201d And rubbing his\nnapkin across his perspiring brow, he gazed at the viands, and from the\nviands to the guest, in alternate glances of admiration and respect.\n\n\u201cHave you a _carte_?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir\u2014two of them; likewise a shay and a covered\ncar.\u201d\n\n\u201cA wine carte, I mean.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir; we get the wine from Dublin in hampers.\u201d\n\nPercy Bingham forgot that he was not in an English inn where the waiters\ndiscuss vintages and prescribe peculiar brands of dry champagne.\n\n\u201cWhat wines have you?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve port wine, sir, and sherry wine, sir, and claret wine, sir, and\nMayderial wine, sir,\u201d was the reply, run off with the utmost rapidity.\n\n\u201cGet me a bottle of sherry!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir.\u201d\n\nIn a few minutes the gory-headed factotum returned with the wine, and,\nuncorking it with a tremendous flourish of arm, napkin, head, and hair,\ndeliberately poured out an overflowing glassful of the amber-colored\nfluid, and drained it off.\n\n\u201cWhat the mischief do you mean?\u201d demanded the young officer angrily. \u201cI\nwanted for to make _certain_ that your honner was getting the right\nwine.\u201d And placing the bottle at Percy Bingham\u2019s elbow, he somewhat\nhastily withdrew.\n\nThe gallant warrior enjoyed his chicken and bacon and \u201cwisp of cabbage.\u201d\nThe waiter had made his peace by concocting with cunning hand a tumbler\nof whiskey-punch, hot, strong, and sweet, which Bingham proceeded to sip\nbetween the whiffs of a Sabean-odored Lopez. Who fails to build castles\nupon the creamy smoke, as it fades imperceptibly into space, wafting\nupwards aspirations, wishes, hopes, dreams\u2014rare and roseate shadows,\nbegotten of bright-eyed fancy? Not Percy Bingham, surely, seated by the\nopen casement, lulled by the murmuring plash of the toying tide, gazing\nforth into the silent sadness of the gray-hooded summer night. He had\nlived a butterfly life, and his thoughts were of gay parterres and\nbrilliant flowers. \u201cOf hair-breadth 'scapes i\u2019 the imminent deadly\nbreach\u201d he knew nothing. His game of war was played in the boudoir and\ndrawing-room; his castle was built in May Fair, his ch\u00e2telaine an ideal.\nThe chain of his meditation was somewhat rudely snapped asunder by an\nanimated dialogue which had commenced in some remote region of the\nhotel, and which was now being continued beneath the window whereat he\nreclined. The waiter had evidently been engaged in expostulating with\nLanty Kerrigan.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t run yer head against a stone wall, Lanty _avic_. Be off to\nKnockshin, and don\u2019t let the grass grow under yer feet!\u201d\n\n\u201cFaix, it\u2019s little ould Joyce wud think av me feet; it\u2019s me back he\u2019d be\nlukkin for, an\u2019 a slip av a stick. Sorra a step I\u2019ll go.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Mary must get her parcel anyhow.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet her sind for it, thin, av she\u2019s in sich a hurry.\u201d\n\n\u201cAn\u2019 so she did. Get a lind av a horse, Lanty.\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a horse there\u2019s in the place, barrin\u2019 an ass.\u201d\n\n\u201cWirra! wirra! She\u2019ll take the tatch off the roof; the blood of the\nJoyces is cruel hot.\u201d\n\n\u201cHot or cowld, I\u2019m not goin\u2019 three mile acrass the bogs\u2014-\u201d\n\n\u201c_You_ could coax it into two be manes av a sup, Lanty.\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a coax, thin. Coax it yerself, sence yer so onaisy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the row?\u201d asked Percy Bingham from the window.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s in regard to a parcel for Miss Joyce, yer honner,\u201d replied Lanty,\nstepping forward.\n\n\u201cAnd who is Miss Joyce?\u201d said Percy, intensely amused.\n\n\u201cO mother o\u2019 Moses! he doesn\u2019t know the beautifullest craythur in the\nintire cunthry,\u201d exclaimed Lanty, hastily adding: \u201cShe\u2019s the faymale\ndaughther av ould Miles Joyce, of Knockshin beyant, wan av the rale owld\nanshient families that kep\u2019 up Connemara sence the times av Julius\nSaysar.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you have a parcel for her?\u201d\n\n\u201cTroth, thin, I have, bad cess to it! It kem up Lough Corrib, an\u2019 round\nbe Cong, insted of takin\u2019 the car to Clifden, all the ways from Dublin,\nin a box as big as a turf creel. It\u2019s a gownd\u2014no less\u2014for a grate party\nto-night; an\u2019, begorra, while _it\u2019s_ lyin\u2019 here they\u2019re goin\u2019 to stay at\nFrinchpark.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s too bad,\u201d thought Bingham, \u201cto have the poor girl sold on account\nof the laziness of this idle rascal. Her heart may be set upon this\ndress. A new ball-dress is an epoch in a young girl\u2019s existence, and a\nball dress in this out-of-the way place is a fairy gift. _Hinc ill\u00e6\nlachrym\u00e6!_ How many hopes cruelly blasted, how many anticipated\nvictories turned into humiliating defeat. If it were not so late\u2014By\nJove! it shall _not_ be.\u201d And yielding to a sudden impulse, Percy\nBingham ordered Kerrigan to start for Knockshin.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s five mile, yer honner, an\u2019\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is sixpence a mile for you. Go!\u201d And in another instant the\nparcel-laden Lanty had taken to the bog like a snipe.\n\nPercy Bingham attacked his breakfast upon the following morning with a\ngusto hitherto unknown to him. \u201cI wonder did that girl\u201d\u2014he had forgotten\nher name\u2014\u201cget the dress in time? I hope so. How fresh these eggs are! I\nwonder if she\u2019s as pretty as that ragamuffin described her? These salmon\ncutlets are perfection. I must have a look at her, at all events. 'Pon\nmy life! those kidneys are devilled to a grain of pepper. This ought to\nbe a good trout day. One more rasher. By George! if the colonel saw me\nperform this breakfast, he\u2019d make me exchange into the heavies.\u201d\n\nLighting a cigar and seating himself upon a granite boulder by the edge\nof the inlet, the purple mountains shutting him in from the world, he\nproceeded to assort his flies and to \u201cput up\u201d his casts.\n\n\u201cMusha, but yer honor has the hoighth av decoys!\u201d observed Lanty\nKerrigan, touching the dilapidated brim of his caubeen, and seating\nhimself beside him. There is a masonry amongst the gentle craft which\nlevels rank, and \u201ca big fish\u201d will bring peer and peasant cheek by jowl\non terms of the most familiar intercourse.\n\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s a good book,\u201d said Percy, with a justifiable pride in his\ntone. The colors of the rainbow, the ornithology of the habitable globe,\nwere represented within its parchment folds. \u201cThis ought to be a good\nday, Lanty.\u201d\n\n\u201cShure enough,\u201d looking up at the sky. \u201cMore betoken, I seen Finnegan\u2019s\nthrout as I come acrass the steppin\u2019-stones there below.\u201d\n\n\u201cFinnegan\u2019s trout! What sort of a trout is that?\u201d asked the officer.\n\n\u201cPether Finnegan was a great fisher in these parts, yer honor. Nothin\u2019\ncud bate him. He\u2019d ketch a fish as shure as he wetted a line, an\u2019 no\nmatther how cute or cunnin\u2019, he\u2019d hav thim out av the wather before they\ncud cry murther. But there was wan ould throut of shupayrior knowledge\nthat was well fed on the hoighth av wurrums an\u2019 flies, an\u2019 he knew\nPether Finnegan, an\u2019, begorra, Pether knew _him_. They used for to stand\nforeninst wan another for days an\u2019 days, Pether flappin\u2019 the wather, an\u2019\nth\u2019 ould throut flappin\u2019 his tail. 'I\u2019ll hav ye, me man,\u2019 sez Pether.\n'I\u2019ll have ye, av I was to ketch ye in me arms like a new born babe',\nsez he. 'I never was bet be a man yet,\u2019 sez he, 'an\u2019 be the mortial I\u2019m\nnot goin\u2019 for to be bet be a fish.\u2019 So he ups, yer honor, an\u2019, puttin\u2019 a\ncupple o\u2019 quarts o\u2019 whiskey in his pockets for to keep up his heart, he\nups an\u2019 begins for to fish in airnest an\u2019 for the bare life. First he\nthried flies, an\u2019 thin he thried wurrums, an\u2019 thin he thried all soarts\nav combusticles; but th\u2019 ould throut turned up his nose at the entirety,\nan\u2019 Pether seen him colloguerin\u2019 wud the other throuts, an\u2019 puttin\u2019 his\ncomether on thim for to take it aisy an\u2019 lave Pether\u2019s decoys alone.\nWell, sir, Pether Finnegan was a hot man an\u2019 aisy riz\u2014the heavens be his\nbed!\u2014an\u2019 whin he seen the conspiracy for to defraud him, an\u2019 the young\nthrouts laffin\u2019 at him, he boiled over like a kittle, an\u2019 shoutin\u2019,\n'I\u2019ll spile yer divarshin,\u2019 med a dart into the river. His body was got,\nthe bottles was safe in his pockets, but, be the mortial frost, th\u2019 ould\nthrout got at the whiskey an\u2019 dhrank it every dhrop.\u201d\n\n\u201cI must endeavor to catch him,\u201d laughed Percy Bingham.\n\n\u201cKetch him!\u201d exclaimed Lanty indignantly. \u201cWisha, _you_ wudn\u2019t ketch\nhim, nor all the fusileers an\u2019 bombardiers in th\u2019 army wudn\u2019t ketch him,\nnor th\u2019 ould boy himself\u2014the Lord be betune us an\u2019 harm!\u2014wudn\u2019t ketch\nhim. He\u2019s as cute as the say-sarpint or the whale that swallied Juno.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do the trout take best here?\u201d asked Bingham, whose preparations\nwere nearly completed, his rod being set up and festoons of\ncasting-lines encircling his white felt hat.\n\n\u201cWurrums is choice afther a flood; dough is shupayrior whin they\u2019re\nleppin\u2019 lively; but av all the baits that ever consaled a hook there\u2019s\nnon aiquail to corbait\u2014it\u2019s the choicest decoy goin\u2019. A throut wud make\na grab at a corbait av the rattles was in his troath an\u2019 a pike grippin\u2019\nhim be the tail.\u201d\n\nLanty Kerrigan was told off as cicerone, guide, philosopher, and friend.\n\n\u201cI suppose I am safe in fishing these rivers. No bailiff or hinderance?\u201d\nasked Percy Bingham of the landlord of the \u201cBodkin Arms.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s no wan to hinder you, sir; so a good take to you,\u201d was the\nreply. \u201cI hope ye won\u2019t come across old Miles Joyce, for if ye do\nthere\u2019ll be wigs on the green,\u201d he added under his breath as he turned\ninto the bar.\n\n              A cook it was her station,\n              The first in the Irish nation.\n    Wud carvin\u2019 blade she\u2019d slash away to the company\u2019s admiration,\n\nsang Lanty Kerrigan, prolonging the last syllable\u2014a custom with his\nclass\u2014into a kind of wail, as he merrily led the way through a narrow\nmountain pass, inaccessible save to pedestrians, in the direction of the\nfishing-ground. It was a sombre morning. Nature was in a meditative\nmood, and forbade the prying glances of the sun. The white mists hung\nlike bridal veils over hill and dale, mellowing the dark green of the\npine-trees and the blue of the distant Atlantic, occasionally visible as\nthey pursued their zigzag, upward course. A light breeze\u2014\u201cthe angler\u2019s\nluck\u201d\u2014gently fanned the cheek, and the sprouting gorse and tender ferns\nwere telling their rosaries on glittering beads of diamond dew.\n\n\u201cThis is Lough Cruagh, yer honor, an\u2019 there\u2019s the boat; av ye don\u2019t\nketch the full av her, it\u2019s a quare thing.\u201d The lake, a pool of\ndark-brown water, lay in the lap of an amphitheatre of verdureless,\ngrim, gaunt-looking mountains. It was a desolate place. No living thing\nbroke upon the solitude, and the silence was as complete as if the\nbarren crags had whispered the single word \u201chush\u201d and awaited the awful\napproach of thunder. A road ran by the edge of the lake, but it was\ngrass-grown and showed no sign of traffic, not even the imprint of a\nhorse\u2019s foot.\n\n\u201cNow she\u2019s aff,\u201d cried Lanty, seizing the oars. \u201cOut wud yer flies, an\u2019\nmore power to yer elbow.\u201d\n\nThe sport was splendid. No sooner had his tail-fly touched the water\nthan an enormous trout plunged at it with a splash like that of a small\nboy taking a header, and away went the line off the reel as though it\nwere being uncoiled by machinery\u2014up the lake, down the lake, across the\nlake; now winding in, now giving the rod until it bent like a whip; now\ncatching a glimpse of the fish, now fearing for the line on the bottom\nrocks.\n\n\u201cIf the gut howlds ye\u2019ll bate him, brave as he is,\u201d exclaimed Lanty\nKerrigan in an ecstasy of apprehension.\n\nThe fish was taking it quietly\u2014_il faut reculer pour mieux\nsauter_\u2014preparing for another effort. Percy Bingham wiped the\nperspiration from his brow; his work was cut out for him.\n\n\u201cNow\u2019s the time for a dart o\u2019 sperrits,\u201d said Kerrigan, dexterously\nshipping his oars and unfastening the lid of the hamper. \u201cYe won\u2019t, yer\nhonner?\u201d\u2014Bingham had expressed dissent. \u201cWell, begorra, here\u2019s luck, an\u2019\nthat it may be good,\u201d pouring out a dropsied glassful and tossing it\noff. \u201cThat\u2019s shupayrior,\u201d with a smack; \u201cits warmin\u2019 me stomick like a\nbonfire! Whisht!\u201d he added in an alarmed whisper, \u201cwho the dickens is\nthis is comin\u2019 along the road?\u201d\n\nA mail phaeton, attached to a pair of spanking grays, came swiftly\nand silently along the grass-grown causeway. An elderly,\naristocratic-looking man was driving, and beside him sat a young and\nbeautiful girl. \u201cBe the hokey! we\u2019re bet; it\u2019s ould Miles Joyce\nhimself,\u201d cried Lanty Kerrigan.\n\n\u201cIs that Miss Joyce, the young lady to whom you took the box last\nnight?\u201d asked Percy somewhat eagerly.\n\n\u201cOch wirra! wirra! to be shure it is, an\u2019 that same box is our only\nchance now.\u201d\n\n\u201cPull nearer shore, Lanty,\u201d said the young officer, who was very anxious\nfor a stare. \u201cGood style,\u201d he muttered. \u201cTight head, delicious plaits,\nRegent Street hat\u2014_ma foi!_ who would think of meeting anything like\nthis in a devil\u2019s punchbowl? Pull _into_ shore, man,\u201d he testily cried.\n\n\u201cShure I\u2019m pullin\u2019 me level best.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot _that_ shore, you idiot. Pull for the carriage.\u201d Lanty was\nstraining in the opposite direction.\n\n\u201cAre ye mad, sir?\u201d whispered Kerrigan. \u201cI wudn\u2019t face ould Joyce this\nblessed minit for a crock o\u2019 goold.\u201d\n\nThe carriage drew up, and the driver in an authoritative voice shouted:\n\u201cBring that boat here.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re bet; I tould you so,\u201d gasped Lanty, reluctantly heading the boat\nin the direction of the carriage. A few strokes brought them to the\nbeach.\n\nPercy Bingham raked up his eye-glass and gazed ardently at Mary Joyce,\nwho returned the stare with compound interest. Irish gray eyes with\nblack, sweeping lashes, hawthorn-blossoms on her brow, apple-blossoms on\nher cheeks, rose-buds on her lips, purple blood in her veins, youth and\ngrace and modesty hovering about her like a delicious perfume.\n\n\u201cMay I ask by whose authority you are fishing here?\u201d Mr. Joyce was pale,\nand suppressed anger scintillated in his eyes. There are a great many\nthings to be done with impunity in Connemara, but poaching is the seven\ndeadly sins rolled into one. \u201cThou shalt not fish\u201d is the eleventh\ncommandment. Bingham felt the awkwardness of his position at a glance,\nand met it like a gentleman.\n\n\u201cI cannot say that I am here by any person\u2019s authority. I am stopping at\nthe 'Bodkin Arms\u2019\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOch murther! murther! howld your whisht,\u201d interposed Lanty in a hoarse\nwhisper.\n\n\u201cSilence, fellow!\u201d cried Bingham. \u201cI am stopping at the 'Bodkin Arms,\u2019\nand, upon asking the proprietor if there was any hinderance to my\nfishing, he replied that there was none. I ought, perhaps, to have been\nmore explicit with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cAv coorse ye shud,\u201d interrupted Lanty.\n\n\u201cAnd I can only say\u201d\u2014here he stared very hard at Mary Joyce\u2014\u201cthat it\nmortifies me more than I can possibly express to you to be placed in\nthis extremely painful position.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo not say one word about it,\u201d said Mr. Joyce in a courteous tone.\n\u201cWith the proprietor of the 'Bodkin Arms\u2019 I know how to deal, and with\nyou too, Lanty Kerrigan.\u201d Lanty wriggled in the boat till it rocked\nagain. \u201cBut as for you, sir, all I can say is that I regret to have\ndisturbed your fishing, and I wish you very good sport.\u201d And he bowed\nwith haughty politeness.\n\n\u201cI thank you very much for your courtesy,\u201d bowed Bingham, who had by\nthis time landed from the boat, \u201cbut I shall no longer continue an\nintruder.\u201d And seizing his rod, he snapped it thrice across his knee and\nflung it into the lake.\n\nIt was Mary Joyce\u2019s bright eyes that led him to this folly\u2014he wanted to\nbe set right with her.\n\n\u201cOh! how stupid,\u201d she exclaimed, starting to her feet.\n\n\u201cThrue for ye, miss,\u201d added Lanty\u2014\u201ctwo-pound tin gone like a dhrink, an\u2019\nan illigant throut into the bargain.\u201d\n\n\u201cA wilful man must have his way,\u201d said Mr. Joyce; \u201cbut I hope, sir, that\nyou will afford me an opportunity of enabling you to enjoy a day\u2019s sport\nin better waters than these.\u201d And lifting his hat, he waved an adieu as\nthe fiery grays plunged onwards and out of sight.\n\nAnd Mary Joyce! Yes, that charming little head bent to him, those\nsweeping lashes lifted themselves that the glory of her gray eyes might\nbe revealed to him, the rose-bud lips had dropped three perfumed petals,\nthree insignificant little words, \u201cOh! how stupid\u201d; and these were the\nfirst words in the first chapter of Percy Bingham\u2019s first love.\n\nHe found the following note awaiting him at the hotel:\n\n    \u201cKNOCKSHIN, June 28.\n\n    \u201cMr. Joyce will be happy if Mr. Bingham will take a day on\n    Shauraunthurga\u2014Monday, if possible\u2014as Mr. J. intends fishing upon\n    that day. A salmon rod and flies are at Mr. Bingham\u2019s disposal.\n\n    \u201c\u2014\u2014 BINGHAM, ESQ.\u201d\n\nPercy Bingham sent a polite acknowledgment and acceptance, and wished\nfor the Monday. It was very late that night when the warrior returned to\nhis quarters. He had been mooning around Mary Joyce\u2019s bower at\nKnockshin.\n\n\u201cWhat Masses have you here, Foxey?\u201d asked Bingham of the waiter, whose\nreal name was Redmond, but to whom this appellation was given on account\nof the color of his hair.\n\n\u201cThe last Mass is first Mass now, sir. Father James is sick, and Father\nLuke, a missioner, is doing duty for the whole barony.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs Mr. Joyce, of Knockshin, a Catholic?\u201d This in some trepidation.\n\n\u201cYes, sir, _of_ course, sir\u2014wan of the ould stock, sir; and Miss Mary,\nhis daughter, sir, plays the harmonicum, sir, elegant.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat hour does Mass commence?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the first bell, sir, but they ring two first bells always.\u201d\n\nPercy Bingham belonged to a family that had held to the faith when the\ntide of the Reformation was sweeping lands, titles, and honors before\nit. He fought for the Catholic cause when it became necessary to strike\na blow; and as he was the only \u201cpopish\u201d officer in the regiment, his\ngood example developed into a duty.\n\nJust as he arrived at the church door the Joyce carriage drew up. Mr.\nJoyce handed out his daughter. The gray eyes encountered those of the\nyoung officer, who lifted his hat. Such a smile!\u2014a sunbeam on the first\nprimrose of spring.\n\n\u201cI was glad to get your note, Mr. Bingham. Could you manage to come over\nto breakfast? Military men don\u2019t mind a short march.\u201d And Mr. Joyce\nshook hands with him.\n\n\u201cAm I to have the pleasure of hearing Miss Joyce\u2019s harmonium to-day?\u201d\nasked Percy.\n\n\u201cNo; Miss Joyce\u2019s harmonium has a sore throat.\u201d\n\nPoor Bingham struggled hard to say his prayers, to collect his wandering\nthoughts. He was badly hit; the ruddy archer had sent his arrow home to\nthe very feathers. He humbly waited for a glance as Miss Joyce drove\naway after Mass, and he got it. He was supremely happy and supremely\nmiserable.\n\nThe \u201cmissioner,\u201d a young Dominican, very tall and very\ndistinguished-looking, crossed the chapel yard, followed by exclamations\nof praise and admiration from _voteens_ who still knelt about in\npicturesque attitudes: \u201cGod be good to him!\u201d \u201cThe heavens open to him!\u201d\n\u201cMay the saints warm him to glory!\u201d while one old woman, who succeeded\nin catching the hem of his robe, exclaimed enthusiastically:\n\n\u201cOch, thin, but it\u2019s yerself that knows how to spake the word o\u2019 God;\nit\u2019s yerself that\u2019s the darlint fine man. Shure we never knew what sin\nwas till ye come amongst us.\u201d\n\nPercy Bingham found Knockshin a square-built, stone mansion, with a\n\u201cdisinheriting countenance\u201d of many windows, surrounded by huge elms\ncontaining an unusually uproarious rookery. A huge \u201cfree classic\u201d porch\nsurmounted a set of massive steps, supported by granite griffins\ngrasping shields with the Joyce arms quartered thereon. A lily-laden\npond, encircled by closely-shaven grass sacred to croquet, stood\nopposite the house, and a pretentious conservatory of modern\nconstruction ran along the greater portion of one wing.\n\nThe gallant warrior, regretting certain London-built garments reposing\nat Westport, arrayed himself in his \u201cSunday best,\u201d and, being somewhat\nvain of his calves, appeared in all the woollen bravery of\nKnickerbockers and Highland stockings.\n\nMiss Joyce did the honors of the breakfast-table in white muslin and\nsunny smiles. Possessing the air of a high-born dame, there was an Irish\nsoftness, like the mist on the mountains, that imparted an indescribable\ncharm to all her movements, whilst a slight touch of the brogue only\nadded to the music of a voice ever soft, gentle, and low.\n\nPercy, who could have talked like a sewing-machine to Lady Clara Vere de\nVere, found his ideas dry up, and, when violently spurred, merely\ndevelop themselves in monosyllables. He had rehearsed several bright\nlittle nothings which were to have been laid like _bonbons_ at her feet.\nWhere were they now?\n\nShe knew some men in the service\u2014Mr. Poynter in the Rifles. Did he know\nMr. Poynter, who danced so well, talked so charmingly, and was _so_\nhandsome? Yes, he knew Poynter, and hated him from that moment. Did he\nknow Captain Wyberts of the Bays, the Victoria Cross man whom she had\nmet at the Galway Hunt Ball? He knew Wyberts, and cursed the luck that\nplaced no decoration upon _his_ tunic but a silken sash.\n\n\u201cBy the way, you _must_ be the gentleman who interested himself in my\ntoilet on Friday night. Lanty Kerrigan spoke burning words in your\nfavor, if _you_ are the _preux chevalier_. Are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI assure you, Miss Joyce, I didn\u2019t know who you were at the time, when\nthe blackguards seemed lazy about your parcel.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you had known me, would that have made any difference, Mr. Bingham?\u201d\nshe asked laughingly.\n\n\u201cIt would.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn what way?\u201d\n\n\u201cI would have thrashed Lanty Kerrigan and have brought the parcel\nmyself.\u201d He threw so much earnestness into this that the red blood\nflushed up to the roots of Mary Joyce\u2019s rich brown hair. \u201cI must see to\nmy tackle,\u201d she said in a confused way.\n\n\u201cAre you an angler, Miss Joyce?\u201d\n\n\u201cLook at my boots\u201d\u2014a pair of dainty, dumpy little things such as\nCinderella must have worn on sloppy days when walking with the prince,\nwith roguish little nails all over the soles crying, \u201cStamp on us; we\nlike it,\u201d and creamy laces fit for tying up bride-cake.\n\n\u201cBy Jove!\u201d exclaimed Percy Bingham, and that was all he was able to\nreach at that particular moment. He thought afterwards of all he could\nhave said and\u2014didn\u2019t.\n\nA walk of half a mile brought them to the Shauraunthurga, or \u201cBoiling\nCaldron,\u201d whose seething waters dashed from rock to rock, and boiled in\nmany whirlpools as it rushed madly onwards to the wild Atlantic.\n\nWhat did Bingham care about the fishing? Not a dump. He stood by _her_\nside, set up _her_ cast, sorted _her_ flies, spliced the top joint of\n_her_ rod, and watched with feverish anxiety the eccentric movement of\n_her_ gorgeous decoy, as it whirled hither and thither, now on the\npeat-brown waters, now in the soap-suds-like foam.\n\n\u201c_Bravissima!_ Splendidly struck!\u201d he cried with enthusiastic delight\u2014he\nfelt inclined to pat her on the back\u2014as the young Galway girl, with\n\u201csweet and cunning\u201d hand, hooked her fish with the _aplomb_ and\ndexterity of a Highland gillie. \u201cGive him line, plenty of rope, and mind\nyour footing!\u201d\n\n\u201cA long hour by Shrewsbury clock\u201d did Mary Joyce play that salmon. Her\ngloves were torn to shreds, her hat became a victim to the\nShauraunthurga, her sheeny hair fell down her shoulders long below her\nwaist, her boasted boots indicated eruptive tendencies, but the plucky\ngirl still held on. \u201cLet me alone, please,\u201d she would cry as her father\nor Bingham tendered their services; \u201cI\u2019m not half-tired yet.\u201d The color\nin her cheeks, the fire in her eye, the delicate nostril expanded, the\nundulating form\u2014the British subaltern saw all this, and almost envied\nthe fish, inasmuch as it was her centre point of interest.\n\n\u201cThe landing-net! Quickly! I have him now!\u201d\n\nPercy Bingham darted forward, caught his foot in the gnarled root of a\ntree, and plunged headforemost into the boiling waters. An expert\nswimmer, he soon reappeared and swam towards the bank, still grasping\nthe net. Finding his right arm powerless, and having succeeded in\ngaining footing, he placed the net beneath the fish, which with a bound\nsprang clear, and, breaking the line that Miss Joyce had slackened in\nher anxiety for the safety of her guest, was, in an exhausted condition,\nfloundering down the stream, when Percy, by a supreme effort, clasped it\nfiercely in his left arm and flung himself on to the bank.\n\n\u201c_Your_ fish after all. But you look ill, Mr. Bingham\u2014dreadfully ill,\u201d\ncried the agitated girl. \u201cYour arm\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIs broken,\u201d he said.\n\nAssisted by Mr. Joyce and his daughter, and with the fractured limb in a\nsling constructed of handkerchiefs and fishing-line, poor Bingham\nreturned to the house. He fought bravely against the pain, and attempted\none or two mournful jokes upon the subject of his mishap; but every step\nwas mortal anguish, and he expected to feel the serrated edges of the\nbones sawing out through his coat-sleeve.\n\n\u201cI must insist upon being permitted to return to my hotel, Mr. Joyce,\u201d\nsaid Percy Bingham when they had arrived.\n\n\u201cIf you want _every_ bone in your body broken, you\u2019ll repeat that again,\nBingham. Here is a room ready for you, and here, in the nick of time, is\nDoctor Fogarty.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cotch him at the crass-roads,\u201d panted the breathless messenger whom\nMr. Joyce had despatched in quest of the bone-setter.\n\n\u201cA broken arm, pooh hoo! And so it is\u2014an elegant fracture, pooh hoo! You\ndid it well when you went about it. Lend me your scissors, Miss Mary,\nand tear up a sheet into bandages. I\u2019ll soon set it for him, pooh hoo!\nAy, wince away, _ma bouchal_; roar murdher, and it will do you good,\npooh hoo! Some splints now. Fell into the river, pooh hoo! After a\nsalmon. You landed him like a child in arms. I forgive you, pooh hoo!\nI\u2019ve room for the fish in me gig, and broiled salmon is\u2014pooh hoo! That\u2019s\nit; the arm this way, as if ye were goin\u2019 to hit me. Well done, pooh\nhoo! _Ars longa est_; so is your arm\u2014an elegant biceps, pooh hoo! Now,\nsir, tell me if there\u2019s a surgeon-major in the whole British army,\nhorse, foot, and dragoon, that could set your arm in less time, pooh\nhoo?\u201d and the doctor regarded the swathed and bandaged limb with looks\nof the profoundest admiration.\n\n\u201cI shall want to get to barracks\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNe\u2019er a barracks will ye see this side of Lady Day; so make your mind\neasy on that score, pooh hoo! Keep in bed till I see you again, pooh\nhoo! I\u2019ll order you something to take about bed-time, but it _won\u2019t_ be\nwhiskey-punch, pooh hoo!\u201d And the genial practitioner pooh-hoo\u2019d out of\nthe apartment.\n\nHow delightful is convalescence\u2014that dreamy condition in which the\nthoughts float upwards and the earthly tenement is all but etherealized!\nPercy Bingham, as he reclined upon a sofa at an open window, through\nwhich the perfume of flowers, the hum of summer, with the murmur of the\nrolling Shauraunthurga, stole like strains of melody, lay like one\nentranced, languidly sipping the intoxicating sweets of the hour,\nforgetful of the past, unmindful of the future. The events of the last\nfew days seemed like a vision. Could it be possible that he would\nsuddenly awake and find himself in the dismal walls of his quarters at\nWestport, far, far away from chintz and lace and from _her_? No; this\nwas _her_ book which lay upon his lap; that bouquet was culled by _her_\nfair hands; the spirited sketch of a man taking a header spread-eagle\nfashion was from _her_ pencil and must be sent to _Punch_. She was in\neverything, everywhere, and, most of all, in the inner sanctuary of his\nheart.\n\nHe had not seen much of her\u2014a visit in the morning like a gleam of\nsunlight; a chat in the gloaming, sweet as vesper-bell; occasional\nbadinage from the garden to his window, and that was all. How could he\nhope to win her, this peerless girl, this heiress of the \u201cJoyce\ncountry,\u201d whose gray eyes rested upon mead and mountain, lake and\nvalley, her rightful dower? He sickened at the thought. Had she been\npoor, he would woo, and perhaps\u2014It was not to be. He had tarried till it\nwas too late; he had cut down the bridge behind him, burned his boats,\nand he must now ford the river of his lost peace of mind as best he\nmight.\n\nDays flew by, and still the young officer lingered at Knockshin. Like\nthe fairy prince in the enchanted wood, he could discover no exit.\nCroquet had developed into short strolls, short strolls into long walks,\nlong walks into excursions. His arm was getting strong again. Mr. Joyce\ntalked \u201csoldier\u201d with him. He had been in the Connaught Rangers, and\nwent through pipe-clay and the orderly book with the freshness of a\n\u201csub\u201d of six weeks\u2019 standing. Mary\u2014what did she speak about? Anything,\neverything, nothing. Latterly she had been eloquently silent, while\nPercy Bingham, if he did not actually, might have fairly, counted the\nbeatings of his heart as it bumped against his ribs. They spoke more at\nthan to each other, and when their eyes met the glance was withdrawn by\nboth with electrical rapidity. It was the old, old story. Why repeat it\nhere?\n\n\u201cMary, Jack Bodkin, your old sweetheart, is coming over for a few days\u2019\nfishing,\u201d exclaimed Mr. Joyce one morning upon the arrival of the\nletter-bag.\n\nMiss Joyce blushed scarlet\u2014a blush that will not be put off; a blush\nthat plunges into the hair, comes out on the eyelids, and sets the ears\nupon fire\u2014and Percy Bingham, as she grew red, became deadly white. The\nknell had rung, the hour had come.\n\n\u201cThis is from the colonel,\u201d extending a letter as he spoke, the words\nchoking him, \u201cand\u2014and I must say good-by.\u201d\n\n\u201cSorry for it, Bingham, but duty is duty. No chance of an extension?\u201d\nasked Joyce.\n\n\u201cNone, sir.\u201d\n\nAnd _she_ said not a word. There was crushing bitterness in this. Mr.\nBodkin\u2019s arrival blotted out _his_ departure. Would that he had never\nseen Knockshin or Mary! No, he could not think that, and, now that he\nwas about to leave her, he felt what that severance would cost him.\n\nThe car was waiting with his _impedimenta_, and he sought her to say\nfarewell. She was not in the conservatory or drawing-room, and as a last\nchance he tried the library. Entering noiselessly, he found Mary Joyce\nleaning her head upon her hands, her hands upon the mantel-piece and\nsobbing as if her heart would break.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon!\u201d he stammered. \u201cIs\u2014is\u2014anything the\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cA bad toothache,\u201d she burst in passionately, without looking up.\n\nWhat could he do? What could he say?\n\n\u201cI\u2014I\u2014do not know how to apologize for\u2014for\u2014intruding upon your\nanguish\u201d\u2014the words came very slowly, swelling, too, in his throat\u2014\u201cbut I\ncannot, _cannot_ leave without wishing you good-by and thanking _you_\nfor the sunniest hours of my life.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2014you are g-going, then?\u201d without looking round.\n\n\u201cI go to\u2014to make room for Mr. Bodkin.\u201d\n\nShe faced him. Her eyes were red and swollen, but down, down in their\nliquid depths he beheld\u2014something that young men find once in a\nlifetime. He never remembered what he did, he never recollected what he\nsaid, but the truth came out as such truths will come out.\n\n\u201cAnd to think that you first learned of my existence through the medium\nof a pitiful ball-dress!\u201d she said, glowing with beautiful happiness.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n\u201cI shall not require the car,\u201d said Percy Bingham an hour later,\nthrowing Lanty Kerrigan a sovereign.\n\n\u201cBedad, ye needn\u2019t have tould me,\u201d exclaimed Lanty with a broad grin. \u201cI\nseen yez coortin\u2019 through the windy.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n  PROF. YOUMANS _v._ DR. W. M. TAYLOR ON EVOLUTION AND THE COPERNICAN\n                                THEORY.\n\n\nThe _Popular Science Monthly_, conducted by Mr. E. L. Youmans, labors\nhard (December, 1876) to support the assertion made by Professor Huxley\nthat evolution is already as well demonstrated as the Copernican theory.\nThis assertion had been refuted by the Rev. Dr. William M. Taylor in a\nletter to the New York _Tribune_, and it is against a portion of this\nletter that Mr. Youmans strives to defend Mr. Huxley\u2019s evolutionary\nviews. We ourselves have given a short refutation of Professor Huxley\u2019s\nlectures on evolution,[16] and we had no intention to revert to the same\nsubject; but since opposite writers are unwilling to acknowledge defeat,\nbut pretend, on the contrary, that their opponents do not make a right\nuse of logic, it may be both instructive and interesting to inquire what\nkind of logic is actually used in this controversy by the evolutionists\nthemselves.\n\nFootnote 16:\n\n  See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1877, page 616.\n\n\u201cIt is significant,\u201d says Mr. Youmans, \u201cthat nearly all the divines who\nhave spoken in reply to Prof. Huxley commit themselves to some form of\nthe doctrine of evolution.\u201d This statement is not correct. Divines\nadmit, as they have ever admitted, the development of varieties within\nthe same species; but the pretended evolution of one species from\nanother they have never admitted, and they do not look upon it as\nadmissible, even now. There may be some exception, for divines are still\nhuman and may be imposed upon by false science; but the truth is that\nthose among them who have replied to Prof. Huxley never meant to \u201ccommit\nthemselves\u201d to any form of the doctrine of evolution as presented by\nhim. They admit, as Mr. Youmans remarks, \u201cthat there is _some_ truth in\nit\u201d\u2014which is by no means strange, as false theories have often been\nevolved from undeniable facts; but they raise \u201ca common protest against\nthe idea that it contains _much_ truth,\u201d which shows that these divines\nwere quite unwilling to commit themselves to the doctrine. Hence it is\nplain that, if the conduct of these divines is \u201csignificant,\u201d it does\nnot signify a yielding disposition, but the contrary.\n\nProf. Huxley had said that the evidence for the theory of evolution is\ndemonstrative, and that it is as well based in its proofs as the\nCopernican theory of astronomy. \u201cThis,\u201d says Mr. Youmans, \u201cis thought to\nbe quite absurd. It is said that Huxley may know a great deal about\nanimals and fossils, but that obviously he knows very little about\nlogic. His facts being admitted, a great deal of effort has been\nexpended to show that he does not understand how to reason from them.\u201d\nWe agree with the critics here alluded to, that Prof. Huxley\u2019s assertion\nconcerning the demonstrative character of his proofs is \u201cquite absurd.\u201d\nAs to his knowledge of logic, there might perhaps be two opinions; for a\nman may know logic, and make a wilful abuse of it; but it is more\ncharitable to assume that his illogical conclusions proceed from\nignorance rather than malice. After all, we are not concerned with the\nperson of the professor, but with his lectures; and, whatever logic he\nmay know, his lectures are certainly not a model of logical reasoning.\nThe passage which Mr. Youmans extracts from Dr. Taylor\u2019s letter, and\nwhich he vainly endeavors to refute, is as follows:\n\n    \u201cIndeed, to affirm, as he [Prof. Huxley] did, that evolution stands\n    exactly on the same basis as the Copernican theory of the motions of\n    the heavenly bodies, is an assertion so astounding that we can only\n    'stand by and admire\u2019 the marvellous effrontery with which it was\n    made. That theory rests on facts presently occurring before our\n    eyes, and treated in the manner of mathematical precision. It is not\n    an inference made by somebody from a record of facts existing in\n    far-off and pre-historic, possibly also pre-human, ages. It is\n    verified every day by occurrences which happen according to its\n    laws. But where do we see evolution going on to-day? If evolution\n    rests upon a basis as sure as astronomy, why do we not see one\n    species passing into another now, even as we see the motions of the\n    planets through the heavens?... We know that astronomy is true,\n    because we are verifying its conclusions every day of our lives on\n    land and on sea. We set our clocks according to its conclusions, and\n    navigate our ships in accordance with its predictions; but where\n    have we anything approaching even infinitesimally to this, with\n    evolution?\u201d\n\nMr. Youmans remarks that the author of this passage is said to be a man\nof eminence and ability. \u201cThat may be,\u201d he adds, \u201cbut he certainly has\nnot won his distinction either in the fields of logic, astronomy, or\nbiology.\u201d To prove this, he makes the following argument:\n\n    \u201cWhen a man undertakes to state the evidence of a theory, and gives\n    us proofs that equally sustain an opposite theory, we naturally\n    conclude that he does not know what he is talking about. This is\n    very much Dr. Taylor\u2019s predicament. In trying to contrast the\n    evidence for evolution with the demonstrative proofs of the\n    Copernican theory, he cites facts that are not only as good, but far\n    better, to prove the truth of its antagonist, the Ptolemaic theory.\u201d\n\nOur readers will probably ask how it is possible to prove that a thing\nis black by the very facts which prove, even better, that the thing is\nwhite? That certain facts may be insufficient to prove either the one or\nthe other of two opposite theories every one will admit; but that facts\nwhich are good to prove the movement of the earth are even better to\nprove its immobility, is what Mr. Youmans alone has the privilege of\nunderstanding.\n\nDr. Taylor, in his argument against Prof. Huxley, assumed the truth of\nthe modern astronomical theory, and said that this theory was proved by\nfacts presently occurring before our eyes; which is not the case with\nthe hypothesis of evolution. But, as he did not mention in particular\nthose facts which are considered to constitute the most irrefragable\nproof of the theory, his silence about them is interpreted by Mr.\nYoumans as an effect of ignorance. It is not our affair to defend Dr.\nTaylor; but we think that this interpretation is unfair. The reverend\ndoctor was not writing a treatise of astronomy; he was simply stating a\nknown doctrine, of which it was not his duty to make the demonstration.\nOn the other hand, even if we admitted that the reverend doctor knows\nbut little of astronomy, we do not see that this would weaken his\nargument; for, whether he knows much or nothing in this branch of\nscience, it remains true that the Copernican theory is proved \u201cby facts\npresently occurring before our eyes\u201d\u2014which is not the case with the\nhypothesis of evolution. It is to this truth that Mr. Youmans should\nhave given his attention, if he desired \u201cto win any distinction in the\nfield of logic\u201d; but his peculiar logic shrank from this duty, and\nprompted him to prefer a gratuitous denunciation of his opponent.\n\nMr. Youmans pretends that Dr. Taylor \u201ctalks as if the Copernican theory\nis something that anybody can see by looking up in the sky.\u201d Dr.\nTaylor\u2019s words do not admit of such a nonsensical construction. The\nCopernican theory, he says, \u201crests on facts presently occurring before\nour eyes, and treated in the manner of mathematical precision.\u201d This\nobviously means that the Copernican theory is based on both observation\nand calculation. Now, surely Mr. Youmans will not maintain that we can\nfind mathematical formulas and make astronomical calculations by simply\n\u201clooking up in the sky.\u201d\n\nHe goes on to say that the Ptolemaic theory was the fundamental\nconception of astronomy; that it guided its scientific development for\ntwo thousand years; that it was based on extensive, prolonged, and\naccurate observations; that it was elucidated and confirmed by\nmathematics; that it was _verified_ by confirming the power of\nastronomical prevision; and that the planetary motions were traced and\nresolved on this theory with great skill and correctness, elaborate\ntables being constructed, which represented their irregularities and\ninequalities, so that their future positions could be foretold, and\nconjunctions, oppositions, and eclipses predicted.\n\nThese and similar remarks of the scientific editor would tend to prove\nthat the Congregation of the Holy Office had very good and substantial\ngrounds for condemning the heliocentric theory, and that Galileo was a\nvisionary; for the theory which he impugned was \u201cconfirmed by\nmathematics,\u201d and \u201cverified by confirming the power of astronomical\nprevision.\u201d We are quite sure, however, that this is not what Mr.\nYoumans intended to prove; and yet it does not appear why he should fill\na column of his magazine with such a panegyric of a defunct theory. We\nconcede\u2014and the fact has never been disputed\u2014that astronomy owes an\nimmense debt to the ante-Copernican investigators for their careful\nobservations and laborious calculations; but we do not see how this has\nanything to do with Dr. Taylor\u2019s criticism. Had the reverend doctor\ndenied that there was any real knowledge of astronomy before Copernicus,\nhis critic might have been justified in trying to enlighten him about\nthe merits of the Ptolemaic astronomers; but Dr. Taylor had not\ncommitted himself on this point, and therefore had no apparent need of\nbeing enlightened on the subject. The information, consequently, which\nMr. Youmans volunteers to offer him is superfluous, not to say\nimpertinent, and, inasmuch as it professes to be an argument, is a\ncomplete failure; for it aims at proving what no one has ever denied.\n\nBut the scientific editor in giving his needless information commits\nanother blunder, which we could hardly expect from a man of science, by\naffirming that the Ptolemaic theory \u201cwas elucidated and confirmed by\nmathematics.\u201d Mathematics confirmed nothing but the order and quality of\nthe phenomena, and the law of their succession. Before Kepler and Newton\nno mathematics could decide whether the sun revolved around the earth or\nthe earth around the sun. Astronomical phenomena were known, but this\nknowledge was a knowledge of facts, not of their explanation. The\nPtolemaic hypothesis was not inconsistent with the facts then observed,\nbut it was _assumed_, not _verified_. If such a theory had been\nverified, its truth would be still recognized, and the Copernican theory\nwould have had no chance of admission. But evidently it is not the\ntheory that has been verified, but only the apparent movements of\ncelestial bodies. Thus \u201cthe elaborate tables\u201d by which the future\npositions of the planets could be foretold prove indeed the accuracy of\nancient astronomical observations and calculations, but they are no\nevidence that the geocentric theory was correct.\n\nMr. Youmans informs us, also, that \u201cCopernicus did not abolish, but\nrather revised, the old astronomy.\u201d If the words \u201cold astronomy\u201d are\ntaken to express merely the knowledge of celestial phenomena, we have\nnothing to reply; but if those words be understood to mean the Ptolemaic\ntheory, the assertion is ridiculous. Indeed, Copernicus, as Mr. Youmans\nsays, \u201csimply recentred the solar system\u201d; that is, he simply put the\nsun, instead of the earth, in the centre of the planetary orbits.\nNothing but that. But who does not see that to give a new centre to the\nsolar system was to suppress the old centre, and therefore to _abolish_\nthe geocentric theory? Why Mr. Youmans should labor to insinuate the\ncontrary we cannot really understand. Dr. Taylor, against whom he\nwrites, had said nothing concerning either the personal views of\nCopernicus or the old system of astronomy, but had simply maintained\nthat the so-called Copernican theory, as mentioned by Prof. Huxley, and\nas understood by all\u2014that is, as perfected by Kepler, Newton, and\nothers\u2014stands to-day on such a basis of undeniable facts that we can no\nlonger hesitate about its truth. This statement might have been\ncontradicted two centuries ago; but we fancy that it ought not to give\nrise to the least controversy on the part of a modern cultivator of\nscience, however much determined to find fault with his opponent.\n\nDr. Taylor had said, as we have noticed, that the Copernican theory\n\u201crests on facts presently occurring before our eyes.\u201d Mr. Youmans\nanswers: \u201cSo does the Ptolemaic theory; and not only that, but, if the\ntest is what occurs before our eyes, then the Ptolemaic theory is a\nthousand times stronger than the Copernican.\u201d If this answer expresses\nthe real opinion of Mr. Youmans, we must conclude that he alone, among\nphysicists, is ignorant of the fact that terrestrial gravitation is\nmodified by the centrifugal force due to the rotation of the earth, and\nthat this fact is established by experiments which \u201coccur before our\neyes\u201d when we make use of the pendulum in different latitudes. What\nshall we say of the aberration of light? Is not this phenomenon a proof\nof the movement of the earth? Or does it not \u201coccur before our eyes\u201d?\nMr. Youmans may say that these facts do not occur before all eyes, but\nonly before the eyes of scientific men. But Dr. Taylor had not\nmaintained that all the facts connected with the Copernican theory occur\nbefore all eyes; and, on the other hand, Foucault\u2019s pendulum, even\nthough oscillating before unscientific eyes, makes visible to the\ndullest observer the shifting of the horizontal plane from its position\nat a rate proportional to the sine of the latitude of the place, thus\nshowing to the eye the actual movement of our planet. It is true,\ntherefore, that the Copernican theory \u201crests on facts presently\noccurring before our eyes.\u201d\n\nBut, if the Copernican theory is so obvious, \u201cwhy,\u201d asks Mr. Youmans,\n\u201cdid the astronomers of twenty centuries fail to discern it? Why could\nnot the divines of Copernicus\u2019 time see it when it was pointed out to\nthem? And why could not Lord Bacon admit it a hundred years after\nCopernicus?\u201d The _why_ is well known. The Copernican theory was at first\nnothing more than a hypothesis; and its truth, even after Kepler and\nNewton, was still in need of experimental confirmation. Had Lord Bacon\nor the divines of Copernicus\u2019 time seen what we see with our eyes in\nFoucault\u2019s experiment, there is little doubt that they would have\nrecognized at last the truth of the new theory. But let this suffice\nabout the certitude of the Copernican theory.\n\nThe second part of Mr. Youmans\u2019 article regards the theory of evolution.\nThis theory assumes that the immense diversity of living forms now\nscattered over the earth has arisen from gelatinous matter through a\nlong process of gradual unfolding and derivation within the order of\nnature (that is, without supernatural interference) and by the operation\nof natural laws. Mr. Youmans says that this theory \u201cis built upon a\nseries of demonstrated truths.\u201d This assertion would have some weight,\nif such a building had not been raised in defiance of logic; but we have\nalready shown that Prof. Huxley\u2019s _Three Lectures on Evolution_ teem\nwith fallacies most fatal to the cause he desired to uphold. Hence,\nwhile we admit that \u201cdemonstrated truth\u201d is a very solid ground to build\nupon, we maintain that not a single demonstrated truth can be logically\nalleged in support of the theory of evolution. But let Mr. Youmans speak\nfor himself:\n\n    \u201cIt is a fact accordant with all observation, and to which there\n    never has been known a solitary exception, that the succession of\n    generations of living things upon earth is by reproduction and\n    genetic connection in the regular order of nature. The stream of\n    generations flows on by this process, which is as much a part of the\n    settled, continuous economy of the world as the steady action of\n    gravity or heat. It is demonstrated that living forms are liable to\n    variations which accumulate through inheritance; that the ratio of\n    multiplication in the living world is out of all proportion to the\n    means of subsistence, so that only comparatively few germs mature,\n    while myriads are destroyed; that, in the struggles of life, the\n    fittest to the conditions survive, and those least adapted perish.\n    It is a demonstrated fact that life has existed on the globe during\n    periods of time so vast as to be incalculable; that there has been\n    an order in its succession by which the lowest appeared first, and\n    the highest have come last, while the intermediate forms disclose a\n    rising gradation. It is a demonstrated truth of nature that matter\n    is indestructible, and that, therefore, all the material changes and\n    transformations of the world consist in using over and over the same\n    stock of materials, new forms being perpetually derived from old\n    ones; and it is a fact now also held to be established that force\n    obeys the same laws. All these great truths harmonize with each\n    other; they agree with all we know of the constitution of nature;\n    and they demonstrate evolution as a fact, and go far toward opening\n    to us the secondary question of its method.\u201d\n\nThese are, according to Mr. Youmans, the \u201cdemonstrated truths\u201d on which\nthe theory of evolution has been built, and which, according to the same\nwriter, \u201cdemonstrate evolution as a fact.\u201d We think, on the contrary,\nthat the only fact demonstrated by this passage is the blindness\n(voluntary or not) of a certain class of scientists. A cursory\nexamination of it will suffice to convince all unprejudiced men that\nsuch is the case.\n\nThat the stream of generations flows on \u201cby reproduction and genetic\nconnection in the regular order of nature\u201d is indeed a fact accordant\nwith all observation, and to which there never has been known a solitary\nexception; but all observation proves that the regular order of nature\nin generation is confined within the limits of the species to which\nparents belong. This precludes the possibility of drawing from this fact\nany conclusion in favor of evolution.\n\nThat living forms \u201care liable to variations, which accumulate through\ninheritance,\u201d is _not_ a demonstrated fact. We see, on the contrary,\nthat all such accidental variations, instead of accumulating, tend to\ndisappear within a few generations, whenever they cease to be under the\ninfluence of the agencies to which they owe their origin. But let us\nadmit, for the sake of argument, that all living forms are liable to\nvariations which accumulate through inheritance; then we ask whether all\nsuch variations are confined within the limit of each species, or some\nof them overstep that limit. If they are confined within that limit, the\nfact proves nothing in favor of the evolution of species. If, on the\ncontrary, any one says that they overstep that limit, then the fact\nitself needs demonstration; for it has never been observed. Therefore to\nargue from this fact in favor of evolution is to beg the question. We\nhave no need of dwelling on Mr. Youmans\u2019 statement that the ratio of\nmultiplication in the living world is out of all proportion to the means\nof subsistence, so that only comparatively few germs mature, while\nmyriads are destroyed. The statement is true; but it has nothing to do\nwith the theory of evolution. That, in the struggles of life, the\nfittest to the conditions survive, is another fact which does not in the\nleast bear out the theory. For the fittest among animals are those which\nenjoy the plenitude of their specific properties, and which, therefore,\nare best apt to transfuse them into their offspring whole, unmixed, and\nunimpaired.\n\nWe are told, also, that life has existed during periods of time so vast\nas to be incalculable. This we admit. But then, in the succession of\nlife, there has been an order, \u201cby which the lowest appeared first, and\nthe highest have come last, while intermediate forms disclose a rising\ngradation.\u201d This, too, we may admit, though not without reservations;\nfor Prof. Huxley himself confesses that numerous intermediate forms do\nnot occur in the order in which they ought to occur if they really had\nformed steps in the progression from one species to another; for we find\nthese intermediate forms mixed up with the higher and the lower ones \u201cin\ncontemporaneous deposits.\u201d But, even supposing that the lowest forms\nprecede the highest, what evidence would this be in favor of evolution?\nThe order of succession may indeed prove that the lower forms existed\nbefore the higher forms were created; but it does not show that the\nlower forms are the parents of the higher. This is merely assumed by the\nevolutionists as a convenient substitute for proof; that is, they first\nassume that evolution is a fact, and then conclude that the fact of\nevolution is established.\n\nLastly, that matter is indestructible, and that therefore all the\nmaterial changes and transformations of the world consist in using over\nand over the same stock of materials, is a doctrine which has no special\nbearing on the question. When a new individual of any living species is\ngenerated, its organism is indeed formed out of old matter; but this had\nno need of demonstration. What our evolutionists ought to show is that\nnew individuals of a certain species have been generated by individuals\nof some other species; and this surely cannot be shown by a recourse to\nthe indestructibility of matter. That matter is indestructible is,\nhowever, a groundless assertion. For though natural forces cannot\ndestroy it, God, who has created it, and who keeps it in existence, can\nalways withdraw his action, and let it fall into its primitive\nnothingness. And as to the so-called \u201cfact\u201d now also held to be\nestablished, that \u201cforce obeys the same laws\u201d\u2014that is, that force is\nindestructible, and that new forms of force are perpetually derived from\nold ones\u2014we need only remark that the theory of transformation of\nforces, as held and explained by our advanced scientists, is but a\ntravesty of truth, and an impotent effort to upset the principle of\ncausality. Neither statical nor dynamical forces are ever transformed.\nIndeed, they have no form attached to them. What our modern physicists\ncall \u201ctransformation of force\u201d is nothing but the change of one kinetic\nphenomenon into another\u2014that is, a succession of modes of movement of\nvarious kinds. Now, modes of movement are modes of being, not of force,\nthough they are the measure of the dynamical forces by which they have\nbeen produced. The force with which any element of matter is endowed is\nconstantly the same, both as to quality and as to quantity. Its exertion\nalone, owing to a difference of conditions, admits of a higher and a\nlower degree of intensity. As we do not intend at present to write a\ntreatise on forces, we will only add that the forces of matter are\nexercised on other matter by transient action, but cannot perform\nimmanent acts calculated to modify their own matter. If they could do\nthis, matter would not be inert. Hence animal life, which requires\nimmanent acts, cannot be accounted for by the forces of matter. And\ntherefore, whatever our scientists may say about the conservation of\nenergy and the transformation of forces, they have no right to infer\nthat animal life can be evolved out of matter alone; and they have still\nless right to pretend that such is \u201cthe fact.\u201d\n\nWhat shall we say, then, of Mr. Youmans\u2019 assertion that the alleged\nreasons \u201cdemonstrate evolution as a fact\u201d? We must say, applying Dr.\nTaylor\u2019s words to the case, that the assertion is \u201cso astounding that we\ncan only 'stand by and admire\u2019 the marvellous effrontery with which it\nhas been made.\u201d A man of Mr. Youmans\u2019 ability can scarcely be so\nignorant of logic as not to see that his reasons demonstrate evolution\nneither as a fact nor as a probability, and not even as a possibility;\nbut when a man succeeds in blinding himself to the existence of a\npersonal God, and substitutes nature in the place of her Creator, we\nneed not be surprised if his logic turns out to be a clumsy attempt at\nimposition.\n\nDr. Taylor had asked why we do not see one species passing into another,\neven as we see the motions of the planets through the heavens. The\nquestion was pertinent; for Prof. Huxley had maintained that \u201cevolution\nrests on a basis as sure as astronomy.\u201d Mr. Youmans answers: \u201cTo this\nfoolish question, which has nevertheless been asked a dozen times by\nclerical critics of Huxley, the obvious answer is that what requires a\nvery long time to produce cannot be seen in a very short time.\u201d We think\nthat the question was not _foolish_, and that the answer of Mr. Youmans\nis a mere evasion. For, if evolution is a fact, we must find numerous\ntraces of it not only in the fossil remains, but also in the actual\neconomy of nature. If the bird is evolved from the lizard, there must be\nactually among living creatures a numerous class of intermediate forms,\nsome more, others less developed, exhibiting all the stages of\ntransformation through which the lizard is gradually developed into a\nbird. Thus, because the acorn develops into the stately oak, we find in\nnature oaks of all the intermediate sizes; and because babyhood develops\ninto manhood, we find in nature individuals of all intermediate ages. In\nlike manner, if the evolution of one species from another is not a\nfable, we must find in nature specimens of all the intermediate forms.\nDr. Taylor\u2019s question was, therefore, most judicious. That Mr. Youmans\u2019\nreply to it is a mere evasion a little reflection will show; for the\nlength of time required for the process of transformation would only\nprove that the intermediate forms must remain longer in existence;\nwhilst the fact is that such forms do not exist at all.\n\n\u201cThere has been much complaint,\u201d says Mr. Youmans, \u201cthat Prof. Huxley\nundertook to put the demonstrative evidence of evolution on so narrow a\nbasis as the establishment of the genealogy of the horse; but this\nrather enhances than detracts from his merit as a scientific thinker.\u201d\nHere the case is misstated. Had Prof. Huxley really demonstrated\nevolution by the genealogy of the horse, no one would have complained\nthat the basis was too narrow; but as it became manifest that the basis\nwas not only narrow but questionable, and that it afforded no evidence\nwhatever of evolution, it was thought that it required a \u201cmarvellous\neffrontery\u201d on the part of Prof. Huxley to maintain before the American\npublic that the genealogy of the horse gave \u201cdemonstrative evidence\u201d of\nevolution. This is the reason why there has been so much complaint.\nProf. Huxley simply insulted his audience when he asked them to believe\nthat evolution was a demonstrated fact.\n\nMr. Youmans tells us that the vital point between Prof. Huxley and his\nantagonists is the question of the validity of the conception of order\nand uniformity in nature. \u201cProf. Huxley holds to it as a first\nprinciple, a truth demonstrated by all science, and just as fixed in\nbiology as in astronomy. His antagonists hold that the inflexible order\nof nature may be asserted perhaps in astronomy, but they deny it in\nbiology. They here invoke supernatural intervention.\u201d This statement is\nutterly false. There is no question about the order and uniformity of\nnature; and it is not to Prof. Huxley or to modern science that we are\nindebted for the knowledge of this uniformity either in astronomy or in\nbiology; the world has ever been in possession of this indisputable\ntruth. The real question between Prof. Huxley and his antagonists is\nthat nature, according to the professor, is independent in its being and\nin its working, and has an inherent power of fostering into existence a\nseries of beings of higher and higher specific perfection, from the\nspeck of gelatinous matter even to man; whereas nature, according to the\nprofessor\u2019s antagonists, and according to science, revelation, and\ncommon sense, is not independent either in its being or in its working,\nand has no inherent power of forming either a plant without a seed or an\nanimal without an ovum of the same species. If Prof. Huxley had had any\nknowledge of that part of philosophy which we call metaphysics, and\nwhich our advanced scientists affect so much to despise because they\ncannot cope with it, he would have seen the absurdity of his assumption;\nand if Mr. Youmans had consulted the rules of logic, he would not have\nsaid that the \u201cuniformity of nature\u201d was with Prof. Huxley a \u201cfirst\nprinciple\u201d; it being evident that uniformity clashes with evolution,\nwhich is a change of forms.\n\nThe last argument of the editor of the _Popular Science Monthly_ in\nbehalf of evolution is as follows:\n\n    \u201cObviously there are but two hypotheses upon the subject\u2014that of\n    genetic derivation of existing species through the operation of\n    natural law, and that of creation by miraculous interference with\n    the course of nature. If we assume the orderly course of nature,\n    development is inevitable: it is evolution or nothing. If the order\n    of nature is put aside and special creation appealed to, we have a\n    right to ask, On what evidence?... There is no evidence. There is\n    not a scintilla of proof that can have a feather\u2019s weight with any\n    scientific mind.... Has anybody ever seen a special creation?\u201d\n\nWe answer, first, that even if it were true that \u201cthere is no evidence\u201d\nin support of the _creation_, it would not follow that there is any\nevidence, either scientific or of any other kind, in support of the\n_evolution_ of one species from another. Indeed, in spite of all the\nefforts of \u201cadvanced\u201d thinkers, we have not yet been furnished with \u201ca\nscintilla of proof that can have a feather\u2019s weight\u201d with a\nphilosophical mind; on the contrary, we have been informed by no less an\nauthority than Mr. Huxley that \u201cno connecting link between the crocodile\nand the lizard, or between the lizard and the snake, or between the\nsnake and the crocodile, or between any two of these groups,\u201d has yet\nbeen found\u2014a fact which, if not destroyed by further discoveries, is \u201ca\nstrong and weighty argument against evolution,\u201d as the professor\nconfesses. Hence it is evident that the existing pal\u00e6ontological\nspecimens, far from proving the theory, form a strong and weighty\nobjection against it. The consequence is that, even if we had no\nevidence of the creation of species, it would yet be more reasonable to\naccept creation, against which no objection can be found, than to accept\nevolution.\n\nBut we are far from conceding that the creation of species is\nunsupported by evidence of a proper kind. Mr. Youmans may laugh at the\nBible; but we maintain that the Biblical record constitutes historical\nevidence. He may also laugh at philosophical reasoning, for his mind is\ntoo \u201cscientific\u201d to care for philosophy; but we believe that\nphilosophical evidence is as good, at least, as any which can be met\nwith in the _Popular Science Monthly_. Animals have a soul, which\nelicits immanent acts; they know, they feel, they have passions; and, if\nwe listen to some modern thinkers, they have even intelligence and\nreason. Now, matter is essentially inert, and therefore cannot elicit\nimmanent acts. Hence animals are not mere organized matter; and\naccordingly they cannot be evolved from matter alone. Their soul must\ncome from a higher source; it must be created. Science has nothing to\nsay against this; it can only state its ignorance by asking: \u201cHas\nanybody ever seen a special creation?\u201d Of course nobody has; but there\nare things which are seen by reason with as great a clearness as\nanything visible to the eye; and this is just the case with creation. On\nthe other hand, why should Mr. Youmans pretend that creation must be\nseen to be admitted, when he admits evolution, though he has never seen\nit? If seeing is a condition for believing, why did he treat as\n_foolish_ Dr. Taylor\u2019s question concerning the passing of one species\ninto another? Why did he ask: \u201cHas the writer ever seen the production\nof a geological formation?\u201d Surely, if evolution were proved to be a\nfact, we would admit it, without having seen it; but, since it is\ncreation, not evolution, that has been shown to be a fact, we are\ncompelled to admit it, even though nobody has had the privilege of\nseeing the event.\n\nWhen Mr. Youmans declares that \u201cthere is not a scintilla of proof\u201d (in\nfavor of special creations) \u201cthat can have a feather\u2019s weight with any\nscientific mind,\u201d he evidently assumes that no scientific mind has\nexisted before our time; which is more than even Huxley or Darwin would\nmaintain. But infidel science is equally blind to the scientific merit\nof its antagonists, and to the blunders which it is itself daily\ncommitting. Thus Mr. Youmans, no doubt to show that he has a \u201cscientific\nmind,\u201d speaks of the derivation of species \u201cthrough the operation of\nnatural law\u201d\u2014a phrase which has no meaning; for law is an abstraction,\nand abstractions do not operate. Nor is it more \u201cscientific\u201d to assume\nthat the creation of species was \u201ca miraculous interference with the\ncourse of nature\u201d; for the course of nature required the creation of\nspecies, just as it now requires the creation of human souls for the\ncontinuance of humanity; and God cannot be said to have interfered with\nthe course of nature by doing what nature required but could not do. Is\nit any more \u201cscientific\u201d to write _Nature_ with a capital letter? Of\ncourse, if there is no God, nature is all, and atheists may write it\n_Nature_. Mr. Youmans does not tell us clearly that there is no God; but\nhe shows clearly enough that to his mind _Nature_ is everything; which\nis, in fact, a virtual denial of a personal God. If we were to inform\nhim that nature is only a servant of God, he would perhaps ask, \u201cOn what\nevidence?\u201d And because we would be unable to point out a chemical\nresiduum or a geologic formation wherein God could be made visible to\nhim, he would conclude that \u201cthere is no scintilla of proof that can\nhave a feather\u2019s weight with a scientific mind.\u201d He then assumes that in\nthe orderly course of nature the evolution of species is \u201cinevitable.\u201d\nIt did not occur to his scientific mind that before making such an\nassertion, it was necessary to examine how far the powers of nature\nextend; for he might have discovered that matter is inert, and that it\nwas a great blunder to assume that inert matter produced animal life.\n\nHe further supposes that when special creations are appealed to, \u201cthe\norder of nature is put aside.\u201d He therefore pretends that the order of\nnature would not allow of the creation of plants and animals, evidently\nbecause it was nature\u2019s duty to perform without extrinsic intervention\nall those wonderful works which we attribute to the wisdom and\nomnipotence of the Creator. We maybe unscientific; but we defy Mr.\nYoumans to show, either scientifically or otherwise, the truth of his\nassumption. To tell us that the evolution of life from dead matter was\nwithin the order of nature, without even attempting to prove that nature\nhad a power adequate to the task, is just as plausible as to tell us\nthat Prof. Huxley has created the Niagara Falls or that Mr. Darwin has\npainted the moon. And yet the author of such loose statements airs his\nscientific pretensions and speaks of \u201cscientific minds\u201d!\n\nWe have no need to follow Mr. Youmans any further; for what he adds\nconsists of assumptions cognate to those we have already refuted.\n\u201cGenetic derivation,\u201d he says, \u201cis in the field as a real and undeniable\ncause\u201d\u2014which is an open untruth. \u201cHas anybody seen a special creation?\u201d\nThis is irrelevant. \u201cDo those who believe in a special creation\nrepresent to themselves any possibility of how it could have occurred?\u201d\nProbably they do, if they have read the first chapter of Genesis.\n\u201cMilton attempted to form an image of the way the thing was done, and\nsays that the animals burst up full-formed and perfect like plants out\nof the ground\u2014'the grassy clods now calved.\u2019 But clods can only calve\nmiraculously.\u201d Quite so; but we must not be afraid of miracles, when we\ncannot deny them without falling into absurdities. \u201cNature does not\nbring animals into the world now by this method, and science certainly\ncan know nothing of it.\u201d Yes; but there are many other things of which\ninfidel science is ignorant. And yet we fancy that, when animals have\nbeen once created, even infidel science might have discerned that their\nprocreation no longer required \u201cthe grassy clods to calve.\u201d\n\nBut enough. We conclude that, so far from being possible, so far from\nbeing probable, so far from being proved, the hypothesis of the origin\nof animal forms by evolution is simply unthinkable; it is a violation\nnot only of the order of nature, but of the very condition of thought\nand of the first principle of science, which is the principle of\ncausality. When will our scientific men understand that there is no\nscience without philosophy?\n\n\n\n\n          A WAIF FROM THE GREAT EXHIBITION, PHILADELPHIA, 1876\n\n\n    \u201cTheir store-houses full, flowing out of this into that.\n\n    \u201cThey have called the people happy that hath these things: but happy\n       is that people whose God is\n    the Lord.\u201d\u2014Ps. cxliii.\n\n\nI.\n\n\n    With face storm-lined and bronzed, no longer young,\n      That seemed as if its soul\u2019s dim life had grown\n      On lonely farm, in rugged inland town\n    Lying, a narrow world, bleak hills among,\n    A stranger gazed amid the wealth and glare\n      Of all the nations\u2019 gathered industry\n      Where rose the light, symmetric tracery\n    Of Munich\u2019s altars worked in colors fair;\n    Where good St. Joseph with the lilies stood;\n      And soft-eyed martyr with her branch of palm,\n      And full, sweet lips smiling with happy calm,\n    Seemed beaming witness 'mid the multitude\n    Of glittering toys and earth\u2019s huge, unworked store,\n    Of nobler purpose man\u2019s life resting o\u2019er.\n\n\nII.\n\n\n    Here stretched its naked arms the bless\u00e8d Rood,\n      Whose desolation eloquent below\n      God\u2019s Mother sat in soundless deeps of woe,\n    Her sad knees holding all her earthly good.\n    Here stood the stranger with a look intent\n      Wherein no light of recognition woke,\n      As if he read in some strange-lettered book.\n    Then, asking what these unguessed figures meant,\n    An answer came: \u201cOur Lord, dead 'neath the Cross.\u201d\n      \u201cAh! yes, and that is Mary, I suppose\u2014\n      The Mother.\u201d Ah! what wondering thoughts uprose\n    To die in silence, winning so some loss,\n    Perchance, unto two lives. Sweet Mother, pray\n    That soul accuse not mine on judgment day!\n\n\nIII.\n\n\n    So strange and sad the simple question seemed;\n      As if on those far hills God\u2019s voice had built,\n      Upon those souls for whom his blood was spilt\n    Some shadow rested, amid which scarce gleamed\n    The mournful splendor by his dark Cross thrown:\n      As if stern life grew but more hard and bare,\n      Missing the presence of the Maiden rare\n    Whose God made her unstained flesh his own;\n    Who held him on her arms a helpless child,\n      With love no mother ever knew before;\n      Holding, when Calvary\u2019s dread hours were o\u2019er,\n    The Man of Sorrows where her Babe had smiled\u2014\n    Her arms the cradle of the Almighty One,\n    Her arms His spotless shroud, life\u2019s labor done.\n\n\nIV.\n\n\n    Alas! such faith to men denied who grope\n      Half in a fear begotten not of love,\n      Half in cold doubt, seeking all things to prove,\n    To none hold fast, with whom divinest hope\n    Holds naught more excellent than earth\u2019s to-days;\n      For whom in vain doth Israel\u2019s lily bloom,\n      With its white sunshine lighting hours of gloom,\n    Shining 'mid thorns that seek to crush its grace\u2014\n    So dimming the broad rays of love divine\n      With earthly shadow cast on earthly things\n      That folded keep their gift of heavenly wings,\n    Lest, soaring, they lose sight of lesser shrine\n    Lest, heart so kindling with the Spirit\u2019s fire,\n    Feet lowly tread that eyes be lifted higher.\n\n\nV.\n\n\n    Slow turning through the glimmering aisles to range,\n      Amid the hum the loitering footsteps wrought\n      I lost the questioning face, but not the thought\n    Of that dim life, to which the night seemed strange\n    Of Calvary\u2019s God, to whom all life is owed\u2014\n      That clouded life wherein Faith\u2019s pure sunshine\n      Casts faintest gleam of its strong light divine\n    That strengthens soul, makes fair the daily load.\n    Far down the hall full notes of organ poured,\n      And broke in song strong voices manifold;\n      Glad alleluias all exultant rolled,\n    As if proclaiming on each soaring chord:\n    \u201cHappy the people of this wealth possessed!\u201d\n    Nay, Happy they whom God the Lord hath blessed.\n\n\n\n\n                        ENGLISH RULE IN IRELAND.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\n\nThe present condition of a people is the latest phase of a life that has\nrun through centuries, in all the events of which there may be traced\nthe relation of cause and effect, and whose continuity has never been\ninterrupted, though at times the current may seem to leave its channel,\nor even to disappear. The past never dies, but with each succeeding\nmoment receives a fuller existence, survives as a curse or a blessing.\nThe passion which urges the human mind back to ages more and more\nremote, until the gathering darkness shuts out even the faintest glimmer\nof light, is not mere curiosity, nor even the inborn craving for\nknowledge; rather is it the consciousness that those ancient times and\nfar-off deeds still live in us, mould us, and shape our ends. We were\nwith Adam when he plucked and ate the forbidden fruit, and that his act\nshould work in us yet, like a taint in the blood, seems to be a\npostulate of reason not less than a truth of tradition or revelation.\nThe cherishing of great names, the clinging to noble memories, the use\nof poetry, music, sculpture, painting, architecture, or any art, to give\nform and vividness to glories, heroisms, martyrdoms, are but the\nexpression of this consciousness that the present is only the fuller and\nmore living past. No vanity, much less scorn or hate, should prompt any\none to lift into the light the glory or the shame of a people\u2019s history.\nAs we tread reverently on the ground where human passions have contended\nfor the mastery, we should approach with religious awe the facts which\nhave made the world what it is.\n\nThere are many persons, who certainly have no prejudices against the\nIrish people, many true and loyal Irishmen even, who strongly object to\nthe prominence given to the sorrows and sufferings of Ireland. They\nwould have us forget the past and turn, with a countenance fresh and\nhopeful as that of youth, to the future. Sydney Smith, full of English\nprepossessions but an honest lover of liberty, who labored as earnestly\nand fearlessly as any man of his generation in behalf of the wronged and\ndefenceless, could not restrain his impatience when he thought of the\nfondness with which Irishmen cling to old memories and sacred\nassociations. In his opinion the object of all government is roast\nmutton, potatoes, claret, a stout constable, an honest justice, a clear\nhighway, and a free chapel. \u201cWhat trash,\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cto be bawling\nin the streets about the Green Isle, the Isle of the Ocean, the bold\nanthem of _Erin go bragh_! A far better anthem would be, Erin go bread\nand cheese, Erin go cabins that will keep out the rain, Erin go\npantaloons without holes in them.\u201d\n\nThis may be very well, but we are persuaded that there is not an abuse\nor an evil in Ireland to-day which has not its roots in the remote past,\nor which can be understood or remedied without a knowledge of Irish\nhistory.\n\nThe bold anthem of _Erin go bragh_, which so provoked Sidney Smith, is\nthe thread that leads us through the labyrinth. It is because the Irish\nare not English that England is neither able nor willing to treat them\njustly; and if she has rendered herself guilty of the greatest social\ncrime in all history, it is because she has clung for centuries with\nterrible obstinacy to a policy which left the people of Ireland no\nalternative between denationalization and extermination. When in England\nthe national spirit dominated and absorbed the religious spirit, the\nIrish, who had so long maintained their separate nationality, adhered\nwith invincible firmness to the old faith. This was imputed to them as a\ncrime, and became the pretext for still more grievous persecutions. If\nthey were resolved to be Irish and Catholic, England was not less\nresolved that they should be outlaws and beggars. They were to have no\nbread or potatoes, or cabins that would keep out the rain, so long as\nthey persisted in singing the bold anthem and acknowledging the\nsupremacy of the pope. The history of Ireland is in great part the\nhistory of her wrongs; for a long time to come, doubtless, it will be a\nhistory of suffering; and if those who write of her find that they are\nplacing before their readers pictures of death, exile, persecution,\nbeggary, famine, desolation, violence, oppression, and of every form of\nhuman misery, they are but describing the state to which her conquerors\nhave reduced her.\n\nBut there are special reasons for dwelling upon the wrongs of Ireland.\nFor three hundred years the Irish people themselves and their faith have\nbeen held responsible, wherever the English language is spoken, for the\ncrimes of England. The backwardness of Irish industry, and the seeming\nwant of energy of the people in improving their condition, are\nhabitually imputed by statesmen and public instructors to a peculiar\nindolence and recklessness in the Celtic race, fostered and encouraged\nby what is supposed to be the necessary influence of the Catholic\nreligion.\n\nThe Irish are probably not more Celtic than the French, who assuredly\nare not excelled in thrift and industry by any other people. There is no\ncountry more Catholic than Belgium, nor is there anywhere a more\nprosperous or laborious people. Irishmen themselves, it is universally\nadmitted, are hard workers in England, in the United States, in Canada,\nin Australia\u2014wherever, in a word, the motives which incite men to labor\nare not taken from them; and yet the popular prejudice on this subject\nis so flattering to Anglo-Saxon and Protestant pride that it remains in\nthe public mind like a superstition, which no amount of evidence can\naffect. In a former article we have attempted to trace some of the\ncauses to which the poverty and misery of Ireland must be attributed,\nand we shall now continue the investigation. During the three centuries\nimmediately following the Conquest the country was wasted by wars,\nmassacres, and feuds, carried on by the two armed nations, which\nfiercely contended for the possession of the soil. The Anglo-Norman\ncolony, entrenched within the Pale, and receiving constant supplies of\nmen and money from the mother-country, formed a kind of standing army,\never ready to invade and lay waste the territories still held by the\nnative population. The Irish people, in self-defence, and also with the\nhope of driving the invader from their shores, turned their whole\nattention to war. All the pursuits of peace were forgotten, and the\nisland became a camp of soldiers, who, when not battling with the common\nenemy, turned their swords against one another. In such a state of\nsociety no progress was possible. Then came three centuries of religious\nwars to add more savage fierceness to the war of races. Under Elizabeth,\nJames I., Cromwell, and William of Orange the whole country was\nconfiscated. The Catholics were driven from their lands, hunted down,\ntheir churches and monasteries were burned or turned over to\nProtestants, their priests were martyred or exiled, their schools\nclosed, their teachers banished, their nobles impoverished; and to make\nthis state of things perpetual the Penal Code was enacted. To this point\nthere was complete harmony between the home government and the English\ncolony in Ireland. But England has rarely poured out her treasure or her\nblood for other than selfish and mercenary motives. She therefore\ndemanded, as the price of her assistance in crushing the Irish\nCatholics, that the commerce and industry of Ireland should be\nsacrificed to her own interests. The House of Commons declared the\nimportation of Irish cattle a public nuisance. They were then\nslaughtered and salted, but the government refused to permit the sale of\nthe meat. The hides were tanned. The importation of leather was\nforbidden. The Irish Protestants began to export their wool; England\nrefused to buy it. They began to manufacture it; an export duty,\nequivalent to prohibition, was put on all Irish woollen goods. They grew\nflax and made linens; England put a bounty on Scotch and English linens,\nand levied a duty on Irish linens. Ireland was not allowed to build or\nown a ship\u2014her forests were felled and the timber sent to England. The\nEnglish colonies were forbidden to trade with her; even the fisheries\nwere carried on with English boats manned by Englishmen. By these and\nsimilar measures Irish commerce and industry were destroyed. Nothing\nremained for the people to do but to till the soil. In this lay the only\nhope of escaping starvation. But they no longer owned the land; it was\nin the hands of an alien aristocracy, English in origin and sympathy,\nProtestant in religion. The Catholic people, without civil existence,\nwere at the mercy of an oligarchy by whom they were both hated and\ndespised. These nobles owed their titles, wealth, and power to the\nviolence of conquest, and, instead of seeking to heal the wounds, they\nwere resolved to keep them open. In France and in England the Northmen\nwere gradually fused with the original population. They lost their\nlanguage, customs, almost the memory of their cradle-land. Even in\nIreland a considerable portion of the Norman conquerors became\nIrish\u2014_Hibernis hiberniores_. But this partial assimilation of the two\nraces was effected in spite of England, who made use of strong measures\nboth to prevent and punish this degeneracy, as it was termed. Had the\nunion between the Irish and the Normans not been prevented by this\nviolent and interested policy, a homogeneous people would have been\nformed in Ireland as in England, and the frightful wrongs and crimes of\nthe last seven hundred years would not have been committed.\n\nBut the interests of England demanded that Ireland should be kept weak\nand helpless by internal discord; and she therefore used every means to\nprevent the fusion of the two races. The \u201cIrish enemy,\u201d ever ready to\nbreak in upon the settlements of the Pale, was the surest warrant of the\nloyalty of the English colony to the mother-country, whose assistance\nmight at any moment become essential to its very existence. The native\npopulation, on the other hand, was held in check by the foreigner\nencamped in the land. Had the Irish and the English in Ireland united,\nthey would have had little trouble in throwing off the yoke of England.\nIt was all-important, therefore, that they should remain, distinct and\ninimical races. All intercourse between them was forbidden. Their\ninter-marriage was made high treason. It was a crime for an Englishman\nto speak Irish, or for an Irishman to speak English. The ancient laws\nand customs of the Irish were destroyed, and they were denied the\nbenefits of English law. As yet the English and the Irish professed the\nsame religious faith; but now even this powerful bond of union was\nbroken. Enemies on earth, they looked to no common hope beyond this\nlife. Three centuries of persecution and outrage followed, during which\nthe Catholic Irish were reduced to such a state of misery and beggary\nthat the only thing which remained in common between them and their\ntyrants was hate.\n\nHere we have come upon the well-spring of all the bitter waters that\nhave deluged Ireland. The country is owned and governed by a few men who\nhave never loved the country and have always hated the people.\nThroughout the rest of Europe, even in the worst times, the interests of\nthe lords and the peasants were to some extent identical. They were one\nin race and religion, rendered mutual services, gloried in a common\ncountry, and shared their miseries. The noble spent at least a part of\nthe year on his estates, surrounded by his dependants. Kind offices were\ninterchanged. The great lady visited the peasant woman in her sickness,\nand the humanities of life were not ignored. Elsewhere in Europe the\ngreat land-owners, whether lay or ecclesiastical, were, with rare\nexceptions, kind to the poor, indulgent to their debtors, willing to\nencourage industry, to advance capital for the improvement of the land,\nand thus to promote their own interests by promoting those of their\ntenants. The privileged classes were not wholly independent of the\npeople. If they were not restrained from wrong-doing by love, they were\noften held in check by a salutary fear.\n\nBut nothing of all this was found in Ireland, where the landlords were\nin the unfortunate position of having nothing to fear and nothing to\nhope from the people. They lacked all the essential conditions of a\nnative aristocracy. Their titles were Irish, but all their interests and\nsympathies were English. They were the hired servants of England, and\nthey were not paid to work for the good of Ireland. They drew their\nrevenues from a country to which they rendered no service; they were\nsupported by the labors of the people whom they oppressed and hated; and\nthey rarely saw the land from which they derived their wealth and\ntitles, but lived in England, where they found a more congenial society,\nand were not afflicted by the sight of sufferings and miseries of which\nthey knew themselves to be the authors. If the people, maddened by\noppression or hunger, revolted, the Irish landlords were not disturbed;\nfor an English army was at hand to crush the rebellion, which was never\nattributed to its true cause, but to the supposed insubordination and\nlawlessness of the Irish character. In England there existed a middle\nclass, which bridged over the chasm that separated the nobles from the\npeasants, and which rendered the aristocracy liberal and progressive by\nopening its ranks to superior merit wherever found; but in Ireland there\nwere only two classes of society, divided the one from the other as by a\nwall of brass. The authority of the Protestant oligarchy over the\nCatholic population was absolute, and they contracted the vices by which\nthe exercise of uncontrolled power is always punished. To the narrowness\nand ignorance of a rural gentry were added the brutality and coarseness\nof tyrants. The social organization prevented the infusion of new blood\nwhich had saved the English aristocracy from decay and impotence, and\nthe general stagnation of political and commercial life in Ireland had\nthe effect of helping on the degeneracy of the ruling caste. Everything,\nin a word, tended to make the Irish landlords the worst aristocracy with\nwhich a nation was ever cursed; and, by the most cruel of fates, this\nworst of all aristocracies was made the sole arbiter of the destinies of\nthe Irish people, of whose pitiable condition under this rule we have\nalready given some account.\n\nWe turn now to consider the causes which have brought a certain measure\nof relief to the people of Ireland; and we must seek for them, not in\nthe good-will or sense of justice of Irish or English Protestants, but\nin circumstances which took from them the power of continuing without\nsome mitigation a policy which, if ruinous to the Irish people, was also\nfull of peril to England.\n\nIt is pleasant to us, as Americans, to know that the voice which\nproclaimed our freedom and independence was heard in Ireland, as it has\nsince been heard throughout the earth, rousing the nations to high\nthoughts of liberty, ringing as the loud battle-cry of wronged and\noppressed peoples. The great discussions which the struggle of the\nAmerican colonies awoke in the British Parliament, and in which the very\nspirit of liberty spoke from the lips of the sublimest orators, sent a\nthrill of hope through Irish hearts, while the Declaration of\nIndependence filled their oppressors with dismay. In 1776 we declared\nour separate existence, and in 1778 already some of the most odious\nfeatures of the Penal Code were abolished. \u201cA voice from America,\u201d said\nFlood, \u201cshouted to Liberty.\u201d Henceforward Catholics were permitted to\ntake long leases, though not to possess in fee simple; the son, by\nturning Protestant, was no longer permitted to rob his father, and the\nlaws of inheritance which prevented the accumulation of property in the\nhands of Catholics were abrogated. This was little enough, indeed, but\nit was of inestimable value, for it marked the turning-point in the\nhistory of Ireland. A beginning had been made, a breach had been opened\nin the enemy\u2019s citadel. But this was not all that the American\nRevolution did for Ireland.\n\nThe sympathies of the Presbyterians of the North went out to their\nbrethren who were struggling on the other side of the Atlantic. They\nalso had grievances compared with which those of the colonies were\nslight; their cause was identical, and the success of the Americans\nwould be a victory for Ireland; if England triumphed beyond the seas,\nthere would be no hope for those who, being nearer, were held with a\nmore certain grasp. Hence, in spite of the bitter hate which in Ireland\nseparated the Protestants from the Catholics, they were drawn together\nby a common interest and sympathy in the cause of American independence.\nEngland\u2019s wars, both in Europe and in her transatlantic colonies, were a\nconstant drain upon her resources, and it became necessary to supply the\narmies in America with the troops which were kept in Ireland to hold\nthat country in subjection. General Howe asked that Irish papists should\nnot be sent as recruits to him, for they would desert to the enemy. The\nbest men were therefore picked from the English regiments and sent to\nAmerica; Ireland was denuded of troops; the defences of her harbors were\nin ruins; and she was exposed to the attacks of privateers. Something\nhad to be done, and Parliament agreed to allow the Irish militia to be\ncalled out. As an inducement to Catholics to enlist, they were promised\nindulgences in the exercise of their religion, but this promise aroused\nProtestant bigotry, ever ready to break forth. The plan was abandoned,\nand the defence of the country was committed to the Volunteers.\n\nIn the meanwhile Burgoyne had surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga,\nFrance had entered into alliance with the colonies, and French and\nAmerican privateers began to swarm in the Irish Channel. The English\nParliament, now thoroughly alarmed, and eager to make peace with the\nrebels, passed an act renouncing the right of taxing the colonies, and\neven offered seats in the House of Commons to their representatives.\nThese concessions, which came too late to propitiate the Americans,\nserved only to embolden the Irish in their demands for the redress of\ntheir grievances. The Americans were rebels, and were treated with the\ngreatest indulgence; the Irish were loyal, and were still held in the\nvilest bondage. This was intolerable. To add to the distress, one of the\nperiodical visitations of famine which have marked English rule in\nIreland fell upon the country, and the highways were filled with crowds\nof half-naked and starving people.\n\nThirty thousand merchants and mechanics in Dublin were living on alms;\nthe taxes could not be collected, and in the general collapse of trade\nthe customs yielded almost nothing. The country was unprotected, and\nthere was no money in the treasury with which to raise an army. Nothing\nremained in this extremity but to allow the Volunteers to assemble; for\nthe summer was at hand, and every day the privateers might be expected\nto appear in the Channel. Company after company was organized, and in a\nvery short time large bodies of men were in arms. The Catholics also\ntook advantage of the general excitement. If the Protestants were in\narms, why should they remain defenceless?\n\nNever before had there been such an opportunity of extorting from\nEngland the measures of relief which she would never willingly consent\nto grant. The threatening danger, however, had no effect upon the\nBritish Parliament.\n\nThe Irish Parliament met in 1779, and the patriots, strong in the\nsupport of the Volunteers who lined the streets of Dublin, demanded free\ntrade. The city was in an uproar; a mob paraded before the Parliament\nHouse, and with threats called upon the members to redress the wrongs of\nIreland. Cannon were trailed round the statue of King William, with the\ninscription,\u201cFree trade or this,\u201d and on the flags were emblazoned\nmenacing mottoes\u2014\u201cThe Volunteers of Ireland,\u201d \u201cFifty thousand of us\nready to die for our country.\u201d\n\n\u201cTalk not to me of peace,\u201d exclaimed Hussey Burgh, one of the leading\npatriots. \u201cIreland is not at peace; it is smothered war. England has\nsown her laws as dragon\u2019s teeth, and they have sprung up as armed men.\u201d\nAll Ireland was aroused. The Irish, said Burke in the English House of\nCommons, had learned that justice was to be had from England only when\ndemanded at the point of the sword. They were now in arms; their cause\nwas just; and they would have redress or end the connection between the\ntwo countries. The obnoxious laws restricting trade were repealed and in\nthe greatest haste sent over to Ireland to calm the tempest that was\nbrewing there.\n\nThe effect went even beyond expectation. Dublin was illuminated,\ncongratulatory addresses were sent over to England, and people imagined\nthat Ireland\u2019s millennium had arrived. But the consequences of centuries\nof crime and oppression do not disappear as by the enchanter\u2019s wand; and\none of the evils of tyranny is the curse it leaves after it has ceased\nto exist. In the wildness of their joy the people exaggerated the boon\nwhich they had wrenched from England; the sober second thought turned\ntheir attention to what still remained to be done.\n\nIn 1780 Grattan brought forward the famous resolution which declared\nthat \u201cthe king, with the consent of the Parliament of Ireland, was alone\ncompetent to enact laws to bind Ireland.\u201d The time could not have been\nmore opportune. The American colonies were in full revolt; Spain and\nFrance were assisting them; England had been forced into war with\nHolland, and her Indian Empire was threatening to take advantage of her\ndistress to rebel. In the midst of so many wars and dangers it would\nhave been madness to have provoked Ireland to armed resistance, and\nGrattan felt that the hour had come when the Irish people should stand\nforth as one of the nations of the earth; when all differences of race\nand creed might be merged into a common patriotism, and Celt and Saxon,\nCatholic and Protestant, present an unbroken front to the English\ntyrant. \u201cThe Penal Code,\u201d he said, \u201cis the shell in which the Protestant\npower has been hatched. It has become a bird. It must burst the shell or\nperish in it. Indulgence to Catholics cannot injure the Protestant\nreligion.\u201d\n\nThe Volunteers were, with few exceptions, Protestants, and their\nattitude of defiance made the English government willing to place the\nCatholics against them as a counterpoise; and it therefore offered no\nopposition to measures tending to relieve them of their disabilities.\nBut, under Grattan\u2019s influence, the Volunteers themselves pronounced in\nfavor of the Catholics by passing the famous Dungannon resolution: \u201cThat\nwe, [the Volunteers] hold the right of private judgment in matters of\nreligion to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves; that we rejoice\nin the relaxation of the penal laws against our Roman Catholic\nfellow-subjects; and that we conceive these measures to be fraught with\nthe happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants\nof Ireland.\u201d\n\nIn February, 1782, Grattan again brought forward a motion to declare the\nindependence of the Irish Legislature, and again it was thrown out. The\nDungannon resolution was then introduced, and it was proposed to abolish\nall distinctions between Protestants and Catholics. But to this the most\nserious objections were raised, and it was found necessary to make\nconcessions to Protestant bigotry. The Catholics were permitted to\nacquire freehold property, to buy and sell, bequeath and inherit; but\nthe penal laws which bore upon their religion, and their right to\neducate their children at home or abroad, as well as those which\nexcluded them from political life, were left on the statute-book.\nFanaticism was stronger than patriotism, and the enthusiastic love of\nliberty was again found to be compatible with the love of persecution\nand oppression. But this injustice in no way dampened the ardor of the\nCatholics for the national independence; and when, on the 16th of April,\n1782, Grattan moved a Declaration of Rights, inspired probably by our\nown Declaration of Independence, he was greeted with as wild a tumult of\napplause by the Catholics as by his Protestant countrymen. \u201cI found\nIreland,\u201d he said, \u201con her knees. I watched over her with an eternal\nsolicitude. I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from\narms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has\nprevailed. Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail her,\nand, bowing to her august presence, I say, _Esto Perpetua_!\u201d\n\nThe overwhelming popular enthusiasm bore everything with it, and\nopposition was useless. \u201cIt is no longer,\u201d wrote the Duke of Portland,\nthe viceroy, \u201cthe Parliament of Ireland that is to be managed or\nattended to; it is the whole of this country.\u201d\n\nIn England the Whigs, who were in power, felt how hopeless would be any\nefforts to stem the torrent, and they therefore yielded with grace. Fox\nadmitted that Ireland had a right to distrust British legislation\n\u201cbecause it had hitherto been employed only to oppress and distress\nher.\u201d Ireland had been wronged, and it was but just that concessions\nshould now be made to her. The day of deliverance had come, and, amidst\nan outburst of universal enthusiasm, Ireland\u2019s independence was\nproclaimed.\n\nThe Catholics were the first to feel the benefits of this victory. The\ntwo Relief Bills, introduced into Parliament in their favor, were\ncarried. They were permitted to open schools and educate their own\nchildren; their stables were no longer subject to inspection, or their\nhorses above the value of five pounds liable to be seized by the\ngovernment or taken from them by Protestant informers; and their right\nto freedom of religious worship was fully recognized. They recovered, in\na word, their civil rights; but the law still excluded them from any\nparticipation in the political life of the country, and they were still\nforbidden to possess arms. Nevertheless, another step towards Catholic\nemancipation had been taken. Two other laws, beneficial to all classes\nof citizens, but especially favorable to the poor and oppressed\nCatholics, date from this time: the Habeas Corpus Act was granted to\nIreland, and the tenure of judges was placed on the English level.\n\nUnfortunately, the social condition of the country was so deplorable\nthat this improvement in the laws conferred few or no benefits upon the\nimpoverished and downtrodden people. But at least there was some gain;\nfor if good laws do not necessarily make a people prosperous, bad laws\nnecessarily keep them in misery. The landed gentry and Protestant clergy\ncontinued without shame to neglect all the duties which they owed to\ntheir tenants, whose wretchedness increased as the fortunes of Ireland\nseemed to rise. To maintain the Volunteers the rents were raised, and\nthe poor peasants, already sinking beneath an intolerable burden, were\nyet more heavily laden. The proprietors of the soil spent their time in\nriot and debauch while the people were starving. They were the\nmagistrates and at the same time the most notorious violators of the\nlaw. \u201cThe justices of the peace,\u201d says Arthur Young, \u201care the very worst\nclass in the kingdom.\u201d\n\nThe clergy of the Established Church were little better. Like the\nlandlords, they were generally absentees, and employed agents to raise\ntheir tithes, in the North from the Presbyterians, and in other parts of\nthe island from the Catholics. \u201cAs the absentee landlord,\u201d says Froude,\n\u201chad his middleman, the absentee incumbent had his tithe farmer and\ntithe proctor\u2014perhaps of all the carrion who were preying on the carcase\nof the Irish peasantry the vilest and most accursed. As the century\nwaned and life grew more extravagant, the tithe proctor, like his\nneighbors, grew more grasping and avaricious. He exacted from the\npeasants the full pound of flesh. His trade was dangerous, and therefore\nhe required to be highly paid. He handed to his employer perhaps half\nwhat he collected. He fleeced the flock and he fleeced their shepherd.\u201d\n\u201cThe use of the tithe farmer,\u201d said Grattan, \u201cis to get from the\nparishioners what the clergyman would be ashamed to demand, and to\nenable the clergyman to absent himself from duty. His livelihood is\nextortion. He is a wolf left by the shepherd to take care of the flock\nin his absence.\u201d[17]\n\nFootnote 17:\n\n  _The English in Ireland_, vol. ii. p. 453.\n\nIn the midst of the general excitement the Catholic peasants grew\nrestless under this horrible system of organized plunder and extortion.\nThey banded together and took an oath to pay only a specified sum to the\nclergyman or his agent. The movement spread, and occasional acts of\nviolence were committed. All Munster was organized, and a regular war\nwith the tithe proctors was begun. In the popular fury crimes were\nperpetrated and the innocent were often made to suffer with the guilty.\nYet so glaring were the wrongs and so frightful the abuses from which\nthe peasants were suffering that they everywhere met with sympathy. The\ntrue cause of these disorders was social and not political. Misery, and\nnot partisan zeal, had driven the Catholics to take up arms. The cry of\nhungry women and children for bread resounded louder in their ears than\nthe shouts of the patriots. They were without food or raiment, and in\ndespair they sought to wreak vengeance upon the inhuman tyrants who had\nreduced them to starvation. Even Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, was\nforced to admit that the Munster peasants were in a state of oppression,\nabject poverty, and misery not to be equalled in the world, and that the\nlandlords and their agents were responsible for the degradation of these\nunfortunate beings.\n\nIreland was still a prey to agitations, hopes, and sufferings when the\nFrench Revolution of 1789 burst upon Europe. The cry of Liberty,\nequality, fraternity sounded as revelation to the struggling patriots.\nHitherto they had contended for freedom, in the English and feudal\nsense, as a privilege and a concession; they now demanded it as an\nimprescriptible right of man. The American Declaration had indeed\nproclaimed that all men were free and equal, or of right ought to be;\nbut this was merely a pretty phrase, a graceful preamble, in a charter\nwhich consecrated slavery and inequality. In America there were no\nprivileged classes, and the people had not groaned beneath the tyranny\nof heartless and effete aristocracies; the evils of which their leaders\ncomplained, compared with those which weighed down the European\npopulations, were slight, almost imaginary. But in France Liberty and\nEquality was the fierce and savage yell of men who hated the whole\nsocial order as it existed around them, and who, indeed, had no reason\nto love it. The spirit of feudalism was dead, and its lifeless form\nremained to impest the earth. The nobles, sunk in debauch and sloth,\ncontinued their exactions, upheld their privileges, and yet rendered no\nservice to the state. Corruption, extravagance, maladministration,\ninfidelity, and licentiousness pervaded the whole social system. France\nwas prostrate with the foot of a harlot on her neck, and the people were\nstarving. Little wonder, when the torch was applied, that the lurid\nglare of burning thrones and altars, the crash of falling palaces and\ncathedrals, should affright and strike dumb the nations of the earth\u2014for\nGod\u2019s judgment was there; little wonder that Ireland, sitting by the\nmelancholy sea, chained and weeping, should lift her head when the God\nof the patient and the humble was shattering the whitened sepulchres\nwhich enshrined the world\u2019s rottenness.\n\nIn Belfast the taking of the Bastile was celebrated by processions and\nbanquets amid the wildest enthusiasm, and the name of Mirabeau called\nforth the most deafening applause. The eyes of Ireland were fastened on\nFrance; the cause of the Revolution was believed to be that of all\noppressed peoples who seek to break the bonds of slavery. \u201cRight or\nwrong,\u201d wrote an Irish patriot, \u201csuccess to the French! They are\nfighting our battles, and, if they fail, adieu to liberty in Ireland for\none century.\u201d[18] Even the manners and phraseology of the Revolution\nbecame popular in Ireland. The Dublin Volunteers were called the\nNational Guard, the liberty-cap was substituted for the harp, and\nIrishmen saluted one another with the title of citizen.\n\nFootnote 18:\n\n  Tone\u2019s _Memoirs_, vol. i. p 205.\n\nOut of this French enthusiasm grew the Society of \u201cUnited Irishmen,\u201d\nwhich soon superseded the Volunteers. The United Irishmen made no\nconcealment of their revolutionary principles. They demanded a radical\nreform in the administration of Ireland, and threatened, if this was\ndenied, to break the bond which held them united with England. They\nopenly proclaimed their intention of stamping out \u201cthe vile and odious\naristocracy,\u201d which was an insuperable obstacle to the progress of the\nIrish people; and to accomplish this they invited the French to invade\nIreland. The landlords, they said, show no mercy; they deserve to\nreceive none.\n\nHowever little sympathy the Catholics might feel with men who\nentertained such violent opinions, they were their natural allies; and\nthe English government, following its old policy of doing what is right\nonly under compulsion, hastened to make concessions. From June, 1792,\nCatholics were admitted as barristers; they were allowed to keep more\nthan two apprentices; and the prohibition of their marriage with\nProtestants was withdrawn. In 1793, when France had declared war against\nEngland, still further concessions were made. The penalties for\nnon-attendance at Protestant worship were abolished. \u201cOn the eve of a\ndesperate war,\u201d said Sir Lawrence Parsons in the House of Commons, \u201cit\nwas unsafe to maintain any longer the principles of entire exclusion.\u201d\nThe Catholics were admitted to the franchise, but were not made eligible\nto Parliament; they were at the same time declared capable of holding\noffices, civil and military, and places of trust, without taking the\noath or receiving the sacrament. This is the third emancipation of the\nCatholics of Ireland. The American Revolution brought about the first,\nand the independence of the Irish Parliament the second.\n\nIn the meantime the crimes and excesses of the French Republicans had\ncooled the zeal of the Irish patriots. The Catholics grew suspicious of\nleaders who applauded the assassins of priests and the profaners of all\nsacred things. A reaction had set in, and the English government seized\nthe opportunity to order the people to lay down their arms; and this\norder was intentionally executed with such cruelty as to provoke\ninsurrections, which, in the lack of leaders and of any plan of action,\nwere easily suppressed. The agents of the United Irishmen had, however,\nsucceeded in interesting the French Republic in the cause of Ireland,\nand in December, 1796, General Hoche set sail for Bantry Bay with\nfifteen thousand men; but the fleet, scattered by a storm, was unable to\neffect a landing. In August, 1798, General Humbert disembarked in\nKillala Bay at the head of fifteen hundred men who had been drawn from\nthe armies of Italy and the Rhine, but he found the Irish people\ncompletely disarmed, and the country in the possession of a powerful\nEnglish army. He nevertheless pushed forward into the interior of the\nisland, routed an army of four thousand men, and finally, when his force\nhad been reduced to eight hundred, capitulated to Lord Cornwallis at the\nhead of thirty thousand. A third expedition, sent out in the month of\nSeptember of the same year, met with no better success. The Rebellion of\n'98 had blazed forth and had been quenched in blood. That it was not\nunprovoked even Mr. Froude confesses.\n\n\u201cThe long era of misgovernment,\u201d he says, \u201chad ripened at last for the\nharvest. Rarely since the inhabitants of the earth have formed\nthemselves into civilized communities had any country suffered from such\na complication of neglect and ill-usage. The Irish people clamored\nagainst Government, and their real wrong, from first to last, had been\nthat there was no government over them; that, under changing forms, the\nuniversal rule among them for four centuries had been the tyranny of the\nstrong over the weak; that from the catalogue of virtues demanded of\nthose who exercised authority over their fellow-men the word justice had\nbeen blotted out. Anarchy had borne its fruits.\u201d[19]\n\nFootnote 19:\n\n  _The English in Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 348.\n\nDuring the violence of the conflict, and in the heat of passion, both\nthe rebels and the British soldiers committed crimes for which no excuse\ncan be offered; but the horrible and deliberate brutality of the English\nafter the suppression of the outbreak has never been surpassed by them\neven in Ireland. When at length the appetite for torture, mutilation,\nand hanging palled, the British ministry resolved to suppress the Irish\nParliament. Nothing was to be feared from the people, for their spirit\nhad been crushed; the lavish expenditure of money in open and shameless\nbribery overcame the scruples of their Protestant representatives; and\nthus, after a struggle of six hundred and thirty-one years (1169-1800),\ncorruption triumphed where every other means had failed. The _Union_ was\ndeclared to exist; but Ireland was permitted to retain its name, its\ninstitutions, laws, and customs, subject, however, to the pleasure of\nthe imperial Parliament.\n\nThe Rebellion of 1803, which accomplished nothing, and that of 1848,\nwhich met with no better fate, close the fateful list of Ireland\u2019s wars.\n\nMen have never fought in a juster cause, and, had they triumphed, their\nnames would live for ever in the scroll of the world\u2019s heroes. They have\nnot bled in vain, if Irishmen will but learn the lesson which their\nfailures teach. Not by arms, but by the force of the holiest of causes,\nis Ireland to obtain the full redress of her wrongs. They only who are\nher enemies or who are ignorant of her history would wish to excite her\npeople to rebellion. That England will grant nothing which she thinks\nherself able to withhold we know; but these periodical outbreaks have\ninvariably given her an opportunity of strengthening the grasp which\npolitical agitation had forced her to relax. Wars which lead only to\nbutcheries are criminal, and they destroy the faith of patriots in their\ncountry\u2019s triumph; while defeat brings divisions and feuds among those\nwho had stood shoulder to shoulder on the field of battle.\n\nAfter the Union Ireland relapsed into a period of lethargic indifference\nwhich might have been mistaken for healthful repose. The Protestant\nascendency entered again upon the beaten paths of tyranny and\noppression, and the Catholics suffered in silence.\n\nThe obstinate bigotry of George III. had prevented Pitt from fulfilling\nthe promise, made at the time of the union of the two kingdoms, to\nrelieve them of their civil disabilities, and the prime minister, whose\nintentions were honest, withdrew from the cabinet. But this step,\nhowever it might exonerate him from further responsibility in the\nmatter, brought no relief to the Catholics; and as the sad experience of\nthe past had taught them the hopelessness of resorting to violent\nmeasures, they entered upon the course of peaceful agitation which,\nunder the wise and skilful direction of O\u2019Connell, compelled the British\nParliament, in April, 1829, to concede to them the rights which had been\nso long and so cruelly withheld.\n\n\u201cThe Duke of Wellington,\u201d said Lord Palmerston, \u201cfound that he could not\ncarry on the government of the country without yielding the Catholic\nquestion, and he immediately surrendered that point\u201d; and George IV.\nsigned the act of Catholic Emancipation with a shudder.\n\nThis great victory, important in itself and its immediate results, was\nyet more important as an evidence of a radical change in the policy\nhenceforward to be followed in seeking redress of Irish grievances.\n\nFor seven hundred years England had been busy in efforts to form a\ngovernment for Ireland, and the result was the most disgraceful failure\nknown in history. For seven hundred years Ireland had rebelled, plotted,\ninvoked foreign aid, in the hope of throwing off the galling yoke; and\nafter centuries of bloodshed she found herself more strongly bound to\nEngland. In the presence of this great historical teaching both nations\nseemed prepared to pause and deliberately to examine their mutual\nrelations, and both seemed to feel that the special objects at which\neach had been aiming were unattainable. The geographical position of the\ntwo countries renders their union inevitable so long as either is able\nto subjugate and hold the other in the bonds of a common government. Had\nIreland been in condition to maintain her independence, England,\nsurrounded by enemies, could never have risen to the position which she\nhas held for centuries. The national aspirations for power and dominion\ncould not be realized while Ireland was permitted to retain her separate\nexistence, and her conquest was therefore inevitable the moment England\nfelt herself strong enough to undertake it; nor can the wildest\nvisionary seriously believe that there is the faintest hope that the\nconnection between them will ever be dissolved except in their common\nruin. So long as England\u2019s power remains, so long will she hold Ireland\nwith the unerring instinct with which a vigorous people clings to its\nnational life; and should England\u2019s downfall come, there is no good\nreason for thinking that it would not be the knell of Ireland\u2019s doom.\nThey have the same language, the same fundamental principles of\ngovernment, the same commercial and political interests; and under these\ncommon influences the differences and antagonisms which still exist are\nlikely to become more and more inactive. The English people are not\nwithout their own grievances, which, in some respects, are more serious\nthan those of the Irish\u2014the consequences of feudalism, which in England\nhas been able to resist more successfully than elsewhere the social\nmovements of modern times. Henceforward Ireland is the natural and\nnecessary ally of the more liberal and fair-minded portion of the\nEnglish people, and she will co-operate most efficiently in helping them\nto bring about the reforms which are so much needed.\n\nFor the perfect religious liberty which can exist only after the\ndisestablishment of the Anglican Church England will be indebted to\nIreland, whose people have already compelled the British Parliament to\nadmit principles and adopt measures which will inevitably lead to the\ndissolution of the union between church and state throughout the whole\nextent of the empire. The Irish land system must be sacrificed as the\nIrish Church has been sacrificed; and this will be the first step\ntowards a complete revolution in the system of land tenure throughout\nGreat Britain. The growing influence and increasing number of English\nCatholics will help greatly to create a more cordial and genuine\nreligious sympathy between the two races of these sister islands; and\nthis sympathy will be still further strengthened when the church in\nEngland, through the disestablishment and disintegration of Anglicanism,\nshall have gained a position and power which will give to her special\nweight in forming public opinion. As the community of interests of the\ntwo countries becomes more manifest, political parties will cease to be\ninfluenced by national or religious prejudice, and will be constituted\nupon principles which relate to the social interests of the people.\nEngland has already confessed the radical error of her Irish policy, and\nher leading statesmen have admitted that the cause of its failure lay in\nits viciousness\u2014in the fact that it wantonly violated the rights and\ninterests of the people because they belonged to a different race and\nheld a different religious faith. Her legislation was unjust because it\nwas narrow and exclusive\u2014favored a class and a creed, and, in order to\nfavor these, repressed and crushed the national energies. The government\nbelieved, whether truly or falsely, that it could rule Ireland only by\nfostering divisions and feuds among her people; and to do this it sought\nby every means to intensify and embitter the prejudice which separated\nthe English from the Irish, the Protestant from the Catholic. With this\nview Scotch and English colonies of Protestants were planted in Ireland,\nand, lest the intercourse and amenities of life should soften the\nasperity of religious bigotry, the government took special care to\nencourage the hatred which kept them aloof from the natives, first by\nlocal separations, and afterwards by the social distinctions which arose\nfrom the enforced poverty and ignorance of the Catholic population. The\nAmerican Revolution taught England, if not the iniquity, the folly of\nthis conduct; and from 1778 to the present day she has been slowly\nreceding from a course in which she had grown old. She has receded\nunwillingly, too, and with hesitation, and has thus often increased the\ndiscontent which she sought to allay. Nations, like individuals, find\nthat it is hard to recover from inveterate habits of wrong-doing. The\nwages of sin must be paid; repentance can save from death, but not from\nhumiliation and punishment. Nor has England repented, but she has\nentered in the way of penitence; she has made some reparation, but has\nnot by any means done all that must be done before Ireland can be\ncontent. For nearly half a century now\u2014that is, since 1829\u2014there has\nbeen, we believe, a sincere desire to govern Ireland fairly, chiefly, no\ndoubt, because English statesmen had come to see that it was not\npossible to govern her in any other way; but these good intentions have\nbeen thwarted by the constitutional repugnance of the English people to\napply strong and efficacious remedies to social disorders. Nowhere else\namong civilized nations are ancient abuses guarded and protected with\nsuch superstitious veneration. Hence the government thought to satisfy\nIreland by half-measures of redress, and these it took so ungraciously\nthat they seemed to be wrung from it, and not conceded with good-will.\nMen are not grateful for favors which are granted because they can no\nlonger be withheld.\n\nEnglishmen still forget that Ireland has the right to be treated by them\nnot merely with justice, but with generous indulgence. So long as the\nroot of the evil is left untouched little will be accomplished by\npruning the branches. Ireland\u2019s curse is the system of land tenure,\nfounded on confiscation and organized to perpetuate a fatal antagonism\nbetween the proprietors and the tillers of the soil. Irishmen will be\ndisaffected and rebellious so long as the national prosperity is\nblighted by a state of things which leaves their country in the hands of\nmen who are happy only when they are away from it.\n\nParliament has passed several land acts, but it would seem that they had\nbeen purposely so framed as to produce no good results. That it is\npossible to change the land system of Ireland radically, without doing\ninjustice to any one, is admitted, and various projects by which this\nmight be done have been laid before Parliament. This is not a question\nof tenant-rights; it lies far deeper. Nor is there any parity in this\nrespect between England and Ireland. In England the land is owned by the\npeople\u2019s natural leaders; in Ireland it is owned by the people\u2019s natural\nenemies. This land question is far more important than any question of\nHome Rule; and if Parliament will but give a proper solution to this\nproblem, Home Rule will no longer be seriously thought of.\n\nWhen landlordism vanishes from Ireland, the day of final reconciliation\nwill be at hand. With it will disappear the filibusters, revolutionists,\nand Fenians, whose disturbing influence in Irish politics is made\npossible by the wrongs which the English government has not the will or\nthe courage to redress. There are other grievances than the land system,\nbut it will not be difficult to do away with them when the country shall\nhave been given back to the people. With a free press, free speech, and\nan organized public agitation sustained and increased by the sympathies\nand interests of the masses of the people of England, it will be found\nimpossible to withhold much longer from Ireland full and complete\njustice; and nothing less will satisfy her people.\n\n\n\n\n                      TENNYSON AS A DRAMATIST.[20]\n\nFootnote 20:\n\n  _Harold_: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.\n  1877.\n\n  _Queen Mary_: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: James R. Osgood &\n  Co. 1875.\n\n\nAlfred Tennyson is to-day one of the household gods of English-speaking\npeoples. He has a place in every library, a niche in every memory, an\necho in every heart. He has unquestionably added a new and brilliant\npage to the great book of English literature. He has set there something\nthat was not there before, and that is not likely to fade away with\ntime. Doubtless there are men who would deny this. There are literary\nGorgons who would, if they could, stare every man into stone. There are\ncritics whose nature seems to distil venom, and who find no sweetness\nsave in their own gall. To men of this class the very fact of a man\nbeing praised is in itself sufficient cause for condemnation. Over and\nabove these there are probably some who honestly dislike or do not care\nfor Tennyson. For such we do not speak, but for the great mass of\nEnglish readers in whose estimation Tennyson occupies a very\nconspicuous, if somewhat undefinable, position. By them he is liked, and\nliked better than any living poet; and, indeed, he has given excellent\nreasons for being so liked.\n\nThat there have been greater English poets, even his most enthusiastic\nadmirers must allow; that there have been few sweeter, all who have read\nhim and others will admit. Indeed, sweetness, with its twin-sister\npurity, is one of the marked characteristics of Tennyson\u2019s verse. No man\never mistook Tennyson for a Pythoness, a Cassandra, a Jeremiah. He is\nnot heroic like Homer. Much of the idyllic grace, but little of the real\nmassiveness, of Virgil he has. He cannot scoff like Horace, or Byron, or\nShelley. He cannot scourge like Dante, observe with the luminous\nphilosophy, the high inspiration of Shakspere, or build up a mighty\nedifice like Milton. He can do none of these things. In some respects he\nis perhaps less than the least of these poets. He is a sweet singer,\nmade for sunshine and peace and harmony; the poet of the happy household\nover whose threshold passes from time to time the sad shadow of a quiet\nsorrow; not the poet of despair, of wrath, of agony, of the fiercer\npassions or tumultuous joys, whose very excess is pain.\n\nTrue it is that, as he sang in his earlier days,\n\n    \u201cThe poet in a golden clime was born,\n      With golden stars above;\n    Dower\u2019d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,\n        The love of love.\u201d\n\nBut he is not such a poet. Never has he given voice to the hate of hate,\nthe scorn of scorn, or to that of which both of these are born\u2014the love\nof love. Whenever he has attempted it he has failed. He is too retiring,\ntoo domestic. \u201cWith an _inner_ voice\u201d his river runs, and we have to\nlisten with ears nicely attuned to catch its whisper and its meaning. So\ninner is it, indeed, that it is often obscure and quite escapes the dull\nhearing of ordinary men. His first volume, published in 1830, is almost\nfulsomely dedicated to Queen Victoria, who is certainly not a heroic\nfigure, whatever else she may be. It is a picture gallery filled with\nClaribels and Lilians, and Isabels and Madelines, and Marianas and\nAdelines\u2014all very sweet and delicate and dainty, but not inspiring. He\nsings to \u201cthe owl,\u201d he dedicates odes \u201cto memory,\u201d he lingers by \u201cthe\ndeserted house,\u201d chants the dirge of \u201cthe dying swan,\u201d and so on. In\n1832 he enlarges his gallery by the addition of the lovely \u201cLady of\nShalott,\u201d \u201cMariana in the South,\u201d \u201cEle\u00e4nore,\u201d and we come nearer to the\npoet\u2019s heart in \u201cThe Miller\u2019s Daughter,\u201d whom he evidently prefers to\nthe haughty and much-abused \u201cLady Clara Vere de Vere.\u201d Something, too,\nof his more marked peculiarities show here in the \u201cPalace of Art\u201d and\nthat dreamy, delicious poem, \u201cThe Lotos-Eaters.\u201d He is intensely\nEnglish\u2014an admirable quality, be it remarked _sotto voce_, in an English\npoet laureate. He closes the volume with some strong verses:\n\n    \u201cYou ask me, why, tho\u2019 ill at ease,\n      Within this region I subsist,\n      Whose spirits falter in the mist,\n    And languish for the purple seas?\n\n    \u201cIt is the land that freemen till,\n      That sober-suited Freedom chose,\n      The land, where girt with friends or foes\n    A man may speak the thing he will;\n\n    \u201cA land of settled government,\n      A land of just and old renown,\n      Where Freedom broadens slowly down\n    From precedent to precedent....\u201d\n\nThe intense difference between the spirit here expressed and that of his\nmore immediate and brilliant predecessors and countrymen, Byron and\nShelley and Keats, may possibly account in some degree for the hold\nwhich Tennyson has taken on the English heart. He was a man, too, who\nfelt the throbbings of the age and touched with skilful fingers the\npulse of Time. Though anxious for the future, he was troubled with no\n\u201cDreams of Darkness,\u201d or hollow-eyed despair, or morbid imaginings. He\nrealizes change; he has hopes for a world over which he sees a God\nruling. He sings boldly of \u201cimmortal souls,\u201d and knows no \u201cfirst dark\nday of nothingness.\u201d He warns the intelligence of his countrymen to\u2014\n\n    \u201c... pamper not a hasty time,\n      Nor feed with crude imaginings\n      The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings,\n    That every sophister can lime.\n\n    \u201cDeliver not the tasks of might\n      To weakness, neither hide the ray\n      From those, not blind, who wait for day\n    Tho\u2019 sitting girt with doubtful light.\n\n    \u201cMake knowledge circle with the winds;\n      But let her herald, Reverence, fly\n      Before her to whatever sky\n    Bear seed of men and growth of minds.\u201d\n\nThese lines are noble, true, and Christian; and again:\n\n    \u201cMeet is it changes should control\n      Our being, lest we rust in ease.\n      We all are changed by still degrees,\n    _All but the basis of the soul_.\n\n    \u201cSo let the change which comes be free\n      To ingroove itself with that which flies,\n      And work, a joint of state, that plies\n    Its office, moved with sympathy.\n\n    \u201cA saying, hard to shape in act;\n      _For all the past of Time reveals\n      A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,\n    Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact_.\n\n    \u201cEv\u2019n now we hear with inward strife\n      _A motion toiling in the gloom\u2014\n      The Spirit of the years to come\n    Yearning to mix himself with Life_.\n\n    \u201cA slow-develop\u2019d strength awaits\n      Completion in a painful school;\n      Phantoms of other forms of rule,\n    New Majesties of mighty States\u2014\n\n    \u201cThe warders of the growing hour,\n      But vague in vapor, hard to mark;\n      And round them sea and air are dark\n    With great contrivances of Power.\u201d\n\nThis was published in 1832, a period when agitations about the suffrage,\nand the Corn Laws, and Catholic Emancipation\u2014questions that shook\nEngland to its foundations, only to fix them deeper than before\u2014were\nrife or looming up like awful spectres in the dim mist of the future.\nTennyson did not dread them, though he realized their vastness and\nimportance. Most certainly the verses just quoted stamp him as a close\nobserver of events in those days and a man of right moral balance, to\nwhom might with some measure of truth be applied his own words:\n\n    \u201cHe saw thro\u2019 life and death, thro\u2019 good and ill,\n      He saw thro\u2019 his own soul.\n    The marvel of the everlasting will,\n        An open scroll,\n\n      Before him lay....\u201d\n\nStill, these nobler passages are only fragments. He prefers his quiet\nmood. In 1842 appeared the first of his idyls, the \u201cMorte d\u2019Arthur.\u201d\nHere again the better nature of the poet\u2014a nature that we are grieved to\nsee apparently soured and crossed, not softened and made more venerable,\nby the hand of Time\u2014breaks forth in the grand prayer of the dying king:\n\n    \u201cIf thou shouldst never see my face again,\n    Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer\n    Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice\n    Rise like a fountain for me night and day.\n    For what are men better than sheep or goats\n    That nourish a blind life within the brain,\n    If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,\n    Both for themselves and those who call them friend?\n    For so the whole round earth is every way\n    Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.\u201d\n\nIt was the Catholic instinct breaking through the wall of prejudice and\nfalse teaching which, in centuries of separation from the truth, have\ngrown up around the English heart, that gave voice to this beautiful\nconception. Many are the instances where non-Catholic poets have leaped\nup to truths of this kind which the whole force of their training and\neducation ran counter to. It is, as it were, the flash of inspiration\ncoming on them in spite of themselves and issuing in music. The divinity\nof their art has lifted them above all prejudice into the sun-bright\nheaven. Thus Byron sings to the Blessed Virgin in strains that a saint\nmight envy. Unfortunately, the instances are many also where men lifted\nup on the heights of inspiration, or by the deep yearnings of their own\nsoul, have, as it were, glanced into heaven and seen the face of Truth,\nonly to fall back again to their lower level, dazed and blinded by the\nvery glimpse that was revealed to them. And we find them deny with their\nown lips and actions what their greater selves had announced.\n\nIt is not our purpose to enter into an elaborate criticism of Tennyson.\nThat task has been done time and again, and by pens infinitely better\nfitted for it than ours. We are only taking touches here and there to\nbring out the poet in his truest colors, in his best and his worst\nlights, in order to add point to the main purport of this article, which\nis to show that Tennyson has mistaken himself and his powers in the\n_r\u00f4le_ which he has thought fit to assume in his later years. In his\nearlier dreams he is full of high thoughts and large aspirations. \u201cMy\nfaith is large in Time, and that which shapes it to some perfect end,\u201d\nhe tells us. He looks forward longingly to \u201cthe golden year.\u201d He is\npossessed with the spirit of Christian purity, and gives constant\nexpression to it, notably in \u201cSt. Agnes\u201d and \u201cSir Galahad.\u201d In \u201cThe Two\nVoices\u201d he argues down atheism. He lays bare the grinning savagery of a\nwasted intellect and debauched life, only to punish it with the power of\na man who knows what virtue is and feels it in his soul. He sometimes\ncatches those inarticulate murmurs of the heart which breathe in\nfeelings rather than in words, where feeling is too deep for words, and\nthey well out in song, as in the\n\n    \u201cBreak, break, break,\n      On thy cold gray stones, O sea!\u201d\n\nwhile in the \u201cIn Memoriam\u201d the poet, stricken to the heart, has given\nvoice to that sorrow, and the effect it has on our life, which most of\nus have felt when some bright intelligence has been taken from our side,\nwhose young years were blossoming fair with promise of a great and good\nfuture.\n\nIn all this he is excellent, perhaps unsurpassed; in all that is sad, or\nsweet, or picturesque, or na\u00efvely joyous our hearts are with him. He\nstands alone in his dainty pictures of scenery, of women, of certain\nmen. He touches the commonplaces of the time with a magic pencil. He\nbeguiled the hard and stubborn Saxon, which yielded reluctantly even to\nthe greatest masters of English verse, into a music it had never known\nbefore. He built up fairy castles, and galleries and cities of old time,\nand peopled them with a fair array of Arthurs and Launcelots, of\nGuineveres and Elaines, of Merlins and Gawains, whose very names were\nmusic, and whose deeds were just such as befitted scenes of witchery. He\nis, moreover, a man of marked personality and nationality in his\nwritings. He is an Englishman and nothing else. He does not care to be\nanything else or more; for he can see nothing greater. All his scenery\nis English; his characters are English; his thoughts, feelings, and\naspirations English. Byron\u2019s corsairs and giaours and Childe Harolds\nwould fight as fiercely, frown as darkly, sin as deeply, in any\ncivilized language as in English\u2014in warmer languages even better,\nperhaps; Shakspere\u2019s profound observations and reading of character\nwould have reached the world through any other channel as surely as,\nperhaps more readily than, through the English; some would doubt whether\nMilton ever wrote English at all. But all Tennyson is English or\nnothing. His dawns, his gloamings, his sunrises, his sunsets, his\nlandscapes, his fens, his fogs, his smoke, his moonlight and moonlight\neffects, his winds, his birds, his flowers, his reeds and rushes, his\ntrees, his brooklets, his seas, his cliffs, his coloring, his ruins, his\ngraveyards, his walks and rides, his love of good cheer, his hums of\ngreat cities, his profound respect for the respectable, are all English.\nHe has the sturdy English common sense and no small share, as will be\nseen, of English prejudice; and, though he feels something of the\nmovements of the outer world, he has all the English narrowness of\nvision. So that, while his works will probably never become a part of\nany other literature than the English\u2014for they would not be understood\nelsewhere\u2014they have won their way into the English heart for their very\n_homeliness_, if for no higher reason. So long as this English poet was\ncontent to sing to us, we were content to listen, were his lay sad or\ngay. He had been singing all our life, and we were not weary of his\nmusic, even though the music was all pitched in much the same key. We\nnever tire of a familiar voice that we love. But when we would be roused\nand wrought up by some martial strain, by some great event, by one of\nthose movements that catch the heart of a people and sway it and hold it\ncaptive, by the \u201cthoughts that breathe and words that burn,\u201d Tennyson\nfails. Surely, for such an Englishman as he, the death of the Duke of\nWellington ought to have proved an inspiring theme. It is true that as\nthe years went on, and the memory of Waterloo faded, and the hero of\nWaterloo moved about and took his part in civic affairs, people (and\npeople are ever ready to weary of their gods, if their gods are too near\nthem and live too long) began to clip and cut down the gigantic\nproportions of the Iron Duke\u2019s colossal figure. Indeed, before he died\nit is safe to say that half England regarded England\u2019s hero as rather an\nordinary sort of person and a worthy but extremely fortunate soldier.\nStill, death generally brings back the liveliest memories of deeds that\nare, or are thought to be, great and good, and a true poet\u2019s song who\nbelieved all of Wellington that Tennyson\u2019s poem expresses might well\nhave been tipped with fire when Wellington died. Yet Tennyson\u2019s funeral\node is poor, tame; where not tame, forced; and, like all such\ncompositions, indefinitely strung out. All his readers know the opening:\n\n    \u201cBury the Great Duke\n      With an empire\u2019s lamentation,\n    Let us bury the Great Duke,\n      To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,\n    Mourning when their leaders fall,\n    Warriors carry the warrior\u2019s pall\n    And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall!\u201d\n\nIt is plain from the start that he is writing for a public. This great\nduke needs a capital G and a capital D to impress duly that public, the\nBritish (which is always ready to be awed by capitals attached to\ntitles), with the great duke\u2019s immensity. There is something of the\nheavy English undertaker about this\u2014a display, a forced solemnity, a\nmeasured tread, a sense of sham. The great duke is lost sight of in the\nfunereal trappings, the crowd, and accompaniment. See how Byron seizes\non the very heart of an event, and in a few lines pictures for us the\nwhole, the before and after. He is describing the greater man by whose\nfall the great duke rose to fame:\n\n    \u201cTis done\u2014but yesterday a king!\n      And arm\u2019d with kings to strive\u2014\n    And now thou art a nameless thing:\n      So abject\u2014yet alive!\n    Is this the man of thousand thrones,\n    Who strew\u2019d our earth with hostile bones,\n      And can he thus survive?\n    Since he, miscall\u2019d the Morning Star,\n    Nor man nor fiend has fallen so far.\u201d\n\nThis indeed is \u201cthe scorn of scorn,\u201d and the entire ode is replete with\nit. Byron, who had been a great admirer of Napoleon, could not consent\nto his idol lowering himself so far as to receive his life from England.\nHe could not forgive himself for yielding to\n\n    \u201cThat spell upon the minds of men\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n      That led them to adore\n    Those Pagod things of sabre-sway,\n    With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.\u201d\n\n\u201cO civic muse,\u201d cries Tennyson,\n\n            \u201cTo such a name,\n    To such a name for ages long,\n    To such a name\n    Preserve a broad approach of fame,\n    And ever-ringing avenues of song.\u201d\n\nHere lies the whole secret of the ode\u2019s comparative poverty. Tennyson is\nby position, if not by profession, \u201ca civic muse,\u201d and the civic muse is\nnever heroic or great. It is more apt, like Turveydrop, to be \u201ca model\nof deportment,\u201d especially when it follows the advice of Mrs. Chick and\n\u201cmakes an effort.\u201d This, for instance, is eminently civic:\n\n    \u201cWhere shall we lay the man whom we deplore?\n    Here, in streaming London\u2019s central roar.\n    Let the sound of those he wrought for,\n    And the feet of those he fought for,\n    Echo round his bones for evermore.\n\n    \u201cLead out the pageant: sad and slow,\n    As fits an universal woe,\n    Let the long procession go,\n    And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,\n    And let the mournful martial music blow;\n    The last great Englishman is low.\u201d\n\nWe hope that Wellington was not \u201cthe last great Englishman.\u201d If so,\nEnglish greatness must indeed be \u201clow.\u201d But the thought is irresistible:\nIs not the undertaker\u2019s hand again visible in all this? How different is\nit from the sad, simple, manly beauty of the lament of a poet, whose\nname scarcely stands in the list of English authors, for one of those\nsoldiers who gloriously failed! Here is how Wolfe sings of the burial of\nSir John Moore:\n\n    \u201cNot a drum was heard, not a funeral note,\n    As his corse to the rampart we hurried;\n    Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot\n    O\u2019er the grave where our hero we buried.\n\n    \u201cWe buried him darkly at dead of night,\n    The sods with our bayonets turning,\n    By the glimmering moonbeam\u2019s fitful light\n    And the camp-fires dimly burning.\u201d\n\nAgain, is this a worthy echo of \u201ca people\u2019s voice\u201d?\n\n    \u201cAnd thro\u2019 the centuries let a people\u2019s voice\n    In full acclaim,\n    A people\u2019s voice,\n    The proof and echo of all human fame,\n    A people\u2019s voice, when they rejoice\n    At civic revel and pomp and game,\n    Attest their great commander\u2019s claim\n    With honor, honor, honor to him,\n    Eternal honor to his name.\u201d\n\nWhat wearisome and forced repetition, what commonplace allusions! This\nis not Tennyson. The very verse is burdened with its vulgar prose, and\nhalts and stumbles in clumsy confusion meant for art. And here is his\ndescription in the same poem of the battle of Waterloo:\n\n    \u201cDash\u2019d on every rocky square\n    Their surging chargers foam\u2019d themselves away;\n    Last, the Prussian trumpet blew;\n    Thro\u2019 the long-tormented air\n    Heaven flash\u2019d a sudden jubilant ray,\n    And down we swept and charged and overthrew.\n    So great a soldier taught us there,\n    What long-enduring hearts could do\n    In that world\u2019s earthquake, Waterloo!\u201d\n\nThe best expression in it, the last, is borrowed from Byron\u2019s wonderful\ndescription of the same battle:\n\n    \u201cStop! for thy tread is on an Empire\u2019s dust!\n    _An Earthquake\u2019s spoil_ is sepulchred below!\u201d\n\nAgain in Byron these two lines tell the whole story, as does that other,\n\n    \u201cThe grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!\u201d\n\nSo with Tennyson\u2019s \u201cWar Songs\u201d and \u201cNational Songs,\u201d published in the\nedition of 1830 and wisely omitted in later editions. They are not much\nabove the level of many fledglings\u2019 performances in a like strain. They\nfall dull on the heart:\n\n      \u201cThere standeth our ancient enemy,\n        Hark! he shouteth\u2014the ancient enemy!\n      On the ridge of the hill his banners rise;\n        They stream like fire in the skies;\n      Hold up the Lion of England on high\n        Till it dazzle and blind his eyes.\n\n    _Chorus_: Shout for England!\n              Ho! for England!\n              George for England!\n              Merry England!\n              England for aye!\u201d\n\nHere are the chorus and full chorus of his \u201cNational Song\u201d:\n\n        \u201cFor the French, the Pope may shrive \u2019em.\n    For the devil a whit we heed \u2019em:\n    As for the French, God speed \u2019em\n        Unto their heart\u2019s desire,\n    And the merry devil drive \u2019em\n        Through the water and fire.\n            Our glory is our freedom,\n              We lord it o\u2019er the sea;\n            We are the sons of freedom.\n                We are free.\u201d\n\nAs Mr. Tennyson has been wise enough\u2014for shame\u2019s sake, presumably\u2014to\nomit these and similar sorry pieces from his later editions, it may seem\nunfair to quote them against him now. We quote them, however,\nintentionally, to show that there is a strong streak of English\nnarrowness and Protestant bigotry in his nature which we were happy to\nthink dead, until within the last few years it has cropped out again. In\n1852 there were probabilities of war between England and France, then\nunder Louis Napoleon. Tennyson thought to rouse his countrymen, and the\nstrongest appeal he can make is to religious bigotry:\n\n    \u201cRise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead;\n    The world\u2019s last tempest darkens overhead;\n          The Pope has bless\u2019d him;\n          The Church caress\u2019d him;\n    He triumphs; may be we shall stand alone.\n          Britons, guard your own.\n\n    \u201cHis ruthless host is bought with plunder\u2019d gold,\n    By lying priests the peasants\u2019 votes controll\u2019d.\n          All freedom vanish\u2019d,\n          The true men banish\u2019d, etc.\n\n    \u201cRome\u2019s dearest daughter now is captive France,\n    The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance,\n          _Would unrelenting,\n          Kill all dissenting_,\n    Till we were left to fight for truth alone.\n          Britons, guard your own.\u201d\n\nAnd this is the gentle Tennyson! But we forbear from comment other than\nthe verses themselves suggest, and turn at last to our more immediate\nobject.\n\nWhatever fault may be found here and there with Tennyson, one thing is\ncertain: his renown was great and his fame established chiefly by his\nearlier and better works and by the peculiar characteristics which we\nhave attempted to point out. The poet, however, seems not to have been\nsatisfied. He was weary of the graceful path by which he ambled gently\nup to fame, and would seek by a new and rugged road a higher place than\nhe already occupied in that temple where are gathered the mighty men who\nhave wrought with the pen monuments more enduring than marble. In an\nevil hour he tempted fate, and fate gave him a severe warning. Weary of\nthe minstrel's lute which had charmed the world, he would be what the\npoets of old were thought to be\u2014a _vates_, an inspired prophet-and his\nvaticination was _Queen Mary_.\n\nAs that drama has been dealt with in these pages by another pen, we\nshall not touch on it here more than to say that never were the minds of\nTennyson\u2019s countrymen better prepared to receive and applaud a work\nintended, as this plainly was, to be an outcry against Rome and a\npicture of one of the fierce struggles between England and Rome. Mr.\nGladstone had prepared the way and set all the world warring on\n\u201cVaticanism.\u201d Tennyson could not have chosen a better time for the\npublication of his drama, and, were it a work of power and passion, it\ncould not have failed to catch the heart of the people. Never, on the\nother hand, could he have chosen a better time for a higher duty: that\nof, in the words of his great master, still in his right hand carrying\ngentle peace \u201cto silence envious tongues.\u201d If the drama failed, it\nfailed in the face of every incentive to success.\n\nFail it did. It was plain, even to friendly critics, that the author of\n_Queen Mary_ was not a dramatist, and so it was hinted generally in the\nmildest possible terms. What was the reason of the failure?\n\nWe have shown, we believe sufficiently, that Tennyson failed wherever he\nattempted to yoke the passions. His hand was too weak to curb them. His\ngenius is reflective, introspective, descriptive. It has not the flash,\nthe white heat of inspiration. It is always Tennyson who is singing,\ntalking to, arguing with us, describing for us. He is a person, not a\nvoice\u2014a very pleasing, scholarly, refined, and in the main right-minded\nperson\u2014but he is for ever giving utterance to his own peculiar thoughts\nin his own peculiar style. The highest form of poetry, as of oratory, is\nnot this. It is that undefinable and truest expression of feeling, of\nhope, of agony, of despair, of wrath, of courage, of any of the passions\nthat lie dormant in the human breast, which at once elicits a responsive\necho from the heart of humanity, so that we do not say, How sweet, how\ntender, how strong is this man, but, How true to nature is this thought!\nThus it is that the greatest poets are the voices of all the world;\ntheir works the inheritance of all the world. In their highest heights\nthey belong to humanity, and to no nation.\n\nThe dramatic we believe to be the highest form of poetry, because it\nalone attempts to portray life itself, life in action; it is not a\ndescription, however magnificently done, of life. There lies between it\nand all other forms of poetry the difference that exists between the\npainting of a hero and the hero himself. The one is the man, thinking,\nliving, moving, breathing, speaking his thoughts, doing his deeds; the\nother after all is only an image, more or less vivid, of him on canvas.\nIt may catch the color of the eye, the expression of the countenance,\nthe texture of the dress, the shape, the form; but at the very best it\nis a picture, no more, infinitely removed from the reality.\n\nIf this be a right conception of the difference between dramatic and all\nother kinds of poetry\u2014and it seems to us to be, although it might need\nmore elaboration to impress it upon the reader\u2019s mind\u2014it will be plain\nthat the dramatic poet needs nothing short of the highest inspiration in\norder to make him catch the very breathings of men\u2019s souls and throw\nthem into living forms, as truly as the master actor loses his own\npersonality and lets it sink or become absorbed utterly in the various\ncharacters he portrays. No mere change of costume will effect the\nmetamorphosis needed to impress the spectator with the reality of the\nchange in character. In the same way no clipping of a poem into acts and\nscenes, and no allotting of certain lines to certain different names,\nwill convert a descriptive poem into a drama. All the world will at once\ndetect the fraud or the inherent defect.\n\nA not uncommon phase of an exasperated mind is to refuse to recognize\nfailure. Tennyson tried again, rather hastily, and in the same\ndirection, with the satisfactory result of making a more disastrous\nfailure than before. The blunder of _Queen Mary_ has been emphasized in\n_Harold_. The first named may have left some minds in doubt whether or\nnot its author could construct a drama; the production of the second has\neffectually set all such doubts at rest. The critics who in the first\ninstance were kind are in the second cruel. We have rarely seen a more\ngeneral and resolutely contemptuous dealing with the pretensions of any\nwriter at all than in the treatment which _Harold_ has received at the\nhands of critics of every shade of opinion, English as well as American.\n\n_Harold_ is simply narrative throughout\u2014spoken narrative, indeed. A\ndrama must be _act_. Scenes prior to and leading up to the Norman\nConquest of England are depicted with more or less beauty of limning,\nbut they are loose, shifting, independent of each other. There is no\nsecret thread to link the whole and give it a unity of purpose and of\nplan, without which there is no drama. There are five acts. There might\nhave been fifty, or only two, or only one, so far as the slow working of\nthe whole up to the catastrophe at the conclusion goes. The first act\nopens in London at King Edward\u2019s palace. Almost the first twenty pages\nare occupied by various characters in discussing the appearance,\nmeaning, and portent of a comet. This is, of course, the old stage trick\nused to knit the coming horror with troubles in the air. Shakspere uses\nit often, notably in _Julius C\u00e6sar_, but with him the troubled elements\nobey the magic wand of Prospero and minister to man, and are but the\naccompaniment of great events. Tennyson\u2019s comet is too much for his\ncharacters. They puzzle themselves about it until we grow tired of it\nand its three tails.\n\nAfter the comet has run its course, the characters being brought\ntogether to discuss it, Harold intimates to the king his intention to go\nto Normandy; the king warns him not to go; then follows a lively\ndiscussion on personal matters between the queen, Harold, and his\nbrothers, which almost ends in a fight; the comet or \u201cgrisly star\u201d is\nintroduced again, and the scene ends apropos of nothing in particular,\nunless a hint of a coming plot on the part of Aldwyth. The second scene,\nthe best in the drama, is a very sweet piece of love-making between\nHarold and Edith, upon which Aldwyth again throws her shadow, and the\nact ends. The second act wrecks Harold at Ponthieu, whence his\ntransition to the power of Count William of Normandy\u2014or Duke William, as\nwe are more in the habit of calling him\u2014is easy. Indeed, to a dramatist\nthere was no reason whatever for the first scene of this act, as the\nstory of Harold\u2019s capture might, if it were necessary, have been told in\na line or two while Harold was actually in the power of William. The\nrest of this long act is taken up with William\u2019s compelling Harold to\nswear, on the relics of the saints, to help him to the crown of England.\nThe third act presents the death of King Edward, who wills the crown to\nHarold. The second scene gives another piece of love-making between\nHarold and Edith, not so happy as the first, and announces the invasion\nof Northumbria by Tostig and Harold Hardrada. The fourth act opens in\nNorthumbria. In the first scene of it the factions of the rival\nchieftains are put an end to by the marriage of Harold with Aldwyth, and\nthus the only attempt at a shadow even of a plot is summarily disposed\nof. The other scenes are before and after the battle of Stamford Bridge,\nand the act closes with news of the landing of the Normans. The fifth\nact opens on the field of Senlac. Harold has a dream in his tent, too\nlike that of Richard III. in conception. Stigand describes the battle of\nHastings to Edith, and the death of Harold. Here the drama should have\nclosed. Anything after it on the stage would certainly come tamely. But\nTennyson cannot resist the temptation to search for the body of Harold,\nand with the finding of it, the death of Edith on it, and what in\nordinary parlance would be called William\u2019s directions for the funeral\narrangements, the play closes.\n\nSuch is _Harold_\u2014narrative, narrative, narrative throughout; very\nexcellent narrative some of it, but no drama, no centre of interest\naround which the whole is made to turn. The misfortune about all\nhistorical plays is that the reader begins with a full knowledge of all\nthe circumstances, and to make them dramatically interesting needs a\nmost skilful adaptation of plot and counterplot, a slow unfolding of\nevents from some necessary cause, a development of character, a silent\nFate, so to say, moving in and out, and, in spite of all things, shaping\nevents to one great end, so that, while we feel the consummation\nimpending, we yet know not how, or when, or where, or by what\ninstrumentality it will come. There is nothing of this in _Harold_.\n\nIt has been seen that Tennyson has no great love for the Pope. Indeed,\nif some of the lines quoted represent the man, he has, of late years at\nleast, the heartiest hatred for the Catholic Church. We cannot help\nthat, however much we may regret it. We must take men as they are, and,\nif Tennyson hates the Pope, why let him hate him and be happy. The Pope\ncan exist and rule the Catholic Church, and be obeyed, revered, loved,\nand honored by intellects as bright at least as Mr. Tennyson\u2019s, for all\nthat gentleman\u2019s hate. A true dramatist, however, sinks, or at least\ndisguises, all his private personal feelings in depicting known\ncharacters or types of character. This is only to be true to nature, to\nart, and to history. Where there is question regarding the right reading\nof a character or a period, a writer is of course at liberty, after\nhaving consulted respectable authorities, to form his own estimate. Men\nwho lived in the eleventh century must be true to their time. To make\nsuch men think, argue, reflect, question, doubt on most matters,\nparticularly on matters of faith, just as do men of the nineteenth\ncentury, is a gross solecism. It is absurd and self-condemnatory on the\nface of it. To make eleventh-century Catholics speak of the Catholic\nfaith, and Rome, and the pope after the fashion of the average\nProtestant or infidel journalist in these days, is absurd, not to\ncharacterize such practice by a harsher expression. This is what\nTennyson has gone out of his way to do in _Harold_; and the only\nimpression with which we rise from its perusal is that the writer\ndetests Normans and Catholics. Between the Vere de Veres and the Pope\nTennyson has lost his temper and his right hand has forgotten its\ncunning.\n\nThe drama presents no character of any special interest. Harold, Edward\nthe Confessor, and William of Normandy, the three principal personages,\nare much the same first as last. In stage terms, William may be set down\nas the \u201cheavy villain\u201d of the piece, and a very heavy villain he is;\nEdward the Confessor as the \u201cfirst old man\u201d; and Harold as the \u201cwalking\ngentleman.\u201d Edward is made\u2014unintentionally too, it would seem\u2014one of the\nsilliest old men that ever walked the boards. As for his sanctity,\nimagine a saint speaking of himself in this style:\n\n                          \u201cAnd I say it\n    For the last time, perchance, before I go\n    To find the sweet refreshment of the Saints.\u201d\n\nSaints, in the Catholic Church at least, are not, as a rule, quite so\nsure about finding \u201cthe sweet refreshment of the saints.\u201d Indeed, they\nhave far graver doubts on this point often than sinners. But lest some\nof his courtiers might feel tempted to doubt the rapid transit to heaven\nof a man so thoroughly sure of his place beforehand, the king informs\nthem:\n\n    \u201cI have lived a life of utter purity:\n    I have builded the great church of holy Peter:\n    I have wrought miracles.\u201d\n\nTrue, every word of it. But it might have occurred to Mr. Tennyson that\nEdward the Confessor was mindful, at least, of that admonition: \u201cLet not\nthine own mouth, but another\u2019s, praise thee.\u201d There never was a saint,\nto our knowledge, so fond of talking about himself, his miracles, his\ngood deeds, his place here and hereafter. Listen to this again:\n\n    \u201cAnd miracles will in my name be wrought\n    Hereafter. I have fought the fight and go\u2014\n    I see the flashing of the gates of pearl\u2014\n    And it is well with me, tho\u2019 some of you\n    Have scorn\u2019d me\u2014ay\u2014but after I am gone\n    Woe, woe to England! I have had a vision:\n    The seven sleepers in the cave at Ephesus\n    Have turn\u2019d from right to left.\u201d\n\nThe whole thing is incongruous. It smacks rather of a converted\n\u201cbrother\u201d giving his \u201cexperiences\u201d and how he \u201cgot religion\u201d before a\nhighly-wrought meeting of \u201cChristian workers.\u201d Had the \u201cdevil\u2019s\nadvocate\u201d only caught scent of any such expressions in the life of the\nreal Edward, it is to be feared he would never have been canonized.\nSaints are not in the habit of canonizing themselves. The only thing\nthat occurs to us as on a par with Mr. Tennyson\u2019s picture of a saint is\none by Mr. William Cullen Bryant in a short and remarkably silly poem\nrecently published by him. It is entitled \u201cA Legend of St. Martin,\u201d and\nthe saint, while still in the flesh, speaks as follows:\n\n    \u201cThus spake the saint: 'We part to-night;\n    _I am St. Martin_, and I give you here\n    The means to make your fortunes.\u2019\u201d\n\nThe author\u2019s favorite churchman is Stigand, who, whether Catholic or\nheretic, no man who had read the history of the time carefully and\nhonestly could by any possibility hold up for admiration. Mr. Tennyson,\nhowever, may consider himself excused on points of historical accuracy,\ninasmuch as he informs us in his dedication that \u201cafter Old-World\nrecords\u2014such as the Bayeux tapestry and the Roman de Rou\u2014Edward\nFreeman\u2019s _History of the Norman Conquest_,\u201d and Bulwer Lytton\u2019s\nhistorical romance treating of the same times, \u201chave been mainly\nhelpful\u201d to him \u201cin writing this drama.\u201d But he cannot be excused for\nsuch culpable negligence in searching out authorities when attempting to\ndepict in a truthful manner a most important historical epoch. Had he\ntaken the easy pains of going a little deeper into history and\nauthorities, it would probably have been better for himself and his\ndrama, or perhaps, with his evident bias, he would not have written it\nat all. He loves Stigand, a thoroughly bad prelate, simply because\nStigand was against the pope. If Tennyson selects his Catholic heroes\nfrom all men who have been against the pope, he will find his hands full\nof very queer characters, some of them worse than Stigand. Imagine even\nStigand saying, in the exact tone of a modern unbeliever:\n\n                    \u201c... In our windy world\n    What\u2019s up is faith, what\u2019s down is heresy.\u201d\n\nCertain modern Anglican prelates and ministers, or any man who\nacknowledges no unchangeable deposit of divine truth, might speak in\njust such a strain. The words, if they mean anything, mean simply that\nthere is no such thing at all as real faith or doctrine. Stigand knew\nbetter than that. His peculiar vice was a very English one\u2014an overdue\nand unscrupulous regard for this world\u2019s goods. This Catholic prelate\ntells Harold of a sum of money which he keeps concealed at the other\u2019s\nservice, to be asked for at his \u201cmost need,\u201d in the following eloquent\nstyle:\n\n    \u201cRed gold\u2014a hundred purses\u2014yea, and more!\n    If thou canst make a wholesome use of these\n    To chink against the Norman, I do believe\n    _My old crook\u2019d spine would bud out two young wings\n    To fly to heaven straight with_.\u201d\n\nTennyson doubtless considers this very English and spirited. Stigand may\nhave disliked the Normans, and doubtless did. With all our hearts! But\nthis mode of expressing his dislike is, in the mouth of a Catholic and a\nprelate, surely not in character.\n\nAgain he asks:\n\n    \u201c... Be there no saints of England\n    To help us from their brethren yonder?\u201d\n\nAs though a Catholic or Christian could dream of the saints warring in\nheaven or of affixing nationality to sanctity! Tennyson\u2019s Edward, with a\nsolitary gleam of intelligence, rebukes him thus:\n\n                  \u201cPrelate,\n    The Saints are one, ...\u201d\n\nyet immediately falls into the absurd blunder he rebukes by adding:\n\n      \u201cBut those (Saints) of Normanland\n    Are mightier than our own.\u201d\n\nWhile witnessing the battle of Hastings Stigand cries out in an ecstasy\nof admiration at Harold\u2019s prowess: \u201cWar-woodman of old Woden!\u201d Could any\nChristian man, Catholic or non-Catholic, couple a Christian warrior\u2019s\nname with the detestable deity of the pagan North?\n\nThe character of Harold, too, is incongruous. He is represented as a\nmost brave, wise, and honorable man, incapable of fear or falsehood:\n\u201cbroad and honest, breathing an easy gladness.\u201d He weakens in many\nplaces. We cannot here go into a historical inquiry respecting the\nalleged oath of Harold on the relics of saints to help William to the\ncrown of England. Much is made of it by Tennyson; so let us take all the\nfacts for granted. A man such as Harold is here represented to be would\nrather have died than taken the oath, if he never meant to keep it. On\nthe other hand, once taken, and knowing it to be false, we doubt whether\nthe resolute Saxon soldier would have troubled himself much about the\nmatter. He acts as a coward throughout while in William\u2019s power. A\nstrong man would not rail in secret at William for forcing him to take\nan oath which the swearer knew to be a lie. He would take it or not take\nit with the best grace possible. \u201cHorrible!\u201d exclaims Harold when the\nrelics on which he has sworn are exposed. Harold was sufficiently man of\nthe world\u2014a man who had passed his life in camp and court\u2014to have\nuttered no such weak cry. In the first place, if he swore falsely, such\nan exclamation showed at once that he never intended to keep his\npromise. In the second place, it would have been perfectly plain to\nWilliam that he could place no reliance on the oath of such a poltroon.\nThe same failure to apprehend the character of the man is apparent in\nthe womanish tirade into which Harold breaks after William has left him:\n\u201cJuggler and bastard\u2014bastard: he hates that most\u2014William the tanner\u2019s\nbastard! Would he heard me!\u201d A moment before he might have heard him,\nbut Harold dared not speak his thoughts. Certainly the man who never\nlost a battle save the one in which he lost all\u2014the man who conquered\nWales, crushed the terrible invasion of Harold Hardrada and Tostig,\nbraved his own sovereign, seized on the English throne with a grasp that\nonly death could shake off, and died so gloriously on Hastings\u2014never\n\u201cplayed the woman with his eyes and the braggart with his tongue\u201d in\nthis poor fashion. Here again speaks the reader of modern infidel\nliterature in the mouth of the unspeculative soldier of the eleventh\ncentury:\n\n    \u201cI cannot help it, but at times\n    They seem to me too narrow, _all the faiths_\n    Of this grown world of ours, whose baby eye\n    Saw them sufficient.\u201d\n\n\u201c_All_ the faiths!\u201d We wonder how many \u201cfaiths\u201d Harold knew of or\ncontemplated. Indeed, it seems to us that Mr. Tennyson here speaks for\nhimself, and in a manner that causes some suspicion of his having lost\nsomething of his own earlier and more robust belief. Harold continues:\n\n                        \u201cBut a little light!\u2014\n    And on it falls the shadow of the priest;\n    Heaven yield us more! _for better Woden, all\n    Our cancell\u2019d warrior-gods, our grim Walhalla,\n    Eternal war, than that the Saints at peace;\n    The Holiest of our Holiest one should be\n    This William\u2019s fellow-tricksters_; better die\n    Than credit this, for death is death, or else\n    Lifts us beyond the lie.\u201d\n\nWhich is heathenism and atheism beautifully combined. He goes on, still\nin his atheistic vein, when Edith bids him listen to the nightingales:\n\n    \u201cTheir anthems of no church, how sweet they are!\n    Nor kingly priest, nor priestly king to cross\n    Their billings ere they nest.\u201d\n\nAnd again, when Gurth brings news of the pope\u2019s favoring William\u2019s\ncause, Harold laughs and says of it:\n\n    \u201cThis was old human laughter in old Rome\n    Before a Pope was born, when that which reign\u2019d\n    Call\u2019d itself God\u2014a kingly rendering\n    Of 'Render unto C\u00e6sar.\u2019\u201d\n\nHarold must have lately risen from a perusal of Mr. Gladstone\u2019s pamphlet\non _Vaticanism_ when he spoke thus, so we pardon his aberration. That\npamphlet is too strong for weak intellects.\n\n    \u201cThe Lord was God and came as man\u2014the Pope\n    Is man and comes as God,\u201d\n\nhe continues, still in the Gladstonian vein. He reminds Edith that love\n\u201cremains beyond all chances and all churches\u201d\u2014a dictum and doctrine that\nwould be strange even in a Protestant Harold. \u201cI ever hated monks,\u201d he\nsays in another place, which may account for his having founded Waltham\nAbbey. He grows more and more Protestant towards the end, and the\nsaintly relics over which he was so terrified at having sworn a false\noath he terms the \u201cgilded ark of mummy-saints.\u201d And here is his final\nlegacy to England:\n\n          \u201c... And this to England,\n    My legacy of war against the Pope\n    From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age,\n    Till the sea wash her level with her shores,\n    Or till the Pope be Christ\u2019s.\u201d\n\nThis is Tennyson\u2019s legacy, not Harold\u2019s. It seems strange that it should\nhave fallen into careless hands; not ours, but those of the poet\u2019s\ncoreligionists. The fact is that the world is growing weary of little\nanti-papal tooters. Great enemies of the papacy it applauds and tries to\nexcuse; but at the mouthings of the little people it yawns. If Tennyson\nhas shown anything in this as in his other anti-Catholic effusions, it\nis that when moved by rancor he can descend to all the small bitterness\nof a common and weak order of mind. We cannot go further into an\nexamination of _Harold_, and, indeed, the task is not worth while. He\nhas failed in the one character which, to a true dramatic genius,\noffered magnificent opportunities\u2014William of Normandy, who was perhaps\nthe greatest and the wisest sovereign that England has as yet known. A\ngallant soldier; a wary yet bold and successful general; an astute\nstatesman; a lover of learning; a resolute if severe ruler; a man who\ncould bide his opportunity, then move on it with the flash and fatality\nof the lightning, yet withal a man of almost ungovernable passions, with\nthe old taint running in his blood and through all his successful\nlife\u2014this was a character that it is as great a pity Shakspere did not\ndraw as that Tennyson should have been rash enough to attempt to draw.\nIn what ought to be the chief scene of the play, the battle of Hastings,\nthere is no battle at all. The weak device is resorted to of setting a\ndescription of it as it proceeds in the mouth of Stigand, who watches\nthe field from \u201ca tent on a mound.\u201d Norman and Saxon, Harold and\nWilliam, are not brought together for the final death-grip. Shakspere's\nbattle-scenes are more vivid than those of any painter. They illuminate\nhistory and print themselves indelibly on the mind. Cut the\nbattle-scenes out of _King John_, _Henry IV._, _Henry V._, _Macbeth_,\n_Julius C\u00e6sar_, _Henry VI._, and you mutilate the plays. Stigand\u2019s\ndescription of the battle of Hastings might be dropped from _Harold_ and\nnot missed. Why should not Harold die as Hotspur dies, or as Macbeth, or\nBrutus, or any of the others\u2014his face to the victorious foe, the fitting\nending of the tragedy? Mr. Tennyson was not equal to the task, either in\nthis scene or at Stamford Bridge. The last clash and conflict of human\npassion he can only look at from afar off and reflect upon when it is\nover. He cannot take it in hand and present it. He would do well to\nretire from the field where empires, and men and events that make or\nunmake empires, are the subjects of song, and go back to the pretty\nscenery, the calm truth, and the graceful verse that have made his name\ndearly loved and justly honored.\n\n\n\n\n                          ANGLICANISM IN 1877,\n           AS AFFECTED BY THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION ACT.\n\n\nWe should feel inclined to apologize to our readers for again\nintroducing the English Establishment to their notice, were it not that\nsince, a year ago, we considered Anglicanism in connection with the \u201cOld\nCatholic\u201d conference at Bonn, the increasing agitation within the state\nchurch cannot but have continued to attract the thoughtful attention of\nthose who, from the bark of Peter, watch the weary tossing of the\nAnglican craft and the mutinous condition of a portion of her crew.\n\nSince the period to which we allude, the fact that the whole tendency of\nthe Alt-Catholic movement is rationalistic and anti-Christian is\nbeginning to be understood by all really religious Protestants, and we\nnow see the better part of them holding aloof from the movement, and\neven the Ritualist journals condemning whatever advances were made\ntowards it. The cause is now advocated only by the Broad-Church party,\nwhich distinguished itself by its emphatic encouragement of the apostate\nLoyson, one of the apostles of the new sect, who went last summer to\nLondon to enlighten the English public on ecclesiastical questions. On\nthe other hand, the High-Church movement is, if anything, in the\ndirection of the Catholic Church, while Alt-Catholicism is a distinct\ncounter-agitation, and thus anything like a cordial fraternization\nbetween the two is impossible. The attempts of the High-Church party to\nobtain at least as much as a recognition of the validity of their orders\nfrom the Orientals\u2014attempts which were renewed at the Bonn\nconference\u2014have again signally failed. One of the \u201cUnionist\u201d leaders\nhimself laments that \u201cthe Oriental Church stands entirely aloof from the\nChurch of England, sweepingly and roundly condemns all its members,\ndenies the validity of their baptisms and ordinations, and practically\nrefuses to aid them in any shape or form.\u201d\n\nThere is no doubt that at the present moment a tremendous struggle has\narisen in the Establishment between the would-be Catholic and the\nProtestant elements; the latter not only pleading its three centuries\u2019\npossession, but also, and truly, declaring itself to be the very basis\nand _raison d\u2019\u00eatre_ of the schism. This claim is urged at the present\ntime with a vehemence and jealous irritation aimed ostensibly at the\n\u201cRomanizing practices\u201d of their brethren, but the venom of which betrays\nitself to be especially called forth by the ceaseless, active,\nself-denying energy of these incorrigible early risers\u2014an irritation not\ndifficult to comprehend on the part of those who, with all their\nprofessions of Evangelical piety, have, generally speaking, an exceeding\nshyness of hard work, detest the Counsels of Perfection in general and\nthe practice of self-denial in particular, take up the pen much more\nreadily than the cross, and prefer bridling their neighbor\u2019s tongue\nrather than their own. Nevertheless, with regard to a certain class\namong the Evangelicals, and these the more earnest, it is only just to\nsay that their condemnation of Ritualists and their practices is\nsincerely a matter of principle. They regard the one as the guides and\nthe other as the direct means to \u201cidolatry\u201d\u2014a term which they have all\ntheir lives been taught to consider as synonymous with the Catholic\nreligion.\n\nWhen St. Edward the Confessor lay on his death-bed in the palace of\nWestminster, he foretold to his queen, St. Edith, and to Stigand that,\nin punishment for the sins of the land, God would permit the enemy of\nmankind to send a mission of wicked spirits into it, who should sever\nthe Green Tree of Old England from its root, and lay it apart for the\nspace of three furlongs; but that the tree should after a due time\nreturn to its root and revive, without the help of any man\u2019s hand. The\ntraditional interpretation of this prophecy has been that the English\nChurch would be cut off for the space of three centuries from its parent\nstem, but that, after that time, the severed church should return to its\nancient allegiance.\n\nAnd what do we now see? Movement, awakening, and life where for three\ncenturies have reigned the gloom and chillness of the tomb.\n\nFrom the time of Elizabeth downwards not only the teaching but the\ngeneral aspect of what is called the Church of England was intensely\nanti-Catholic. A brighter day first dawned for England when she\nhospitably received and succored the exiled priests of France. The\nprecious leaven of their holy teaching and example never has been lost.\nLater, in 1829, the emancipation of the Catholics of the British Empire,\nunder George IV., marked a fresh epoch in the history of the Catholic\nChurch in England. The discussions which attended the passing of this\nact helped to increase a knowledge of her tenets, and prepared the way\nfor their better appreciation; besides which, the restoration of some of\nthe most illustrious families of the realm to their ancient and\nhereditary seats in the House of Lords, together with the admission of\nCatholics into the Lower House, tended further to the removal of many\nprejudices. Since Newman and Pusey, in 1833, recalled their brethren to\nthe study of the Fathers of the church, many steps have been taken in\nthe Establishment in the direction of the ancient paths\u2014steps which\nCatholics have noted with interest and hope, though they perceive that\nbut too often men who have been attracted towards the truth rest\napparently contented with a bad imitation of its external manifestations\nand a garbled or \u201cadapted\u201d representation of its doctrines, forgetting\nthat truth distorted ceases to be truth, and often is a lie. They marvel\nalso that the invariable opposition of the pseudo-episcopate does not\nhelp these men, who are the present life of their system, to see that\ntheir imaginary \u201cCatholicity\u201d is wholly unauthorized and unrecognized by\ntheir ecclesiastical superiors, and that the hierarchy of their church\nis as consistently and persistently anti-Catholic as the constitution of\nthat body itself. They are resisted and condemned by their bishops, and\nfrom their bishops they have no appeal except to a lay tribunal whose\ninterference _in sacris_ they repudiate.\n\nBy the terms of a new Appellate Jurisdiction Act, recently passed in\nboth Houses of Parliament, the jurisdiction of the Privy Council has\nbeen transferred to a new Court of Appeal. It was then provided that\nepiscopal assessors should in future sit on the bench with the lay\njudges; and though it is by the latter that the judgment is pronounced,\nthe bishops are allowed to make remarks on what is passing. They are to\nsit in rotation in the new court. The two archbishops and the Bishop of\nLondon are also to sit in turn, _ex officio_, and the rest in\nquarternions, beginning with the junior four (Chichester, St. Asaph,\nEly, and St. David\u2019s). It is impossible to say what may be the results\nof this equivocal assessorship, with regard to which the London _Morning\nPost_ disrespectfully observes that \u201cthe plan offers no security\nwhatever that the assessors shall be fit for their office beyond the\nfact that they are bishops\u201d; calmly adding that \u201csince the purpose for\nwhich their presence is required is the imparting to the judges of a\ncertain kind and quality of information when desired, it is a serious\ndefect to the scheme that it provides no guarantee that the prelates who\nsit shall possess any proper aptitude for their position.\u201d[21]\n\nFootnote 21:\n\n  The following from the London _Weekly Register_ may tend to show\n  whether this doubt is reasonable or otherwise: \u201cThe vicar of St.\n  Barnabas, Leeds, is fatigued with parochial work and wishes to take a\n  little rest. He asks his Lordship of Ripon to let him name a clergyman\n  who shall take his duties for a few weeks or months. His lordship\n  replies that he cannot do so, because\u2014but the language is too\n  episcopal to be misquoted: 'If there is truth in the reports which,\n  from time to time, appear in the public papers, you are in the habit\n  of breaking what you must know to be the law.\u2019 His Lordship of Ripon\n  reads the papers, and, finding it inconvenient to leave his palace at\n  Ripon and make a call upon a clergyman in Leeds, he refuses leave of\n  absence to that clergyman, on account of newspaper reports.\u201d The\n  church-wardens take up their vicar\u2019s cause, and, in a very proper\n  \u201cmemorial,\u201d represent the needs of his case to his paternal diocesan.\n  But all is useless. \u201cThe law, the law,\u201d says the bishop, and remains\n  comfortably in his palace, while he forbids his hard-working vicar to\n  take a holiday, though he does not even condescend to specify his\n  offence. And yet the Anglican bishops do not apparently object to a\n  due amount of repose for themselves, if we may judge from the fact\n  that at the very time we write there are no fewer than fifteen of the\n  \u201cmissionary bishops\u201d of the Establishment who, after a few years of\n  absence, and even these years agreeably diversified with visits to\n  their friends in England, have returned thither \u201cfor good,\u201d and are\n  now settled with their wives and families in comfortable rectories at\n  home\u2014an arrangement more convenient for croquet-parties than\n  \u201cconversions.\u201d\n\nUpon this another journal asks: If it be true that Anglican bishops are\ncorporately incompetent as advisers of lay judges, even on the doctrines\nof their own particular communion, of what use are they at all? If they\ncannot, without the aid of civilians, interpret the Articles, why not\nmake bishops of the lay judges, instead of paying thousands a year to\neach of these gentlemen, who do not apparently know their own business?\nIn any case, how Ritualists can remain, with satisfaction to their\nconsciences, in a communion whose highest arbiter is not even a\nsub-deacon, is perplexing to any one who regards the church as a\ndivinely-instituted system. We have been reminded by _Presbyter\nAnglicanus_ that it is a necessary ingredient in any system of\ndiscipline that the superior should not be judged by the inferior, the\nteacher by the taught; and that the twelfth canon of the African Code\nordains that, \u201cif a bishop fall under the imputation of any crime, he\nshall have a second hearing before twelve bishops, if more cannot be\nhad; a priest before six, with his own bishop; a deacon before\nthree\u2014_according to the statutes of the ancient canons_.\u201d Again: \u201cIt was\na recognized principle in the primitive church that the deposition of an\necclesiastic required the intervention of more bishops than were needed\nfor his ordination. The Anglican bishops notwithstanding their\nprofessions of regard for the primitive church, are content that a\npresbyter, ordained and instituted by a 'bishop,\u2019 should be deprived by\na layman. And they talk of apostolic order!\u201d\n\nThe writer just quoted, who is now safe in the Catholic Church,\ndescribed, just before his conversion, the present condition of\necclesiastical discipline in the Anglican Church as follows: \u201cThe\necclesiastical courts which survived the Reformation and the great\nrebellion have been ... abolished; the bishop of each diocese has ceased\nto be the ordinary of that diocese, and the whole clergy of the Church\nof England are rendered amenable to, and are even directed in their\nconduct of public worship by, a layman, whose office has been created in\nthe year of grace 1874 by the imperial Parliament, and who, besides\nplaying the part of a pseudo-dean of the Arches and principal of the\nProvincial Court of York, is also to be the national ordinary, the\nParliamentary vicar-general of the Establishment, exercising\njurisdiction in every parish from Berwick-on-Tweed to the Channel\nIslands.\u201d And this is the system to which unquestioning, unrepining,\nabsolute submission is required of the clergy by the bishops of the\nAnglican communion.\n\nNor is this all; not only is it now the case that secular law courts\ndecide what may or may not be taught and practised in the Anglican\nChurch, but they also claim to decide who shall and who shall not be\nadmitted to its rites and sacraments. Lawyers are thus not only the\ndoctors and _ceremoniarii_ of Anglicanism, suspending or depriving\necclesiastics at pleasure, but they are also to be, in the last resort,\nthe stewards of Anglican sacraments.\n\nA case was lately pending before the Judicial Committee in which the\naction of a \u201cpriest\u201d in refusing communion was reviewed and judged by\nthe court. A parishioner of a Ritualist pastor having declared that he\ndid not find in the Bible sufficient evidence for the existence of evil\nspirits to incline him to believe in the devil, the clergyman prohibited\nhis coming for communion until he did believe in the devil. The\nparishioner wrote a complaint to the bishop, and the latter took his\npart against his parish \u201cpriest\u201d and for the devil. The matter being\nreferred to the Judicial Committee, the bishop\u2019s verdict was confirmed\nin favor of the sceptical parishioner and of his Infernal Majesty.\n\nNor can any individual cases of this kind be matter of surprise when we\nreflect to what the doctrinal decisions of the supreme courts of the\nAnglican Establishment have, with the consent of her entire episcopate,\nas expressed in their famous \u201callocution\u201d on the Public Worship Act,\npledged her clergy. According to the final and irreversible authority\nacknowledged by that episcopate, the Church of England holds, 1, that\nthe doctrine of baptismal regeneration is an open question; 2, that it\nis an open question whether every part of every book of Scripture is\ninspired; 3, that there is no \u201cdistinct declaration\u201d in the formularies\nof that church on the subject of everlasting punishment, and that the\nwords \u201ceverlasting death\u201d in the exposition of the Lord\u2019s Prayer given\nin the catechism \u201ccannot be taken as necessarily declaring anything\ntouching the eternity of punishment after the resurrection\u201d; 4, that\nAnglican bishops are the creatures of English law and dependent on that\nlaw for their existence, rights, and attributes.[22]\n\nFootnote 22:\n\n  See _Christianity in Erastianism_. A letter to Cardinal Manning. By\n  _Presbyter Anglicanus_.\n\n\u201cThe Church of England,\u201d said Dr. Stanley, the Protestant Dean of\nWestminster, in a sermon recently preached at Battersea, \u201cis what she is\nby the goodness of Almighty God and of his servant Queen Elizabeth.\u201d If\nhe had said, \u201cof Henry VIII. and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth,\u201d we\ncould have agreed with him, particularly as the riper years of the\nEstablishment continue so suitably to fulfil the promise of such\nparentage; but to Catholics there is a revolting profanity in classing\ntogether the goodness of God with that of one of the most implacable\npersecutors of his church\u2014a persecutor, not from conviction of the\njustice, but the iniquity, of her cause, and from a persistent\ndetermination to extinguish in her realm the ancient faith, whose very\nexistence was a condemnation of the state religion arranged by her\nfather and Cranmer, improved by her brother and his Genevese assistants,\nand re-fashioned to her own liking by herself. The sentence pronounced\nby the Protestant historian Chalmers upon this powerful and unprincipled\nqueen is that \u201cshe was a woman without chastity, a princess without\nhonor, and a sovereign without faith\u201d; and, as if by way of a satanic\nparody on the vision of the Immaculate Virgin in the Book of\nRevelations, we see Elizabeth, the offspring of an adulterous union,\ntrampling under her despotic foot the Bride of Christ.\n\n\u201cThe Church of England,\u201d continued the dean, \u201cwas, it is true, a\ncompromise,\u201d and \u201che was not a true son thereof who used it as a weapon\nfor promoting this or that doctrine, but, _after the example of\nElizabeth_, and for the interests of the nation, used it as a broad\nshield under which he might work for good,\u201d[23] etc., etc. The sense of\nwhich, in plain English, appears to be that the said church prefers\ngeneral indifference to doctrinal truth, the \u201cinterests of the nation\u201d\nto the glory of God, and the \u201cexample of Elizabeth\u201d to purity of faith\nand life.\n\nFootnote 23:\n\n  Hentzner furnishes us, by the way, with a singular testimony to\n  Elizabeth\u2019s \u201cgoodness\u201d when, among other things of the same nature, he\n  tells us that, in the latter years of her reign, executions for high\n  treason (this being the term applied to denial of the royal supremacy\n  in the church fully as much as in the state) were so frequent that he\n  counted at one time on London Bridge no fewer than 300 heads. She\n  herself on one occasion pointed out to the French ambassador the same\n  ghastly trophies adorning the gates of her own palace.\n\nBut Dean Stanley represents one only of the four principal sections into\nwhich the Church of England has divided itself; and however complacently\nthe \u201cBroad\u201d and even \u201cModerate High\u201d Churchmen may regard the marshy\nnature of the ground in which the foundations of their faith, if faith\nit can be called, are laid, and congratulate themselves on the fact that\nit is neither land nor water, but something of both, there are earnest\nmen who have no fancy for being amphibious, and who spare no pains and\ntoil to drain away the stagnant waters from their morass, in the sincere\nconviction that beneath the miasma-breeding mosses there lies, for those\nwho dig deep enough to find it, the imperishable rock.\n\nOf this number seems to be the Rev. Arthur Tooth, vicar of St. James\u2019,\nHatcham, who is now in prison because he chooses to act upon the\nprinciple of \u201cno compromise.\u201d We honor a man who is willing to suffer\nfor conscience\u2019 sake, and to uphold the right of the church to decide in\necclesiastical causes, but at the same time we cannot but feel that Mr.\nTooth is more conscientious than logical, and that by his present\nopposition he is breaking the solemn promise and oath which, as a\nclergyman of the state church, he took, at his ordination, to a\nstate-church bishop.\n\nMr. Tooth, on account of certain ritualistic practices\u2014_i.e._, the use\nof \u201cCatholic\u201d vestments, conducting the communion service so as to make\nit resemble as much as possible Holy Mass, having \u201ca crucifix in the\nchancel, little winged figures on the communion-table, lighted candles\non a ledge where he had been ordered not to place them, etc., etc.\u2014was,\nby order of Lord Penzance and with the approval of his own bishop, Dr.\nClaughton of Rochester, interdicted from officiating again in the\ndiocese. The writ of inhibition was served him on a Sunday morning\nbefore the commencement of the service; he not only took no notice of\nthe writ, but also on the following (Christmas) day publicly resisted\nhis substitute. Canon Gee had been appointed by the bishop to read the\nservice in the place of Mr. Tooth, but, on his arriving at the church,\nthe latter gentleman, backed by about forty of his male parishioners,\nmet him at the door and refused to allow him to enter, upon which Canon\nGee, after protesting against this insubordinate proceeding on the part\nof his refractory brother, was forced to retire. Having thus disposed of\nthe episcopal delegate, the vicar proceeded to display an unusual pomp\nin the ceremonial. Six splendid banners were carried in procession, on\none of which was embroidered the monogram of Our Blessed Lady,\nsurrounded by the words, _Sancta Dei Genitrix_.\u201d The church was crowded\nto suffocation, partly with worshippers, and also very largely by people\nwho had come from curiosity, as was evident by their behavior no less\nthan by their murmured expressions of ridicule or indignation; a crowd,\nnot only of \u201croughs,\u201d but numbering many well-dressed people, had\nassembled outside. On one occasion, the 14th of January, in particular,\nthe scenes both within and without were disgraceful. \u201cInside,\u201d we are\ntold, \u201cthere was a good deal of fighting and scuffling, especially at\nthe lower end,\u201d while outside the crowd, besides breaking down the\nfences, shouting \u201cNo popery,\u201d yelling, and in various ways demonstrating\ntheir inclination to break the laws as well as the parson did, had they\nnot been kept in some abeyance by a strong body of three hundred police,\njoined in singing loudly the national anthem, vociferating with especial\nemphasis and vigor the line \u201cConfound their knavish tricks\u201d\u2014improved by\nsome to \u201cpopish tricks\u201d in honor of the occasion. Some time after the\nservice was over, so as to give the mob time to thin, the sight of Mr.\nTooth issuing from the church under the protection of \u201ctwenty stout\npolicemen of the F Division\u201d had in it something almost ludicrous to\nthose who reflected that all this commotion arose from the fact of his\nhaving spurned the \u201csecular arm.\u201d\n\nWhen, on the 20th of January, the Rev. R. Chambers, who has been\nappointed curate in charge of the parish of Hatcham by the Bishop of\nRochester, went, accompanied by the bishop\u2019s apparitor, and, producing\nhis license, requested Mr. Tooth to hand over to him through the\nchurch-wardens the possession of the church, the vicar replied that he\nrefused to take any notice of the document or the application. He was\ntherefore committed for contempt of court, and is now lodged in\nHorsemonger Lane jail.\n\nIt is not necessary to give more than two portions of the very temperate\nexplanations with which Lord Penzance has accompanied his\njudgment\u2014namely, those portions which are aimed at the delusions\nsupposed to be most important in the controversy. These delusions are,\nin brief, 1st, that the new Public Worship Act was an innovation upon\nAnglican custom, and an invasion of its rights; 2d, that obedience\nshould be rendered to an ecclesiastical and not to a lay superior. The\nanswers of Lord Penzance to these assumptions are, substantially, as\nfollows:\n\n\u201c1. It would be well if those who maintain these propositions were to\nread the statutes by which the ritual of the Church of England at the\ntime of the Reformation was enforced\u2014I mean the statutes establishing\nthe two successive prayer-books of King Edward VI. and the prayer-book\nof Queen Elizabeth, which regulated the ritual of the reformed church\nfor the first hundred years after its establishment. They would there\nfind that a clergyman departing in the performance of divine service\nfrom the ritual prescribed in the prayer-book was liable to be _tried at\nthe assizes by a judge and jury_ (the bishop, _if he pleased_, assisting\nthe judges), and, if convicted three times, was liable to be _imprisoned\nfor life_. The intervention, therefore, of a temporal court to enforce\nobedience in matters of ritual is at least no novelty; the novelty, as\nfar as the Church of England is concerned, is rather in the claim to be\nexempt from it.\n\n\u201c2. But suppose this claim, for the sake of argument, to be admitted;\nwhat, then, are the ecclesiastical courts to whose judgment the\nRitualists would be willing to defer? Unless every clergyman is to\nsettle the form of worship for himself, and there are to be as many\nforms of worship as there are parishes in the land, who is it that, in\nhis opinion, is to determine what the rubrics of the prayer-book\nenjoin?\u2014for we suppose him to consider himself bound by the directions\nof the prayer-book. What is the court to which he is willing to render\nobedience? Is it the court of his bishop? If so, he must surely be aware\nthat by the ecclesiastical law of this country, as well before the\nReformation as since, an appeal from the bishop\u2019s court lies, and has\nalways lain, to the court of the archbishop, this Court of Arches, whose\njurisdiction he now denies. What question, therefore, is there of a\nsecular court, or an invasion of the rights of the Church of\nEngland?[24]\u201d And the judgment passed by Lord Penzance was contained in\nthe following words: \u201cApplying these powers as I am bound to do, I have\nno hesitation in pronouncing Mr. Tooth to be contumacious, and in\ncontempt for disobeying the inhibition pronounced by this court, and I\ndirect the same to be signified to the queen in chancery, with a view to\nhis imprisonment.\u201d\n\nFootnote 24:\n\n  A writer in the London _Times_ gives the following answer to the\n  ecclesiastical assumptions of Mr. Tooth: \u201cI will enumerate some of the\n  acts on ecclesiastical matters which have become law without the\n  consent of the priesthood, and which therefore the present agitators\n  bind themselves to disallow and disobey: The act of Edward VI. on the\n  Sacrament, on Chantries, on Images, on Fasting; the Acts of\n  Uniformity, both of Edward VI. and Elizabeth; the Act of Toleration;\n  the act abolishing the burning of heretics, under William III.; the\n  acts, both of Charles II. and William III., for the observance of\n  Sunday; the various Marriage Acts of William III., George II., and\n  Queen Victoria; the various acts both for the repression and the\n  relief of Roman Catholics during the same range of time; the acts\n  during the late and present reigns against pluralities and against\n  non-residence; the acts suppressing the Irish bishoprics, suppressing\n  half the cathedral dignitaries in England, and, finally,\n  revolutionizing the Irish Church; the act for abolishing the services\n  drawn up by Convocation for the political anniversaries of the\n  seventeenth century. These and many other laws, many of them of\n  unquestioned beneficence, most of them of unquestioned obligation, all\n  of them passed by Parliament, and by it alone, must be set aside by\n  those who make it a point of conscience to disobey any law which has\n  been imposed on the church by secular authority.\u201d\n\nAnd now the strife of tongues which preceded this climax was comparative\ncalm to that which at present rages. All the winds of \u00c6olus, each trying\nwhich can blow the hardest, seem let loose at once in the distracted\nEstablishment. By the Ritualist party the confessor for disobedience in\nHorsemonger Lane jail is already dubbed \u201cthe martyr, Tooth\u201d; while\nanother party rejoices that, by the contumacy of this \u201cparson in\nrevolt,\u201d the state church is \u201cforced into a clear, practical assertion\nof her old and hitherto unquestioned right to restrain and punish\ndisobedient and delinquent 'clerks.\u2019\u201d Further, the London _Times_,\ndilating after its own infallible fashion upon Mr. Tooth and \u201chis\npranks,\u201d dares to aver that \u201cto parade a banner calling the Virgin Mary\nthe 'Mother of God\u2019 is little less than sheer blasphemy.\u201d\n\nAt a large meeting of the \u201cEnglish Church Union\u201d it became evident that\nthe changes in law procedure produced by the Public Worship Regulation\nAct are producing a murmur in favor of \u201cdisestablishment\u201d within the\nChurch of England herself. One of the reverend speakers at this meeting\nsaid that \u201cthe issue had now merged from one about the color of a stole\nto a question of church and state,\u201d and the honorable chairman agreed\nthat \u201cestablishment might cost too dear.\u201d Archdeacon Denison declared\nthat this case of \u201cdear Arthur Tooth\u201d would prove to be \u201ca\nlife-and-death struggle with Protestantism,\u201d thus making the old mistake\nof putting mere ritualism in the place of the Catholic Church. Canon\nCarter moved that \u201cthe Church Union denies that the secular power has\nauthority in matters purely spiritual,\u201d upon which a journal reminds him\nthat, from the days of the Reformation, it has been one of the\nconditions on which the state church enjoyed the emoluments and\nprivileges of establishment that her clergy should perform certain\nduties in a way laid down by law. Whether, as in the case of Mr. Tooth,\nthey have or have not done so is a matter which the law leaves a\nparticular court to decide. If Mr. Tooth does not relish the action of\nthese tribunals, two courses are open to him, and only two. Either he\nmay give up those practices which they declare obnoxious within the pale\nof the Established Church, or he may leave the Establishment and\ncontinue them elsewhere. The latter step would entail the sacrifice of\nthe endowment, or, as the Ritualists would say, it would involve the\nguilt of schism; in which case the whole matter resolves itself into a\nchoice of sins: the clergyman must either commit the sin of obeying Lord\nPenzance, and so retain the endowment, or he must commit the sin of\n\u201cschism\u201d and fling the endowment away. Thus the Church Unionists are by\nno means logical in comparing their present position to that of\nChalmers, Buchanan, Guthrie, Cunningham, and other leaders of the Free\nKirk of Scotland previously to 1843; for these men gave up all thought\nof state endowment, or even of ministering in buildings dependent on the\nstate, and purchased the independence of their ministrations at the cost\nof all state temporalities. This is a very different matter from\nattempting to have the temporalities and the independence together.[25]\n\nFootnote 25:\n\n  Certain evicted Ritualists, however, do not appear to be much affected\n  by the measures taken to repress them, if it be true that the Rev. R.\n  P. Dale, who has been suspended for three years, and his former parish\n  merged into another, takes the matter very philosophically, and, in\n  default of his own parish, finds every Sunday in one place or another\n  a complaisant brother-clergyman, who lends him his church and his\n  pulpit, from which he braves the pseudo-episcopal thunders.\n\nAnother observation made by Canon Carter was, though not in itself more\ntrue, yet, for him, much more to the point\u2014namely, that \u201cthe only\npersecution now carried on in England is against the High-Church party.\u201d\nIt is on this fact that the Ritualists stand triumphant. They can\nhonestly plead that they, the High-Church party, have done more than all\nthe other parties put together for the revival of faith and devotion in\nEngland. They can also plead that they are men of education, of courage\nand energy and self-denying zeal, and that to them is due whatever\nresiduum is left of Catholic sentiment and tradition in the\nEstablishment. The marvel is that any of these really earnest men should\ncontinue so blind to their anomalous position.\n\nOn the same day that the English Church Union held its assembly a\nmeeting of the ultra-Protestant school took place at the Wellington\nHall, Islington, where about one hundred and twenty clergymen and laymen\npartook of breakfast, after which they proceeded to deliver themselves\nof a large amount of the peculiar and incoherent insipidities with which\nthe readers of the _Rock_ must be painfully familiar. One specimen will\nsuffice, which, as our readers will perceive, is not lacking in the\nunctuous accusations in which the \u201cEvangelicals\u201d are apt to excel: \u201cAs\nin Germany,\u201d they said, \u201cthe Jesuits devoted all their self-denying\nenergies to opposing the spread of the true doctrines, so here in\nEngland there was an able and resolute body of men who opposed\nthemselves to the true principles of religion, and who, by services\nrendered attractive to the eye and ear, appealed by the senses to the\nunderstanding. Many of these men were no doubt sincere, and were thus\nunconsciously doing the work of Satan. This was the powerful opposing\nforce with which the Evangelical body of the Church of England had to\ncontend.\u201d\n\nNow, we must beg leave to observe that for these \u201cEvangelical\u201d gentlemen\nto talk of Ritualists as unconsciously doing the work of Satan is simply\nabsurd. Did not the \u201cbeam in their own eye\u201d blind them, we would ask\nthem to take a glance backward and think of forty years ago, when,\nthrough the length and breadth of the land, they locked up their\nchurches from Sunday afternoon to the following Sunday morning, and\nsometimes even longer; for the writer can recall three villages (there\nmay or may not have been many more) in Leicestershire alone where, less\nthan forty years ago, there was only one service on the Sunday, and that\nalternately in the morning and afternoon. We have heard of the wag who\nchalked on the church door of an Evangelical rector, \u201c_Le Bon Dieu est\nsorti: Il ne reviendra que dimanche prochain_.\u201d And truly, if the good\nGod _did_ come back, it would not be, in many instances, to find his\nhouse \u201cswept and garnished.\u201d\n\nForty years ago! Sitting in the old family pew in the chancel of A ...\nstone church, through the long, monotonous sermons of the worthy rector,\nwhose favorite subjects were \u201csaving faith\u201d and abuse of popery, what a\nhelp it was to patient endurance to watch the merry, loud-voiced\nsparrows fluttering in and out of the broken diamond panes of the\nchancel windows, through which long sprays of ivy crept and clung\nlovingly up the poor old walls, bare of everything but whitewash, of the\nonce Catholic church\u2014walls that the damp of many an autumn and winter\nhad dyed with streaks of green, deeper and brighter in hue than the\nfaded, ink-stained rag of moth-eaten green baize that covered the\nrickety wooden table standing where, in old days, the most holy\nSacrifice had been offered upon a Catholic altar. Childhood, before\nopportunities for comparison have been afforded, is not hard to please,\nand we used to think that that verdant chancel might have been in the\nmind of the sweet Psalmist of Israel when he sang, \u201cThe sparrow hath\nfound her a house, and the swallow a nest, where she may lay her young:\neven thine altars, O Lord of Hosts!\u201d And yet our worthy rector (a rich\npluralist with a large family) was a kind-hearted, easy, amiable man,\nand not in any way addicted to the hunting and drinking practices of\ncertain of his clerical neighbors; his house was the perfection of\nrefined not overloaded luxury, and the well-kept gardens of that most\npleasant of rectories were a paradise of smooth lawns, gay parterres,\nand shady shrubberies sloping down to the banks of the winding Soar. The\nrector led a mildly studious life when in the country (for half his year\nwas spent in London), visited much among the \u201ccounty families,\u201d and\nshyly and rarely entered the cottages of the village; but religion in\nthat village was well-nigh dead. If amiable clergymen of this stamp are\nnot \u201cunconsciously doing the work of Satan\u201d themselves, they at any rate\ngive Satan plenty of time and opportunity to do his own work himself\namong their flock, and to do it very effectually, too.\n\nYet it is the descendants of men like these who are foremost in groaning\ndown and persecuting the self-denying, hard-working clergy who are\nalways at their posts! The preachers of sentiment are furious against\nthe upholders of the necessity of dogmatic truth. The idlers in family\nand social circles are desperate against enthusiasts who at least _try_\nto hear confessions and to be priests. We cannot admire the consistency\nof the Ritualists\u2014for unhappily it does not exist\u2014but the inconsistency\nof their \u201cEvangelical\u201d accusers is simply \u201cthe impeachment of energy by\ntwaddle.\u201d\n\nA correspondent of the London _Times_ calls attention to the fact that\nwhile Mr. Tooth, who is perfectly orthodox as regards the creeds of the\nchurch, is prosecuted for extremes in ritual, a brother clergyman is\nallowed to preach open infidelity from the pulpit unmolested. \u201cThe\nPublic Worship Bill,\u201d he writes, \u201chas been passed to repress crimes so\ngrave as over-magnificence in the services, but does not deign to meddle\nin so small a matter as that of vindicating the Divinity of our Saviour,\nwhich is fearlessly impugned in a pulpit which the Bishop of London\nhimself has condescended to occupy.\u201d\n\nIt is much to be doubted whether the Anglican bishops, when they\nobtained from Parliament the Public Worship Regulation Act, had the\nremotest idea of the tempest which, Prospero-like, they were summoning\naround them, but which, unlike Shakspere\u2019s magician, they would be\npowerless to allay. And if this is the result obtained by the act just\nmentioned, a still more recent one, the \u201cScotch Church Patronage Act,\u201d\nanother measure intended by Lord Beaconsfield as an additional buttress\nto ecclesiastical establishments, has produced similar storms in the\nNorth. It has led to proceedings in connection with the \u201csettlement\u201d of\na parish clergyman at New Deer in Aberdeenshire which recall the furious\nbattles between the \u201cintrusion\u201d and non-intrusion parties that split the\nEstablished Church of Scotland into fragments thirty-four years ago, and\nhas besides almost succeeded in uniting three-fourths of Scotland into a\nsolid disestablishment phalanx. The Presbyterian Kirk, moreover, in\naddition to subjects of contention presented from without, has certain\ncharacteristic squabbles of its own. A question having recently arisen\non the subject of unfermented wines in the celebration of what is called\ncommunion, the session has maintained that it \u201chas a right to change the\nelements of communion, and in so doing is discharging its proper\nfunctions.\u201d Why not? If local churches can make their own doctrines,\nwhat, we should like to know, is to hinder them from making their own\nsacraments as well?\n\nOur object in this article has been merely to sketch the present\ncondition of affairs in the English Establishment; but as we have in\nconcluding taken a momentary glance at Scotland also, we cannot leave\nunnamed the Green Isle of the West, whose centuries of suffering and\noppression have at last, we earnestly trust, given place to times of\npeace and long prosperity.\n\nShould the reviving hopes of many hearts be realized, and the Green Tree\nof England\u2019s ancient church again spread its vigorous branches over the\nland that was once \u201cOur Lady\u2019s Dowry\u201d; and should the grand old northern\nabbeys, Melrose, Jedburgh, Paisley, and even, it may be, Iona, receive\nagain as in past ages their cowled and consecrated sons, still England\nand Scotland will have but returned to the faith which Ireland has never\nlost, and which no human or Satanic power has been able to wrench from\nher. No! For, rather than let the cross be torn from her bleeding\nembrace, she suffered herself to be nailed upon it.\n\n\n\n\n                        THE ASHES OF THE PALMS.\n\n\nTHE DISCIPLE.\n\n\n    \u201cAre ashes scarce that palms must burn,\n    Those sweet memorials of the only day\n    Of triumph that thou hadst, my Prince,\n      Upon this woeful earth?\u201d\n\n\nTHE MASTER.\n\n\n    \u201cAll glory unto ashes, child, must turn,\n    Of which this deathly world can make display.\n    These ashes on proud heads convince\n      Proud hearts of glory\u2019s worth.\u201d\n\n\nTHE DISCIPLE.\n\n\n    \u201cIf palms to ashes must,\n    So be 't. _I_ still will live to praise,\n      Though glory\u2019s gage should burn.\u201d\n\n\nTHE MASTER.\n\n\n    \u201cE\u2019en thou art naught but dust.\n    The mark thy forehead bears betrays\n      To what thou shalt return.\u201d\n\n\nASH WEDNESDAY\n\n\n\n\n                           NEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\n    AN OLD WORLD AS SEEN THROUGH YOUNG EYES; OR, TRAVELS AROUND THE\n    WORLD. By Ellen H. Walworth. New York: Sadlier & Co. 1877.\n\nEvery school-girl who reads this book will wish that she had an uncle\nwho would send for her one day, while she is dreaming over her\nlesson-book, and invite her to accompany him around the world. This is\nwhat happened to Miss Ellen Walworth in June, 1873, and the volume\nbefore us is composed of the letters which she wrote home during her\ntour, and which were published as they were received in an Albany\nnewspaper, attracting at the time considerable attention. They are the\nproduction of a school-girl of fifteen, but slightly altered from their\noriginal form, and this makes their peculiarity and their special\ninterest. The course of her travels was through Scotland, Ireland,\nEngland, Belgium, the country of the Rhine, Switzerland, Italy, Egypt,\nChina, Japan, and home by way of San Francisco. The letters are just\nwhat they should be\u2014natural, lively, juvenile descriptions of the little\nincidents of travel and the scenes witnessed, with the freshness and\nvividness of letters written at the time and on the spot to which each\none successively belongs. Two extremely interesting letters of Father\nWalworth, written with his well-known charm of style and minute accuracy\nof statement, are included in the collection. One of these contains a\ndescription of the Coptic rite, the other an account of the present\nstate of the mission in Japan, with many interesting historical\nparticulars. Our young folk will find this a very entertaining volume,\nand older people may read it with pleasure. It is a book very creditable\nto the young author, and also an evidence of the kind of culture which\nis given to young girls by the accomplished ladies at Kenwood. We\nsubjoin one specimen of the style in which the letters are written, not\nat all childish, although suffused with a childlike gayety:\n\n    \u201cI remember what dispute arose among the passengers the day we went\n    down Lake Zurich. There were mountains all around us, but from the\n    end of the lake towards which we were steering rose quite a high\n    range. Over their summits the clouds extended up some distance, and,\n    strange to say, a succession of peaks were to be seen above the\n    clouds, suspended, as it were, in the sky, and having no connection\n    with the peaks below, except a close resemblance in form. Their\n    outlines were distinctly marked against the clear blue sky, but they\n    had a strange, chalky, light appearance, as if they could be blown\n    away by a breath. Some of the passengers said they were merely\n    unusual forms taken by the clouds; others insisted that they were a\n    reflection of the peaks below\u2014a species of _Fata Morgana_. A few old\n    Alp frequenters, among them our friend of the gravel acquaintance,\n    ventured to assert that they were real mountains, but their idea was\n    laughed down as ridiculous. While the dispute was the hottest, the\n    wind, by a strange freak, dispersed the clouds almost in an instant,\n    and we had before us one of the mighty ranges of Switzerland, beside\n    which our mountains of the lake shore were mere hillocks.\n\n    \u201cFrom the foot of Lake Zurich we took the railroad carriages for\n    Ragatz and Chur. This journey is among my most vivid recollections\n    of Switzerland: for we were following the courses of the valleys and\n    streams through that wonderful range of mountains that we had seen\n    from the lake. We twisted ourselves into every possible position to\n    see the snow-capped summits directly above us, and our\n    fellow-travellers\u2014English, French, and Germans\u2014became so excited\n    over the scenery that they would call out to each other\u2014for, though\n    the language might not be understood, the gestures were\n    unmistakable\u2014and they would rush from one side of the cars to the\n    other, even dropping down on the floor, to get a sight from the\n    car-windows of the very tip-top of the mountains. The enthusiasm\n    seemed contagious; there were haughty Englishmen, stolid Germans,\n    fashionable young ladies, and confirmed dandies equally forgetful of\n    appearances. Indeed, as we passed peak after peak, now clustered\n    together, now opening and showing beautiful valleys between, or\n    dark, shaded chasms, the jagged rocks taking new shapes and hues\n    every instant, it was like watching a grand and ever-varying\n    kaleidoscope.\u201d\n\n\n    MUSICA ECCLESIASTICA. A collection of Masses, Vespers, Hymns,\n    Motets, etc., for the service of the Catholic Church. New York: J.\n    Fischer & Bro.\n\nOf this publication the Part 16 sent us, containing motets for singing\nat the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, is a collection well suited\nfor use at that function. But we must object to the title of the general\nwork, as neither this nor any figured _music_ can be sung by\necclesiastics, as such, officiating in any service of the Catholic\nChurch. The only melody properly styled _musica ecclesiastica_ is the\nGregorian chant. Definitions are always of grave moment. Suppose that\nsome one of our enterprising publishers should present the public with a\nmanual of prayers such as the _St. John\u2019s Manual_, the _Key of Heaven_,\nor the _Mission Book_ under the title of \u201cManual for the Clergy,\nconsisting of prayers, litanies, hymns, and other devotions _for the\nservice of the Catholic Church_\u201d; it is plain that it would not receive\nthe imprimatur of a Catholic school-boy.\n\nUnder a proper title we give our hearty encouragement to the work which\nour German Catholic brethren abroad and here in the United States have\nwithin the last few years pursued with such praiseworthy zeal in the\ncomposition of music for the use of our choirs, which, if we do not\nthink it to be the most suitable and most consistent in tone with the\nletter and spirit of the Catholic ritual, is decidedly a vast\nimprovement upon the sensual, operatic style of music whose melodies and\nharmonies have emasculated the devotion and vitiated the taste of, we\nregret to say, almost the majority of Catholics in modern times.\n\n\n    THE COMPREHENSIVE GEOGRAPHY. Nos. 1, 2, and 3. New York: P. O\u2019Shea,\n    37 Barclay St. 1876.\n\nWe are inclined to think that this series is the best of the many which\nhave of late years been presented to the public, and certainly do not\nknow of any which are superior to it in any respect except in the\ndepartment of physical geography; and it is as complete even in this as\nit could well be without an additional volume specially devoted to that\nsubject.\n\nThe feature which should particularly recommend it to Catholics is the\nprominence which it gives to facts connected with religion. There is no\nbranch of study for the young in which it is so important that religion\nshould be prominent as geography, with the exception, of course, of\nhistory. Even the best text-books hitherto published are perhaps a\nlittle too reticent in this respect. The desire to accomplish this\nobject has in the present work led to the introduction of some rather\nunnecessary details; but this is a fault on the right side.\n\nWe hope that this series will become popular, as it deserves to be, in\nCatholic schools.\n\n\n    THE COMPLETE OFFICE OF HOLY WEEK ACCORDING TO THE ROMAN MISSAL AND\n    BREVIARY. In Latin and English. New edition. Revised and enlarged.\n    18mo, pp. 563. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.\n\nThis edition of _Holy Week_ is a new and corrected one; it is printed\nfrom large type on good paper, and is well and substantially bound.\nMoreover, it is complete, containing all the offices of the church from\nPalm Sunday to Easter Tuesday, inclusive. This edition is the only\ncorrect one now published in this country. It has been carefully read by\npersons competent to guarantee against the gross blunders that are apt\nto disfigure Catholic works of the greatest importance. The price is so\nlow that the book is within the reach of every one, thus enabling them\nto follow easily the services of the church during Holy Week.\n\n\n\n\n                          THE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n                     VOL. XXV., No. 146.\u2014MAY, 1877.\n\n\n                      THE PRUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[26]\n\n\nFootnote 26:\n\n  _Two Chancellors, etc._ By Julian Klaczko. Translated by Frank P.\n  Ward. New York: Hurd & Houghton.\n\n  _Pro Nihilo_ and other pamphlets on the Arnim question.\n\nM. Julian Klaczko is by birth a Polish Jew and is a convert to the\nCatholic Christian faith. He was for a time employed in the office of\nthe Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was afterwards a member of\nthe imperial parliament. He has, however, generally been a resident in\nFrance, where his numerous essays on political topics have been\npublished, all of which have attracted much attention and won for their\nauthor a high reputation. We have already, in our number for last March,\nmade some observations on the career and policy of one of the two\nchancellors, whose lives and public actions, so far as they had\nprogressed at the time of its publication, were sketched in the work\nwhose title is given below. This work is one of the most interesting\npolitical _brochures_ of our time, and we propose to continue in the\npresent article the review of it commenced in our previous one,\nconfining our attention chiefly to the chancellor of the German Empire.\n\nPrince Bismarck has been characterized by M. Thiers as \u201ca savage full of\ngenius.\u201d He is one of Carlyle\u2019s \u201cheroes\u201d\u2014an expression synonymous with\nthat of the clever French statesman, and denoting a giant in whom is\nembodied intellectual and physical force, irrespective of any moral\ndirection. To this native strength, which has remained through life to a\ngreat extent rude and uncultivated, and not in any way to a regular and\ncareful education, Otto von Bismarck is indebted for the success he has\nachieved. His studies were finished on his entrance at the university,\nand never resumed. It is doubtful whether he ever passed the legal\nexamination required before entering the civil service in Prussia.\nNevertheless, such a man is always a sort of extraordinary professor to\nhimself. He has read literature and studied men and events. It is absurd\nto call such a man uneducated; and, although he does not possess the art\nof speaking or writing according to rule, he is able to use both his\ntongue and pen with an original power which sometimes rises to the\nhighest level of eloquence, and to coin expressions which, once uttered,\ncan never be forgotten. We have quoted one in our former article, about\nthe \u201ciron dice of destiny,\u201d and we will give one more, which we think is\nunsurpassed in the annals of modern speech:\n\n    \u201cOne of his most happy, most memorable inspirations he suddenly drew\n    one day from the libretto of the _Freisch\u00fctz_.\n\n    \u201cIn this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter,\n    borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately\n    kills an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap.\n    He then asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they\n    are 'enchanted balls,\u2019 and that, in order to obtain them, he must\n    surrender himself to the infernal spirits and deliver his soul to\n    them. Max draws back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he\n    hesitates in vain, that the bargain is made, and that he has already\n    committed himself by the ball he made use of: 'Do you think, then,\n    that this eagle was a free gift?\u2019 Well! when in 1849 the young\n    orator of the Mark of Brandenburg had to implore the Prussian\n    chamber not to accept for the King of Prussia the imperial crown\n    which the parliament of Frankfort offered him, he ended by crying\n    out: 'It is radicalism which offers this gift to the king. Sooner or\n    later this radicalism will stand upright before the king, will\n    demand of him its recompense, and, pointing to the emblem of the\n    eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: _Did you think, then,\n    that this eagle was a free gift?_\u2019\u201d\n\nThe suggestion will doubtless present itself immediately to the minds of\nmany of our readers that the poetic myth of the _Freisch\u00fctz_ is likely\nto be fulfilled in sober, actual reality when the German imperial drama\nis played out, and that Bismarck will prove to have been the Robin of\nWilliam I. But this is an anticipation, and we return to our sheep and\nour young wolf. An equally marked and well-known trait of Bismarck\u2019s\nstyle in speech and writing is a cold, biting, ironical humor, which\noften assumes the outward guise of frankness, sometimes ferocious,\nsometimes farcical, but always dangerous and often deadly when the\nmaster of the weapon is wielding it in a real fight. The general tone of\nhis disposition is contemptuous and misanthropical, as of one who\nalternately sneers and laughs at mankind in general, on the whole\ndespising the game of life, yet going in for deep play with all his soul\nwhen the chance presents itself, for mere occupation and amusement; just\nas he plunged into the Burschen-life in his youth and hunted bears at a\nlater period in Russia. There is no trace of philanthropy in his\ncharacter; as an enemy he is relentless, and no gentle or noble\nsentiments hamper his progress in the way of his policy of \u201cblood and\niron.\u201d Yet there is a most tender and devoted affection manifested in\nhis letters to his sister, Malvina von Arnim\u2014\u201cMaldewinchen\u201d; so far as\nwe know he has been a kind husband and father; there seems really to be\nsomething genuine in his long friendship for Prince Gortchakoff; and all\nthe world knows that he risked his life to rescue a servant from\ndrowning. The impression we have received from all we have ever read or\nheard about him is, that his natural disposition, like that of Napoleon,\nis generous and noble, but, like his, has been perverted by ambition.\n\nHis early life did not promise any great achievements. He went by the\nname of \u201cMad Bismarck,\u201d and was always restless, unsettled, without\nsteady application to any definite aim. What his real inward convictions\nare or have been, in religion, philosophy, and the higher sphere of\npolitical ethics, is very difficult to determine, at least for us who\nare at a distance; or even to decide how far he has ever formed and\ncherished any deep and settled convictions at all. Practically, he has\nbeen a Pyrrhonist and Epicurean, a heathen and a materialist, using all\nthings and all ideas as so many counters of no value except for his own\ngame. The opinions which he professed at the outset of his political\ncareer were those of \u201cthe party of the cross,\u201d that old-Prussian,\nreligious, monarchical, conservative party represented by the\nillustrious Baron von Gerlach, which has been in opposition to the\nadministration of the chancellor, and is now in a quasi-alliance with\nthe Catholic party.\n\n    \u201c'I belong\u2014' such was the defiant declaration of Herr von Bismarck\n    in one of his first speeches in the chamber\u2014'I belong to an opinion\n    which glories in the reproaches of obscurantism and of tendencies of\n    the middle age; I belong to that great multitude which is compared\n    with disdain to the most intelligent party of the nation.\u2019 He wanted\n    a _Christian state_. 'Without a religious basis,\u2019 said he, 'a state\n    is nothing but _a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of\n    bastion in a war of all against all; without this religious basis,\n    all legislation, instead of regenerating itself at the living\n    sources of eternal truth, is only tossed about by human ideas as\n    vague as changeable_.\u2019\u201d\n\nWhat can be finer or truer than this statement, in which the whole of\nhis own policy as chancellor of the German Empire is condemned in\nadvance out of his own mouth? In every important respect his avowed\nopinions and political action were diametrically opposite to those of a\nlater date. In fact, his bold and even extravagant advocacy of the cause\nof the house of Hapsburg, at a moment when (1850) the attitude of\nPrussia towards Austria was most humiliating, was the first occasion of\nlaunching him into the career of foreign affairs. He was sent, with much\nmisgiving on the part of the king and his minister, as Prussian\nplenipotentiary to the Diet of Frankfort; and here he began to go to\nschool to Prince Gortchakoff, now commenced that world-renowned\nfriendship between these two statesmen which has altered the course of\nhistory and for whose _d\u00e9no\u00fbement_ we are at this moment intently\nwatching.\n\nIt would be idle to suppose that these two men traced out beforehand the\ncommon policy which they have since pursued in concert. It was\nimpossible for any human sagacity to foresee the conjunctures which have\nsince arisen, and have furnished to Bismarck the opportunities of which\nhis genius has availed itself to destroy and to upbuild great political\nfabrics. They could only plan, in general, the aggrandizement of Russia\nand Prussia, by the breaking down of the traditional policy of coalition\nand balance among the European powers. All that we can see clearly\nrespecting the incipient working of Bismarck\u2019s mind at this period is,\nthat he contracted an aversion for Austria, a contempt for the German\nconfederation, and a mean opinion in general of the diplomats who had\nthe management of the European state-craft. The idea of a new era of\nabsolutism in a few great, conquering nations\u2014an absolutism \u201ctinged with\npopular passions,\u201d or, according to his favorite expression,\u201cspotted\nwith red\u201d\u2014dawned on his mind and became gradually more distinct. Some\nextravagant projects were at times bubbling in his restless brain, and\nhe often threatened to abandon the career of regular diplomatic service\nand go into politics \u201cin his swimming-drawers.\u201d But when the Prussian\nadministration proposed to him to go to Russia as resident ambassador,\nwith a view, as he expressed it, of \u201cputting him on ice\u201d to cool him\ndown, he consented to don a \u201cbear-skin\u201d instead of the aforesaid\nhabiliments of a _sans-culottes_.\n\nOn the 1st of April, _his birth-day_, 1859, Herr von Bismarck arrived in\nthe capital of the Russian Empire, of which his former colleague at\nFrankfort was already the chancellor. Among the Russians he was\nextremely popular; for he took extraordinary pains to make himself\nagreeable to them, and seemed to have turned himself into a Russian, for\nthe time being, in donning the bear-skin. Notwithstanding his outward\nhilariousness, he was inwardly morose, dissatisfied with the course\nwhich Prussian and European politics were following, and feeling himself\ncondemned to honorable exile and inaction. He was once so severely ill\nthrough chagrin that his life was in danger. He said on his recovery\nthat he had gone \u201chalf-way to a better world,\u201d and expressed regret that\nhe had not completed the journey. He thought of abandoning politics\naltogether, and with difficulty overcame his impatience sufficiently to\nbide his time a little longer. Gortchakoff said that Russia \u201cdid not\nsulk, but meditated.\u201d Bismarck sulked and meditated. But meanwhile the\ncourse of events was preparing for him his opportunity. The strange and\nmixed drama in which Napoleon III., destined to be its principal victim,\nwas the chief actor\u2014whose critical moments were Sebastopol, Solferino,\nSadowa, Sedan\u2014was going on. This great actor, once regarded as a sphinx\nof political wisdom, but now designated by no more honorable title than\nthe \u201cdreamer of Ham,\u201d holds a conspicuous place in the group of those\napparently and temporarily great men to whom belongs the epitaph sadly\ncomposed for himself by the expiring Joseph II., Emperor of Austria:\n\u201cHere lies the man who failed in all his undertakings.\u201d More than this,\nhe is a signal instance of that blind fatuity by which those men who set\nthemselves to counteract the order of divine Providence are seduced, as\nthe King of Israel was by the \u201clying spirit\u201d in the mouth of his\nprophets, to ruin themselves and become the executioners of divine\nvengeance on their own persons.\n\nIf Louis Napoleon had had good sense and moral principle enough to\nimitate Charlemagne, he might have confirmed his dynasty, established\nFrance in solid power and prosperity, and earned true glory as a\nbenefactor of Christendom. But he was not \u201cof the seed of those men by\nwhom salvation was brought to Israel.\u201d He aspired to imitate C\u00e6sar and\nNapoleon without possessing their genius. He imitated the profligacy of\nC\u00e6sar in his youth, the perfidy of Napoleon in his old age. His early\nvices avenged themselves in the pain and disease which unmanned and\nincapacitated him for action in the last eventful crisis of his career.\nHis criminal alliance with Carbonari and conspirators in his youth\nentangled him afterwards in a mesh which he had not courage, even if he\nhad the wish, to break. By his alliance with the Turk he prepared an\nenemy in Russia, who became one principal cause of his final downfall\nand the humiliation of France, while he gained nothing beyond a\nmomentary prestige of glory for his army. By his Italian campaign, and\nhis subsequent support of Prussia against Austria, he weakened the power\nwhich would otherwise have befriended France in her dire distress; and\nhe built up a kingdom which abandoned and betrayed him, at the cost of\nincurring the malediction which falls on all betrayers and oppressors of\nthe Holy See.\n\nBy his greed of territory in annexing Savoy he alienated for ever his\nformer ally, England. By the war above alluded to and his miserable\nMexican _fiasco_ he used up the splendid army of France, and was found\n_minus habens_ when the day of destiny came on him unprepared. He\ndeliberately fostered the military and political increase of Prussia,\nand then madly dragged down upon France that terrible power which,\nhaving first outwitted, in the second place crushed him.\n\nWe have read of some one who drew an enigmatical figure, in which a\ncrowned serpent is represented twining from his tail upward through a\ncombination of four letters S, and strangled by the upper crook of the\ntopmost letter. In this figure is strikingly symbolized the course of\nevents in Europe from the Crimean war to the Prussian conquest. During\nBismarck\u2019s residence in Russia, which followed Sebastopol, came the day\nof Solferino. The immediate effect of this battle was an attempt to\nmobilize the Prussian army, which disclosed to the crown-prince, now\nEmperor of Germany, its miserable condition, and suggested to him the\nplan of its entire reformation. This plan he afterwards carried out,\naccomplishing it with unprecedented rapidity and skill by the aid of Von\nMoltke and Von Roon, against the violent opposition of the parliament\nand the whole people. Thus was Bismarck\u2019s great instrument of making\nforce bring right under subjection prepared for him in advance, without\nhis concurrence. The connivance and concurrence of Russia were already\nsecured, most cordially so far as further designs on Austria were\nconcerned, and at least conditionally and passively in respect to\nulterior projects of improving Prussia\u2019s position.\n\nThe \u201cIron Count\u201d is now about to try the strength of his Thor\u2019s hammer\non the head of the sphinx. Bismarck is about to become the head of the\nPrussian state, and try his craft and strength in a contest for\nsupremacy with Louis Napoleon. He was called home toward the end of 1861\nfor consultation and to assist at the coronation of King William, and\nreturned to St. Petersburg only to close up the affairs of his mission\nand take farewell. In May, 1862, he was at Berlin, and evidently\ndestined for the post of Chief Minister. He was, however, _ad interim_\nsent on the mission to Paris, _to take the measure of Louis Napoleon_\nand study more nearly the position of European affairs, which all\ncentred at that time in the Tuileries. We should rather say that he went\nto Paris to _complete_ these studies and observations. Already, in 1858,\nhe had sounded the French emperor in respect to his sentiments towards\nPrussia, and found them most encouraging. During the same year Louis\nNapoleon had sent this singular message by Count Pepoli to the court of\nBerlin: \u201cIn Germany Austria represents the past, Prussia represents the\nfuture; in linking itself to Austria Prussia condemns itself to\nimmobility; it cannot be thus contented; it is called to a higher\nfortune; _it should accomplish in Germany the great destinies which\nawait it, and which Germany awaits from it_.\u201d Consider this language,\nand then think of the prison of Wilhelmsh\u00f6he and of the reflections\nwhich must have passed through the mind of the unfortunate dreamer so\nrudely awakened by the thunder of Von Moltke\u2019s guns! King William had\nhad an interview with Louis Napoleon at Compi\u00e8gne, for which Bismarck\nhad aided him in preparing, and it was partly the result of this\ninterview which had determined him to call the bold cavalier of the Mark\nto his side. The dreamer\u2019s vague and scheming mind revolved vast\nprojects of Pan-Latin, Pan-German, Pan-Sclavonian combinations, uniting\nthe three great races and the three great churches, with their\nrespective centres at Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, in a triple\nalliance of universal monarchies, to dominate the world, to inaugurate a\nnew era, to bring on the millennium of civilization, and to place the\nname of Louis Napoleon at least on a par with those of Moses, Alexander,\nJulius C\u00e6sar, Constantine, and Charlemagne.\n\nWe have read in the autobiography of some German philosopher that in his\nyouth he was ravished with ecstasy in thinking of \u201c_the wheels of the\neternal essences_\u201d! The visionary projects of this unfortunate imperial\nseer remind us forcibly of this boyish philosopher. While he was letting\nFrance drift on towards the _O\u00f9 allons nous?_ of Mgr. Dupanloup, he was\ndriving his imaginary chariot, on the \u201cwheels of the eternal essences,\u201d\nthrough airy regions, casting an occasional undecided glance on Belgium\nand the frontiers of the Rhine. Bismarck was not long in taking his\nmeasure, and it appears that Prince Gortchakoff had long since learned\nthe passes by which he could magnetize him at pleasure. With his own\npeculiar, knavish frankness, Bismarck avowed his own objective aim\u2014the\nrectification of the Prussian frontiers\u2014and found it easy to amuse the\ndecaying emperor with vague hints of compensation to France by allowing\nthe annexation of Belgium and the territory on the left bank of the\nRhine. As for the opinion which was formed respecting Bismarck himself,\nat this time and during the first period of his administration, by the\nemperor and the diplomats, it appears now strangely comical. They could\nnot bring themselves to regard him as serious, and were thrown\ncompletely off their guard by his consummate acting. As late as 1865,\nwhen he visited the French emperor at Biarritz, the latter, while\nlistening to his harangues during the promenades which they took\ntogether on the beach, would slyly press the arm of Prosper Merim\u00e9e, and\neven whispered once in his ear: \u201cHe is crazy.\u201d M. Benedetti in the\nfollowing year told General Govone that he considered Bismarck to be \u201ca\nmaniacal diplomat,\u201d adding that he had _long known his man_, and had\n_followed him up_ for fifteen years. There is something grimly amusing\nin this play of the cat and the mice, notwithstanding its tragical\nresults and the pity we must feel for the victims who thought themselves\nso extremely astute, but were lured on by one deeper in craft than they\nwere, as easily as the meditative, solemn bruin was enticed by Reynard\nthe fox to go after honey.\n\nBismarck left Paris, convinced of three things as the result of his\nstudies: First, that Louis Napoleon was a \u201cgreat unrecognized\n_incapacity_.\u201d Second, that \u201cliberalism is only nonsense which it is\neasy to bring to reason; but revolution is a force which it is necessary\nto know how to use.\u201d Third, \u201cthat England need not enter into his\ncalculations.\u201d He returned to Berlin to assume the office of Minister of\nForeign Affairs and commence the work of rounding off Prussia. Austria\nwas the one decided antagonist whom he had to meet in the critical\nstruggle for supremacy in Germany. He was not afraid of her single power\nunaided by allies, but he was anxious to make doubly sure of the\nneutrality of France and Russia. Circumstances favored him most\nremarkably in producing an alienation between these two powers, which\nwas an efficacious preventive of any amicable concord between the two to\ncheck his plans, and in persuading each one more decisively to connive\nat them. The Polish insurrection, encouraged by France and Austria,\nembroiled Alexander II. with Louis Napoleon, and renewed all the former\nrancor of St. Petersburg against Vienna. Bismarck was cunning enough to\nmake secret preparations for taking advantage of the insurrection, if it\nproved too strong for Russia to quell, by occupying Poland with Prussian\ntroops, and securing the final disposition of the whole Polish question\nfor himself. At the same time he so managed as to strengthen the bond\nbetween himself and Gortchakoff, and, in the actual event, to bind\nRussia and Prussia closely together by an open common policy in respect\nto Poland. Favored by fortunate circumstances, by the co-operation of\nmilitary chiefs who showed a genius in organizing and leading the\nPrussian army which astonished the world, by a fatuity in Louis Napoleon\nand a complaisance in the Russian chancellor beyond his most sanguine\nexpectations, he played during the next four years, like a Paul Morphy\nof politics, four or five games at once with masterly skill. King\nWilliam of Prussia and all the other rulers and statesmen of Europe were\nbut pieces or pawns to be played with, taken, or checkmated; and on the\nday after the battle of Sadowa he was really master of the situation.\n\nThe objective point at which Bismarck aimed in the year 1862 was to make\nPrussia the most powerful state in Europe and completely independent of\nevery other state or coalition of states. For this end it was necessary\nto destroy the German _Bund_, to deprive Austria of all power in\nGermany, to increase the Prussian territory, and to establish its\nhegemony in Germany. All this was accomplished, before the close of the\nyear 1866, by means of the imbroglio of the Schleswig-Holstein\nsuccession. When Christian IX. succeeded to the throne of Denmark, his\nright to the succession in the duchies was disputed, because it came\nthrough a female line debarred from inheriting by the ancient law of\nSchleswig and Holstein. The designs of Prussia upon these duchies were,\nhowever, of a much earlier origin, and had their birth from the liberal\nparty and its revolutionary movements in 1848. In a speech delivered in\nthe Prussian chambers, April 21, 1849, Herr von Bismarck declared that\nthe war provoked in the duchies of the Elbe was \u201can undertaking\neminently iniquitous, frivolous, disastrous, and revolutionary.\u201d We will\nnot pretend to determine the question of the validity of King\nChristian\u2019s title, as between himself and the people of the duchies. It\nis evident enough, however, that the matter was one which interested all\nEurope, and ought to have been calmly, justly determined, in a manner\nconsonant with the interests of the kingdom of Denmark, of the people of\nthe duchies, of the confederated states of the German _Bund_, and of\nEurope. In fact, the doubt respecting Christian\u2019s title was seized upon\nby Bismarck as a mere pretext for absorbing the disputed territory,\n_with its fine Baltic sea-port of Kiel_, into Prussia. The Prince of\nAugustenberg, the chief claimant against Christian, had been induced, a\nshort time before the accession of the latter to the Danish throne, by\nthe influence of Bismarck himself, to sell his claim on Holstein to the\ngovernment of Copenhagen. No sooner was the old king dead than Bismarck\ndeclared that this same prince was the rightful duke. At a later period\nhe brought forward several other claimants, that these rival claims\nmight neutralize each other. How he cheated Lord John Russell; how he\nused the German _Bund_ as a tool for his own purposes and then\nscornfully pushed it aside; how he drew Austria into a war against\nDenmark, followed by a joint occupation of the duchies, and then\ncommenced a quarrel against her for their sole possession; and how\nEngland, the declared protector of Denmark, looked tamely on while it\nwas despoiled and maimed, we have not time to relate in detail. It was a\ngreat blunder in France, England, and Russia to permit what they could\neasily have prevented. On the part of Austria it was a stupendous and\nsuicidal folly to make itself an accomplice in a conspiracy for\ndestroying the bulwarks of its own power. This was soon made manifest,\nbut too late to escape the consequences of a fatal blunder. Prussia\nbeing ready for action, the _Bund_ and the claimants of the duchies were\nsummarily shoved aside. The question of the right of succession in the\nduchies was referred to a high Prussian court for adjudication. It was\ndecided that _the King of Denmark alone_ had possessed the right of\nsovereignty in Schleswig and Holstein, and that, by the cession which he\nhad been forced to make after being conquered in war, this right was now\nvested in Prussia and Austria. Austria was politely requested to sell\nher share to Prussia, which she declined to do, and the next step was to\nwrest it from her by force.\n\nThe dark intrigues\u2014at the time so hidden from sight and so almost\ndesperate, even in the view of the \u201cmaniacal diplomat\u201d who held their\nthreads in his hand and wove them into a mesh around his victim\u2014by which\nBismarck planned the ruin of Austria, have since been fully disclosed.\nWith the government of Victor Emanuel a strict and secret treaty was\ncontracted. At the same time, and for several years after, a\ncorrespondence was kept up with Mazzini, looking to the overthrow of\nVictor Emanuel in case of any action on his part unfavorable to the\nschemes of the arch-conspirators. Arrangements were made for fomenting\nan insurrection in Hungary under the leadership of Garibaldi. The\nneutrality and connivance of Louis Napoleon were secured by playing upon\nhis Italian sympathies and holding before him vague expectations of\ncompensation for France.\n\nPrince Gortchakoff lent an underhand but most valuable help to his\nfriend all through, beginning with the attack on Denmark. It was Louis\nNapoleon, whose incapacity and weakness were not yet fully revealed even\nto Bismarck\u2019s keen eye, who was most feared and distrusted. Enfeebled as\nhe was in respect to whatever capacity he had really possessed in his\nprime, and weakened as was the power of France, yet, with the help of\nthe statesmen and soldiers who were at his disposal, he still retained\nthe power of determining the main issue in the politics of Europe, and\nBismarck knew it. He would not stir in any decisive action until well\nassured that he had mastered the French emperor by his superior craft.\nHe had less difficulty in this than he anticipated. Louis Napoleon, like\nmost other European observers, overrated the military strength of\nAustria, and underrated the new Prussian army with its almost untried\nleaders, Von Roon and Von Moltke; which even Bismarck himself somewhat\ndistrusted up to the last moment. The French emperor desired and hoped\nfor the liberation of Venetia. But he expected the defeat of the\nPrussian army in Germany, and for himself the _r\u00f4le_ of a mediator, an\numpire, a general referee for settling all things on the basis of a new\ntreaty of peace. He let Bismarck play his game out, with what result is\nknown to the world. Although victorious in Italy, Austria nevertheless\nceded Venetia to Louis Napoleon, who handed it over to Victor Emanuel.\nThe victory of Sadowa agreeably surprised the victor, brought despair to\nthe vanquished, and astonished the world. If all the other great powers\nhad not been alienated from each other, and under a fatal spell of the\narch-fiend, Robin\u2019s master, whose enchanted balls had brought down the\nAustrian eagle, they might have intervened to prevent the grave ulterior\nconsequences of this fatal day of Sadowa. If Louis Napoleon had not been\nparalyzed and demoralized to the extent of utter imbecility, he might\nhave interfered alone, and successfully, in this his last opportunity\nfor saving his dynasty and saving France. Nobody interfered. There was a\nweak show of negotiations, but Bismarck had his own way in everything.\nBefore the end of the year 1866 his spoils were all gathered in and\nsafely garnered, and the centre was shifted from Paris to Berlin.\n\nThe area of Prussia had been increased, by the annexation of Hanover,\nHesse-Cassel, Nassau, Frankfort, and the duchies of the Elbe, from\n108,000 to 135,000 English square miles, and its population from\n19,000,000 to 23,000,000. It was, moreover, the head of a North German\nConfederation, and practically had control of the South German States,\nwith the certainty of having all Germany outside of Austria to\nco-operate with it and follow its lead in case of hostilities with\nFrance. These were the \u201cmoral conquests of Prussia in Germany\u201d which the\nking, as prince-regent, had announced to the nation when he assumed the\nreins of government. This was the fulfilment of \u201cthe federal obligations\ntoward the Emperor Francis Joseph,\u201d so much talked of at Potsdam, while\nthe future chancellor was hunting bears in Russia. Such was the sequel\nof the protest of Berlin against the Piedmontese annexation. The\nprophecy of Cavour was fulfilled: that \u201cPrussia would one day, thanks to\nPiedmont, profit by the example which had been given to it.\u201d\n\nThe \u201cPiedmontese mission of Prussia,\u201d vaunted by the French democratic\npress, was well inaugurated and pretty near fulfilment. Louis Napoleon\u2019s\noracular sayings about the \u201cgreat destinies of Prussia\u201d proved to have\nsomething else in them than \u201cthe stuff which dreams are made of.\u201d He had\nno longer to utter the philanthropic complaint: \u201c_The geographical\nposition of Prussia is badly defined._\u201d It was perhaps not quite perfect\nin the opinion of Bismarck, but it was certainly vastly improved, and\ndestined to a still further rectification which had probably not been\nrevealed to the imperial dreamer.\n\nHaving disposed of his _first_ accomplice in the great scheme, gradually\nmatured during his sulky meditations at Frankfort and St. Petersburg\nunder the tuition of his master in diplomacy, Prince Gortchakoff\u2014namely,\nhaving put down Austria\u2014Bismarck proceeded with his next plot: against\nhis accomplice in the one just successfully carried into execution.\nAustria had been lured on by the expectation of sharing in the\nspoliation of Denmark, defrauded of her portion of the spoils, and\nstripped of a great part of her original possessions, to the advantage\nof Prussia. In like manner Louis Napoleon was disappointed of the\nacquisitions he hoped to receive as a reward for conniving at the\nspoliation of Austria; he and his dynasty were overthrown completely,\nand we trust finally; France was humiliated to the dust and compelled to\nransom herself from captivity by the price of her treasure and her\nterritory. The disruption of the European bond left France, as Austria\nhad been left, at the mercy of her perfidious ally, converted into an\nopen and relentless enemy.\n\nDuring the preliminaries of peace at Nikolsburg, afterwards ratified by\nthe treaty of Prague, by which the German hegemony of Prussia was\nestablished, Bismarck persuaded the French emperor through his envoy,\nthe unfortunate M. Benedetti\u2014the same one who knew his man and followed\nhim up so skilfully\u2014that \u201cthe reverses of Austria allowed _France and\nPrussia to modify their territorial situation_.\u201d Hints were thrown out\nabout the Rhine provinces and Belgium. After Prussia had completed her\nown modification of her territorial situation for the time being,\nBismarck continued, while Prussia was taking a rest and making all her\npolitical and military arrangements perfect, what he called his\n\u201cdilatory negotiations\u201d with Louis Napoleon. The latter was asking for\ncompensations, for which he had not stipulated when he placed his\nservices at the disposal of his employer. Mephistopheles qualified this\ndemand as a \u201cpolicy of _pour boire_.\u201d You engage a _fiacre_ in Paris,\nyou pay the stipulated price to the driver, and he presents his hand\nagain, unless you anticipate him by a voluntary gratuity, with the\nfamiliar phrase: \u201cPour boire, monsieur, s\u2019il vous pla\u00eet!\u201d If you are a\ngood-humored gentleman, you hand over a few sous and he departs\ncontented. If you are gruff and parsimonious, and show unwillingness to\ncomply with his polite request, he will reiterate it with less deference\nand civility. Whereupon, if you are violent and profane, and have\nsufficient command of the French language to speak after the manner of\nthe _gamins de Paris_, you refer him to a person beyond the \u201c_Porte de\nl\u2019Enfer_.\u201d The history of the secret treaty of offensive and defensive\nalliance between France and Prussia, giving the aid of France to carry\nout the further programme of Prussian ascendency in Germany, and the aid\nof Prussia to secure Luxembourg and Belgium to France, signed by France,\nthough not signed, _only laid up in her archives_, by Prussia, is well\nknown. A previous project of a treaty ceding the Rhine provinces to\nFrance was shown to the South German plenipotentiaries and drove them\ninto a secret and strict alliance with Prussia. The work of Nikolsburg\nand Prague was completed, the whole military force of North and South\nGermany was at the disposal of King William, and nothing was wanting but\na war with France to make him emperor of Germany, with Alsace and\nLorraine as additional provinces of his kingdom, and all expenses paid\nby the French treasury. Bismarck could now drop the mask whenever he\npleased, and bully the unfortunate emperor into the folly of trying to\nexpiate his past misconduct by _baptizing himself in the fire_ of\nPrussian artillery and _mitraille_. This dark and tragic act in the\ndrama of the Downfall of Europe is summed up with consummate truth and\nterseness in that little masterpiece entitled _The Fight in Dame\nEuropa\u2019s School: showing how the German boy thrashed the French boy, and\nhow the English boy looked on_:\n\n    \u201cOnly one boy\u2014his favorite fag\u2014did William take into his confidence\n    in the matter. This was a sharp, shrewd lad named Mark, not\n    over-scrupulous in what he did, full of deep tricks and dodges, and\n    so cunning that the old dame herself, though she had the eyes of a\n    hawk, could never catch him out in anything absolutely wrong. To\n    this smart youth William one day whispered his desires [of annexing\n    part of Louis\u2019 garden] as they sat together in the summer house\n    smoking and drinking beer. 'There is only one way to do it,\u2019 said\n    Mark. 'If you want the flower-beds, you must fight Louis for them,\n    and I believe you will lick him all to smash. You see, old fellow,\n    you have grown so much lately, and filled out so wonderfully, that\n    you are really getting quite formidable. Why, I recollect the time\n    when you were quite a little chap!\u2019 'Yes,\u2019 said William, turning up\n    his eyes devoutly, 'it has pleased Providence that I should be\n    stout. Then, my dear Mark, what do you advise me to do?\u2019 'Ah! that\n    is not so easy to say. Give me time to think, and when I have an\n    idea I will let you know. Only, whatever you do, take care to put\n    Master Louis in the wrong. Don\u2019t pick a quarrel with _him_, but\n    force him, by quietly provoking him, to pick a quarrel with _you_.\n    Give out that you are still peaceably disposed, and carry your\n    Testament about as usual. That will put old Dame Europa off her\n    guard, and she will believe in you as much as ever. The rest you may\n    leave to me.\u2019 An opportunity of putting their little plot into\n    execution soon occurred. A garden became vacant on the other side of\n    Louis\u2019 little territory [Spain], which none of the boys seemed much\n    inclined to accept. It was a troublesome piece of ground, exposed to\n    constant attacks from the town-cads, who used to overrun it in the\n    night and pull up the newly-planted flowers. 'Don\u2019t you think,\u2019 said\n    Mark one day to his friend and patron, 'that your little cousin, the\n    new boy [Prince Hohenzollern], might as well have that garden?\u2019 'I\n    don\u2019t see why he should not, if he wants it,\u2019 replied William, by no\n    means deep enough to understand what his faithful fag was driving\n    at. 'It will be so nice for Louis, don\u2019t you see, to have William to\n    keep him in check on one side, and William\u2019s little cousin to watch\n    him on the other side,\u2019 observed Mark innocently. 'Ah! to be sure,\u2019\n    exclaimed William, beginning to wake up, 'so it will; very nice\n    indeed. Mark, you are a sly dog.\u2019 'I should say, if you paid Louis\n    the compliment to propose it, that it is such a delicate little\n    attention as he would never forget\u2014even if you withdrew the proposal\n    afterwards.\u2019 'Just so, my boy; and then we shall have to fight.\u2019\n    'But look here, won\u2019t the other chaps say that I provoked the\n    quarrel?\u2019 'Not if we manage properly,\u2019 was the reply. 'They are sure\n    to fix the cause of dispute on Louis rather than on you. You are\n    such a peaceable boy, you know; and he has always been fond of a\n    shindy.\u2019 So Dame Europa was asked to assign the vacant garden to\n    William\u2019s little cousin. 'Well,\u2019 said she, 'if Louis does not\n    object, who will be his nearest neighbor, he may have it.\u2019 'But I do\n    object, ma\u2019am,\u2019 cried Louis. 'I very particularly object. I don\u2019t\n    want to be hemmed in on all sides by William and his cousins. They\n    will be walking through my garden to pay each other visits, and\n    perhaps throwing balls to one another right across my lawn.\u2019 'Oh!\n    but you might be sure that I should do nothing unfair,\u2019 said William\n    reproachfully. 'I have never attacked anybody.\u2019 'That\u2019s all my eye,\u2019\n    said Louis. 'I don\u2019t believe in your piety. Come, take your dear\n    little relation off, and give him one of the snug corners that you\n    bagged the other day from poor Christian.\u2019 'Come, come,\u2019 interposed\n    the Dame, 'I can\u2019t listen to such angry words. You five monitors\n    must settle the matter quietly among yourselves; but no fighting,\n    mind. The day for that sort of thing is quite gone by.\u2019 _And the old\n    lady toddled off_ and left the boys alone. 'I wouldn\u2019t press it,\n    Bill, if I were you,\u2019 said John, in his deep, gruff voice, looking\n    out of his shop-window on the other side of the water. 'I think it\u2019s\n    rather hard lines for Louis\u2014I do indeed.\u2019 'Always ready to oblige\n    you, my dear John,\u2019 said William; and so the new boy\u2019s claim to the\n    garden was withdrawn. 'What shall I do now, Mark?\u2019 asked William,\n    turning to his friend. 'It seems to me that there is an end of it\n    all.\u2019 'Not a bit,\u2019 was the reply. 'Louis is still as savage as a\n    bear. He\u2019ll break out directly; you see if he don\u2019t.\u2019 'I have been\n    grossly insulted,\u2019 began Louis at last, in a towering passion, 'and\n    I shall not be satisfied unless William promises me never to make\n    any such underhand attempts to get the better of me again.\u2019 'Tell\n    him to be hanged,\u2019 whispered Mark. 'You be\u2014no,\u2019 said William,\n    recollecting himself, 'I never use bad language. My friend,\u2019 he\n    continued, 'I cannot promise you anything of the kind.\u2019 'Then I\n    shall lick you till you do, you psalm-singing humbug!\u2019 shouted\n    Louis. 'Come on!\u2019 said William, lifting up his hand as if to commend\n    his cause to Heaven, and looking sanctimoniously out of the whites\n    of his eyes. 'Come on!\u2019 shouted William, thirsting for more blood.\n    '_Vive la guerre!_\u2019 cried poor Louis, rushing blindly at his foe.\n    Well and nobly he fought, but he could not stand his ground. Foot by\n    foot and yard by yard he gave way, till at last he was forced to\n    take refuge in his arbor, from the window of which he threw stones\n    at his enemy to keep him back from following. And when William, who\n    talked so big about his peaceable disposition, and declared that he\n    only wanted to defend his 'fatherland,\u2019 chased him right across the\n    garden, trampled over beds and borders on his way, and then swore\n    that he would break down his beautiful summer-house and bring Louis\n    on his knees, everybody felt that the other monitors ought to\n    interfere. But not a foot would they stir. Aleck looked on from a\n    safe distance, wondering which of the combatants would be tired\n    first. Joseph stood shaking in his shoes, not daring to say a word\n    for fear William should turn round upon him and punch his head\n    again; and John sat in his shop, grinding away at a new rudder and a\n    pair of oars. 'Come and help a fellow, John,\u2019 cried Louis in despair\n    from his arbor. 'I don\u2019t ask you to remember the days we have spent\n    in here together when you have been sick of your own shop. But you\n    might do something for me, now that I am in such a desperate fix and\n    don\u2019t know which way to turn.\u2019 'I am very sorry, Louis,\u2019 said John,\n    'but what can I do? It is no pleasure to me to see you thrashed. On\n    the contrary, it would pay me much better to have a near neighbor\n    well off and cheerful than crushed and miserable. Why don\u2019t you give\n    in, Louis? It is of no mortal use to go on. He will make friends\n    directly, if you will give back the two little strips of garden; and\n    if you don\u2019t, he will only smash your arbor to pieces, or keep you\n    shut up there all dinner-time and starve you out. Give in, old\n    fellow; there\u2019s no disgrace in it. Everybody says how pluckily you\n    have fought.\u2019\u201d\n\nThe ingenious author has made a mistake about Aleck and Joseph. Aleck\nwas in league with William, and his threats alarmed Joseph and kept him\nfrom interfering. Bismarck had succeeded in reconciling Gortchakoff to\nthe sacrifice of all the old friends and family connections of Russia in\nGermany. Moreover, he had in some way convinced him so completely that\nit was for the interest and future advantage of Russia to ally itself\nclosely with Prussia, that he turned a deaf ear to the advances of\nFrance and Austria in reference to the Oriental question, and gave a\nstrong moral support, which in case of need he was ready to transform\ninto active military co-operation, to his most iniquitous and oppressive\nmeasures against France. M. Thiers was convinced of this when Prince\nBismarck handed to him his Russian portfolio and allowed him to read at\nleisure thirty letters which it contained, while he sat by quietly\nsmoking a cigar and enjoying the chagrin and discomfiture of the aged\nstatesman. Besides this, we must consider that England had a reason for\ncoolness towards France in the unprincipled negotiations of the French\ngovernment respecting England\u2019s _proteg\u00e9e_, Belgium. And at last, when\nEngland did wish to interfere to obtain for France more favorable\nconditions of peace, and made propositions for concerted action to St.\nPetersburg, it was Russia which threw cold water upon the plan and kept\nall Europe back while William was finishing up his quarrel with Louis.\nIt cannot be doubted that Bismarck had given Gortchakoff to understand\nthat, when the proper time came, Prussia would secure for Russia a fair\nfield and no interference for a decisive and final effort to destroy the\nEuropean empire of the Turk. Fuad-Pasha, said to have been one of the\ngreatest statesmen of Turkey, while lying on his death-bed at Nice\ndictated a political testament, which was sent, after his mortal career\nhad closed, to his sovereign, the sultan. In this document he had said:\n\u201cWhen this writing is placed before the eyes of your majesty, I will no\nlonger be in this world. You can, therefore, listen to me without\ndistrust, and you should imbue yourself with this great and grievous\ntruth: that _the empire of the Osmanlis is in danger_. An intestine\ndissension in Europe, and _a Bismarck in Russia_, and the face of the\nworld will be changed.\u201d The date of this document is January 3, 1869.\n\nThe conflict between Prince Bismarck and the Catholic Church has been\ntreated of repeatedly in former articles in this magazine. We will,\ntherefore, abstain from going over that ground again. It has been\nsurmised that the policy of the Prussian chancellor in respect to the\nchurch has been dictated to him by the necessity of satisfying the\ndemands of the radical-liberal party. We cannot think that it is to be\naccounted for simply on this ground. The general idea and fundamental\nprinciple of Bismarck has been to destroy the community of nations which\nwas the remnant of ancient Christendom, and raise up an independent,\nself-subsisting, absolute, and dominating German Empire. It is an\nessential part of this plan to destroy the principle of unity and\ncommunity centred in the Holy See, and to make the emperor absolute head\nof all churches within the boundaries of his state. The idea is wholly\npagan and despotic, and includes the subversion of all right except that\nwhich is a conceded privilege derived from the sovereign will of the\nstate. Not only, therefore, is all international right ignored by it,\nbut every right of municipalities, of orders, of legislative and\njudicial bodies, of subordinate members of the government, of\nassociations and individuals, is suppressed and merged in one paramount\nright of force, of physical power\u2014in a word, of tyranny, the worst, as\nPlato long ago taught, of all possible political organisms.\n\nIn perfect harmony with the oppressive, persecuting policy of Prince\nBismarck toward the church has been his conduct toward the Prussian\nnobility, the legislative chambers, and all those who have in any way\nasserted their rights against his despotic might. This is illustrated in\nthe case of the Count Harry von Arnim.\n\nWe had intended to go more deeply into the merits of this affair than we\nnow find our remaining space will permit. Catholics have little reason\nfor cherishing amicable sentiments toward this unfortunate victim of a\nrelentless persecution under the forms of law. He has been one of the\nmost artful and persistent enemies of the Holy See among the statesmen\nof Europe. The pamphlet _Pro Nihilo_, on account of which, in great\npart, he was condemned of treason by a Prussian court, is sufficient, by\nitself, to show that if he had been in power he would have been more\ndangerous than even Bismarck. His cold contempt is more offensive to\nCatholic feelings than the violence of his successful rival.\nNevertheless, there is in him more of honor, probity, veracity, and the\ncourtesy of a gentleman than is at this day very common among\ndiplomatists of the \u201cnew era.\u201d Besides, he has been tricked, insulted,\nill-used, and all but crushed in pieces by a cruel enemy, and therefore\nwe cannot help sympathizing with him. There is something deeply tragic\nin his story. The gist of it lies in this: that he would not be a blind,\nsubservient tool in the hands of the chief of the administration, that\nhe dared to think for himself, and that the old Prussian nobility had\nfixed their hopes on him as a desirable successor to the chancellorship,\nin case anything happened to Prince Bismarck. Hence the long,\nperfidious, and in the end brutal warfare waged against him by his\nunscrupulous and relentless enemy, who has for the time being triumphed,\naccording to his own maxim, _La force prime le droit_. The Count von\nArnim is still, however, a formidable antagonist. With the pen, on the\nfield of legal argument, in the subtle tactics of diplomatic writing, he\nis superior to his persecutor, and master of a force dangerous even to\nthe man who can command armies. He has a host of friends and\nsympathizers in Prussia, of allies throughout Europe. M. Benedetti was\nnot mistaken when he applied the epithet \u201cmaniacal\u201d to the man who was\ncalled \u201cmad\u201d by the friends and boon companions of his youth. His\nmadness is not without method, and, like that of Charles XII. of Sweden,\nhas given him a certain prestige of heroism and success. On the day of\nSolferino that prestige sat on the helmet of Napoleon III. Sedan,\nWilhelmsh\u00f6he, and Chiselhurst were still invisible in the future. The\ncareer of Bismarck is not yet finished, nor can the destiny which awaits\nthe empire he created be foretold. It is reported that he has recently\nreplied to those who asked him whether there would be war in Europe over\nthe Eastern question: \u201c_The devil only knows!_\u201d He appears to regard his\nSatanic Majesty as the god of modern Europe and the supreme controlling\npower in modern politics. Formerly the name of God was frequently on his\nlips, and his thoughts spontaneously referred all things to him. It was\nGod who decided battles and controlled the destinies of nations. Men of\ngreat genius cannot escape from their clear and vivid intuitions of the\nsupersensible. One who has had the insight and the sentiment of the\nmeanness of the world, and the sole grandeur of eternal principles of\ntruth and morality, belonging to a mind naturally great, cannot be a\ncomplete dupe of the illusions by which he deceives and subdues the\nmultitude. We can see this deep melancholy of a mind which cannot be\nsatisfied with the trivialities of life, and is restlessly yearning\nafter something greater, in all the wild conviviality, restless\nscheming, audacious enterprise, ironical sporting in word and deed with\nall persons and things held in awe and regarded as sacred in the common\nsentiments of humanity, in the whole career of this Carlylean hero.\nSatan, we have no doubt, has had a great control over the rulers and the\npolitics of modern Europe. Bismarck can see this, and has assuredly not\nforgotten his own prophecy of the results of the policy of adorning\none\u2019s self with the feathers of eagles which have been brought down by\nthe devil\u2019s bullets. When he says that \u201cthe devil only knows whether\nthere will be war in Europe,\u201d we hear Robin telling Max that he has\nconcluded an infernal compact and must stand by it. We know, however,\nthat although the devil knows his own plans, and tries to guess at those\nof God, he cannot fathom or thwart these plans of one who is infinitely\nstronger and wiser than he is, and has often before made him catch\nhimself in his own mouse-trap. Bismarck is like the legendary giant\nChristopher, while he was in the service of the demon, thinking him to\nbe the strongest master he could serve. He has acted as if he supposed\nthat God had given up Europe to the devil\u2019s dominion, yet he betrays his\nconviction in a hundred ways that there is a stronger power than the\nrevolution or the anti-Christian despotism \u201cspotted with red,\u201d which is\nonly biding its time. He despises and sneers at his own master, because\nhe sees him wince at the crucifix on the cross-road. We think it quite\nprobable that in his secret soul he venerates Pius IX., as did Mazzini,\nand is convinced that if anything on earth is great, true, and as\nenduring in the future as it has been in the past, it is the Catholic\nChurch. His fear of it, and his war _\u00e0 l\u2019outrance_ against it, show an\nestimate of its power which can have no rational foundation except in an\nunwilling, hostile apprehension of its divine origin. The shallow,\nclever Count von Arnim is a cool, quiet sceptic. So, we conjecture, is\nPrince Gortchakoff. Bismarck is too deep for that sort of smooth, placid\nincredulity. He fears an ultramontane as children are afraid of a bear\nunder the bed. He is afraid of Jesuits, afraid of nuns, afraid of\nchildren singing hymns in honor of the Sacred Heart.\n\nWe think he has some reason to be afraid. The waters are rising around\nhim, and it is likely that he will yet have to plunge into them \u201cin his\nswimming-drawers.\u201d \u201cSooner or later radicalism will stand upright before\nthe king, will demand of him its recompense, and, _pointing to the\nemblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: Did you\nthink, then, that this eagle was a free gift?_\u201d\n\n\u201cWithout a religious basis a state is nothing but _a fortuitous\naggregation of interests_, a sort of bastion in a war of all against\nall; without this religious basis all legislation, instead of\n_regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth_, is only\ntossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable.\u201d This is the great\ncase of Bismarck _versus_ Bismarck. His renunciation of his own\nprinciples, and maniacal following of passion against reason, is but a\ntype of the conduct of Europe. The modern Germany has renounced and made\nwar upon the principles which were the foundation of its old imperial\ngreatness. France has done the same; Italy has done the same, with a\nworse and more parricidal impiety. Europe has done it, and the natural\nconsequence is \u201cwar of all against all.\u201d \u201cLa force,\u201d says Lacordaire,\n\u201ct\u00f4t ou tard, rencontre la force.\u201d \u201c_A house divided against itself\ncannot stand_\u201d; and such a house is the one which Bismarck has built.\nThe Napoleonic fabric was overwhelmed by the volcanic fires of Sedan. We\nbelieve that there will be a Sedan for the similar fabrics of Cavour and\nBismarck, for the whole structure of modern European politics. And where\ncan be found these \u201cliving sources of eternal truth\u201d at which\n\u201clegislation can regenerate itself\u201d? Let us remind our readers that the\nEncyclical and Syllabus of Pius IX. were proclaimed in 1864, between the\nepochs of Solferino and Sadowa. We think they will easily understand why\nthe Holy See condemned the principles of \u201caccomplished facts\u201d and\n\u201cnon-intervention,\u201d and perceive to what an abyss these principles have\nconducted Europe. They will remember that the date of the Council of the\nVatican is 1870, between Sadowa and Sedan, and perceive the import and\nreason of our conclusion, that the source of regeneration for Europe is\nthe same source from which European Christendom received its birth and\nthe life of its youth and manhood. To quote again from Lacordaire: \u201cOn\nn\u2019emprissonne pas la raison, on ne br\u00fble pas les faits, on ne d\u00e9shonore\npas la vertu, on n\u2019assassine pas la logique.\u201d That policy of which\nPrince Bismarck is the great master is the policy of fraudulence,\nperfidy, violence, and tyranny. The whole European apostasy and\nconspiracy against the Holy See\u2014the centre of religious unity and\npolitical equilibrium for Europe and the world\u2014is a revolt against\nreason, history, morality, and the logic by which the sequences of\nprinciples and events are demonstrated and applied to the concrete\nmatter of human destiny. These are indestructible powers, and no\nartillery can overthrow them or fraud pervert their decisions. \u201c_There\nis no kingdom of hell upon earth_,\u201d but only a continuous resistance of\nthe infernal powers to the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which from time to\ntime breaks out into a revolution. And the same calm, historic record,\nin which past Catholic historians have narrated the successive defeats\nof these revolutionary enterprises will, in each new chapter added by\nsucceeding centuries, continue the chronicle of similar failures;\nplacing the impartial mark of indelible dishonor against the names of\nall those who have sought for greatness by fraud and violence.\n\n\n\n\n                                VERONICA\n                           A LEGEND OF M\u00c9DOC\n\n\n    _In fines terr\u00e6_\n    _Verba corum._\n\nDescending the river from Bordeaux amid verdant isles, and between\nshores that produce some of the choicest wines of France, we soon come,\non the right, to Blaye, with its chivalric memories of Orlando and the\nfortress that makes it the Key of Aquitaine, as it was in the days of\nAusonius, who says:\n\n    \u201cAut iteratarum qua glarea trita viarum\n    Fert militarem ad Blaviam.\u201d\n\nAt the left we pass Pauillac, the ancient villa of St. Paulinus of Nola.\nThe Gironde soon becomes a sea. The shore lowers and is on a level with\nthe waves. The poor hills of Saintonge escape to the north, and the\nwhite houses of Royan become visible on the far-off shore. The sea-gull\nflies over our head, tireless as the ceaseless waves that feed him. We\nsee the white tower of Cordouan at a distance framed in a dazzling sea\nof blue and gold, out of which it rises two hundred feet above low tide,\nfull of grace and majesty, like an enchanted castle. It is said to stand\non the remains of the ancient isle of Antros, which Pomponius Mela, in\nthe first century, places at the mouth of the Gironde. We cannot resist\nthe temptation to climb its three hundred steps for the sake of the\nwonderful view over fell and flood. The foundation of this tower is lost\nin obscurity. Even its very name is a mystery. Some think it of Moorish\nderivation, and that the first light-house here was built by the\nSaracens\u2014a most ridiculous supposition; for the Moors, though they\ndestroyed a great deal in Aquitaine, certainly had no time for building,\nwhatever their taste for architecture. Others say it was due to Louis le\nD\u00e9bonnaire, and that he appointed a keeper to light a beacon-fire and\nsound a _cor_, or horn, night and day, to warn the sailor of the perils\nof the coast; but any one who ever heard the noise of the tumultuous\nwaves breaking high against the cliff of Cordouan can imagine the\ninefficiency of the most vigorous lungs in such violent storms as are\nproverbial on the Bay of Biscay. The poor keeper would have needed the\nHorn of Thunder of the Armorican legend, given St. Florentius by a\nNorman chief to summon aid when attacked by his piratical horde, or the\nmagic oliphant of Orlando, then kept hard by at Blaye, wherewith its\nowner once blew so terrible a blast that all the birds dropped dead in\nthe forests of Roncesvalles and it was heard for twenty miles around.\n\nThe earliest historical knowledge we have of a light-house here is from\na charter of the fourteenth century, by which we learn that the Black\nPrince built a tower on the cliff of Cordouan, with a chapel dedicated\nto the Blessed Virgin, kept by a hermit. In 1409 the hermit\u2019s name was\nGeoffroy de Lesparre, who subsisted by levying two _grossos\nsterlingorum_ on every vessel from Bordeaux laden with wine\u2014a toll that\nHenry IV. of England authorized him to double.\n\nAs for the modern tower of Cordouan, Louis de Foix was\n\n    \u201cLe gentil ing\u00e9nieur de ce superbe ouvrage.\u201d\n\nHe was one of the architects employed by Philip II. of Spain in building\nthe Escorial, and the inventor of the mechanism by which the waters of\nthe Tagus were carried to the highest part of the city of Toledo. Some\ncurious things are related of this ingenious architect while in Philip\u2019s\nservice. The ill-conditioned prince, Don Carlos, seems to have placed\nconfidence in him; for he commissioned De Foix to furnish him with a\nbook heavy enough to kill a man with a single blow. The architect made\none of twelve tablets of stone, six inches long and four broad, bound in\nsteel covers embossed with gold, which weighed over fourteen pounds, and\nmight have had for its motto the excellent _mot_ of Callimachus on the\ndanger of weighty books. De Thou relates the account of this momentous\ntome, which is also referred to in the list of Don Carlos\u2019 expenses, and\nsays De Foix told him the idea was by no means an original one of the\nprince\u2019s, but suggested by a similar volume improvised in his\ngrandfather\u2019s time by Don Antonio de Acu\u00f1a, Bishop of Zamora, who,\nconfined in the castle of Simancas for taking part in the rebellion of\nthe Comuneros, covered a brick of the size of his breviary with leather,\nand with this volume of decisive theology killed his keeper and made his\nescape. Perhaps Don Carlos overlooked the fate of the bishop, who was\novertaken by the keeper\u2019s son and hanged on the battlements of the\ncastle of Simancas. All who have visited the Armeria Real at Madrid will\nremember the armor of this belligerent prelate.\n\nDe Foix also invented several curious clocks for Don Carlos, who seems\nto have inherited Charles V.\u2019s taste for chronometrical instruments.\nEvery one knows the anecdote of the servant who, suddenly entering the\nemperor\u2019s room one day, overthrew the table and broke to pieces the\nthirty watches on it. The emperor laughed and said: \u201cYou are more\nsuccessful than I, for you have discovered the only means of making them\nall go alike.\u201d Among these clocks of complicated mechanism made for the\nprince by De Foix was one in the shape of an antique temple adorned with\ncolumns, that indicated the hours, days, months, and other things.\n\nDon Carlos, as if conscious of the insecurity of his life, also ordered\nDe Foix to construct a machine with pulleys and weights by which he\ncould himself open and shut his chamber door while in bed, and yet no\none could enter the room against his will. De Foix seems to have been\nfaithless to the prince; for on the 18th of January, 1568\u2014by the king\u2019s\norder, to be sure\u2014he stopped the movement of the pulleys, unknown to Don\nCarlos, whose chamber was thus opened and he conveyed to prison. De\nThou\u2019s account of this is confirmed by the letter of an Italian at\nMadrid written eight days after, in which the door with its pulleys is\nmentioned.\n\nLouis de Foix (or _sans foi_) is said to lie beneath the tower he\nerected; so we could not say: \u201cLight be the turf above thee!\u201d even had\nwe been disposed.\n\nSix or eight miles south of Cordouan we came to Soulac, amid the\nsand-dunes and salt marshes, with its antique church of Notre Dame de la\nFin des Terres, held in great veneration by the sailors of the middle\nages, and recently dug out of the sands in which it had been buried for\none hundred and twenty years. In fact, it had been partly buried since\nthe fourteenth century. Few churches have so strange a history as this.\nTradition attributes its original foundation to the pious Veronica, on\nwhose linen veil the weary Saviour, on his way to Calvary, left the\nimpress of his sacred face. It was strange to come upon her traces on\nthis distant shore, and we took great interest in hunting up all the\nlocal traditions respecting her. Lady Eastlake considers her _de trop_,\nboth morally and pictorially, and regards her very existence as\nproblematical; but we who have so often met her in the sorrowful _Via\nCrucis_, and pondered on the touching lesson she has left us, feel how\nutterly that somewhat stringent author is mistaken. Seraphia, Bernice,\nBeronica, or Veronica\u2014no matter by what name she is called\u2014is a being\nfull of reality to us. As to her identity with the Syro-Ph\u0153nician woman\nof the Gospel, we are disposed to say with Padre Ventura: \u201cIt is not\ncertain the _h\u00e9morro\u00efsse_ was the same as Veronica, but it is probable\nthat she who had the wonderful favor of wiping the sweat and blood from\nthe divine face of our Saviour was the same matron who touched the hem\nof his garment with so much courage and faith, and gave such a testimony\nto his divinity.\u201d Even if the contrary were proved, this would not\naffect the ancient tradition respecting her apostolate in France, which\nmodern research is far from shaking. Holy chroniclers of the middle ages\nassert that Veronica was not only an intimate friend of the Blessed\nVirgin, but one of the women whom Jesus healed of their infirmities and\nwho consecrated themselves to his service, following him in his round of\nmercy, and aiding him with their substance. The learned Lucas of Bruges\ndeclares her positively the Syro-Ph\u0153nician woman healed by our Saviour,\nwho, says Julian in his chronicles, lived part of the time at Jerusalem\nand part at C\u00e6sarea of Philippi. Eusebius says he saw with his own eyes\nthe monument she erected at C\u00e6sarea in memory of her cure, on which she\nwas represented at the feet of her divine Benefactor\u2014a memorial\ndestroyed by Julian the Apostate.\n\nA Polish poet, Bohdan Zaleski, thus alludes to the traditional intimacy\nof Veronica with the Holy Family in lines full of graceful simplicity in\nthe original:\n\n\u201cJoseph and Mary have lost the child Jesus at Jerusalem. Elizabeth comes\nto tell them he has been found. 'It must be either in the Temple, then,\nor at Veronica\u2019s,\u2019 replies Mary.\n\n\u201cThe Holy Family go to visit Elizabeth. Jesus, afar off, joyfully hails\nthe aged matron, as well as Veronica, Martha, and Salome.\n\n\u201cJoseph makes the accustomed prayer to thank God for his gifts. Jesus\nbreaks the bread and blesses it. Veronica passes around the basket and\ndistributes the bread among the guests.\u201d\n\nPilgrims for centuries have mentioned Veronica\u2019s house as at the corner\nof a street near the spot where Jesus fell for the second time under the\nweight of his cross. She is said to have been the wife of St.\nAmadour\u2014the Zaccheus of the Scriptures, who in early life, says the\nlegend, was in the service of the Blessed Virgin. He had watched over\nthe childhood of Jesus, and this was why he was so joyful to receive him\nin his house. After the Crucifixion he and Veronica attached themselves\nanew to the service of Mary, with whom they remained till her glorious\nAssumption. According to a lesson in the breviary of Cahors\u2014founded on\nan old MS. of the tenth century by Hugo, Bishop of Angoul\u00eame, which P\u00e8re\nOdo de Gissey, who collected all the traditions respecting St. Amadour,\ndeclares he had seen\u2014Saul, the persecutor of the church, wished to force\nAmadour and Veronica to return to the old law. They were condemned to\ndie of hunger, but an angel of the Lord mercifully delivered them from\nthe power of their persecutors and conducted them to a bark, ordering\nthem to abandon themselves to the mercy of the waves and land wherever\ntheir boat should come to shore, there faithfully to serve Christ and\nhis holy Mother.\n\nOne old chronicle says the demon invoked the winds, swelled the waves,\nand unchained the very furies against the frail bark. Death at every\nmoment seemed at hand in its most frightful form. But the venerable\nmatron, in the height of danger, seized the sacred relics she brought\nwith her, and, raising them to heaven, invoked the assistance of God.\nWonderful to relate, the storm at once ceased, a favorable breeze sprang\nup and brought the boat safely to the western coast of France to a place\ncalled Solac, in face of the setting sun. Here she built, as best she\ncould, a church in honor of the blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, and\ndeposited therein with due honor the holy relics of Our Lady she brought\nwith her.\n\nBernard de la Guionie, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, says that,\nby a particular providence of God, they brought with them many precious\nrelics of the Blessed Virgin, such as her hair and shoes, and even some\nof the _Sanctum Lac_ that nourished the divine Word. It is generally\nbelieved this relic gave the name of Solac, or Soulac, to the\nplace\u2014_Solum Lac_, because the other relics of the Virgin were\ndistributed among various churches. This relic was not once considered\nso extraordinary. It was not only venerated in many parts of Christendom\nas the symbol of the divine Motherhood, but it became a symbol of the\nsupernatural eloquence and sweet doctrine of several doctors of the\nchurch. Every one who has visited the magnificent gallery at Madrid will\nremember Murillo\u2019s beautiful painting representing St. Bernard deriving\nthe food that lent to his lips such sweet, persuasive eloquence from the\npure breast of the gentle Deipara. The dignity and grace of the Virgin\nin this painting are something marvellous, and take away everything that\nmight seem human from the subject.\n\nWe have all heard of the Grotto of Milk at Bethlehem, with its rock of\noffence to so many scoffing tourists. It is only those who have a\nprofound faith in the Incarnation that venerate everything associated\nwith the divine Infancy. St. Louis of France built the beautiful\nChapelle du Saint Lait in the Cathedral of Rheims to receive the relic\nthat gave it its name. A like relic was venerated in the church of Mans\nin the time of Clovis. And a vial was borne before the army at the\nbattle of Askalon, in 1224, which reminds one of Rubens\u2019s painting at\nBrussels in which the Madonna bares her breast before the awful Judge,\nas if he could refuse nothing at the sight of the bosom on which he had\nso often been pillowed, and where he had been nourished. There is an old\nlegend of a similar vial of this sacred _laict_ being brought from the\nHoly Land by a pilgrim, who, weary, stopped one day to repose by a\nfountain near Evron, and hung the reliquary on the hawthorn bush that\novershadowed him, and went to sleep. When he awoke, the bush had grown\ninto a tree and the relic was far beyond his reach. He tried to cut the\ntree down with a hatchet, but could make no impression on the wood.\nFeeling an inward assurance this was the spot where Providence wished\nthe relic to be honored, he gave it to the bishop, who built thereon a\nchurch, which became known as Notre Dame de l\u2019Epine Sainte. The high\naltar enclosed the hawthorn tree. Fran\u00e7ois de Ch\u00e2teaubriand, abbot of\nEvron in the sixteenth century, gave this church a beautiful reliquary\nof silver gilt, in the form of a church, beneath the dome of which was a\ntube for the relic. Devotion to this relic still exists at Evron.\n\nBut to return to Soulac. It is not surprising the Syro-Ph\u0153nician woman\nshould come to this distant shore. We know by Strabo that the ancient\nPh\u0153nicians and Carthaginians came to traffic on this coast, and even\nwent to Great Britain. Soulac was probably the ancient Noviomagos spoken\nof by Ptolemy. The old legend of C\u00e9nebrun speaks of Veronica as _la Dame\nMarie la Ph\u00e9nicienne_, who came from the East under marvellous\ncircumstances, learned the language of M\u00e9doc, and built a church beside\nwhich God caused a fountain of fresh, soft water to spring up out of the\nsalt shore for the cure of tertian fevers so common in this region.\nMoreover, it appears she was in such constant relations with the\ngovernor of Bordeaux, appointed by Vespasian, that, to facilitate the\nintercourse between Soulac and the capital, a Roman road was\nconstructed, \u201cvery level and as straight as a line\u2014_rectissimum sicut\ncorda_.\u201d If Vespasian had anything to do with it, we may be sure it was\nstraight; for we know how, to rectify a bend in the Flaminian Way, he\nbored a tunnel through a rock a thousand feet long.\n\nIt was at Bordeaux that Veronica converted Benedicta, a woman of\ndistinguished birth, and the wife of Sigebert, a priest of the false\ngods, who, attacked by a cruel malady, and hearing of the marvels\nwrought by St. Martial, said to Benedicta: \u201cGo and bring the man of God;\nperhaps he will take pity on me.\u201d St. Martial gave her the miraculous\nstaff of St. Peter, at the touch of which Sigebert recovered the use of\nhis limbs. He at once proceeded to Mortagne, accompanied by a great\nnumber of soldiers and other followers, all of whom were baptized by St.\nMartial. At his return to Bordeaux he overthrew all the pagan altars,\nwith the exception of one, which St. Martial purified as a memorial of\nthe triumph of the true faith. The inscription graven thereon is still\nto be seen in the museum at Bordeaux: _Jovi Augusto Arula donavit. SS.\nMartialis cum templo et ostio sacravit_\u2014Arula gave this altar to Jupiter\nAugustus. Martial consecrated it with the temple and vestibule.\n\nBenedicta continued to work miracles with St. Peter\u2019s staff, and greatly\ncontributed to the propagation of the faith in the province. She died in\nthe odor of sanctity, and was buried in the oratory of St. Seurin at\nBordeaux, where her remains are still honored on the 8th of June.\n\nSigebert, whose name signifies the powerful or courageous, became the\nfirst bishop of Bordeaux, where he is honored as a martyr under the name\nof St. Fort. To his _sanctum feretrum_ at St. Seurin\u2019s people formerly\nwent to take solemn oaths.\n\nThe foregoing reference of the old chronicler to Vespasian reminds us of\nthe part Veronica is said to have had in the destruction of Jerusalem. A\ncurious old play of the middle ages tells us Vespasian was afflicted\nwith the extraordinary inconvenience of a wasp\u2019s nest in his nose, and,\nafter trying every known means of dislodging it, sent for the great\nPhysician of the Jews. Finding he had been put to death by his own\nnation, he demanded some of his followers, whereupon Nicodemus, Joseph\nof Arimathea, and Veronica are said to have gone to Rome. The emperor\nexpressing a desire to see a portrait of Christ, Veronica held up the\n_Volto Santo_ before him, at the sight of which he was instantaneously\nhealed. In his gratitude he vowed to take vengeance on the murderers of\nJesus, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem. The connection between\nthis legend and the traditional respect in which Veronica was held by\nVespasian\u2019s representative at Bordeaux is curious.\n\nSome say it was Tiberius who was cured of the leprosy by the holy veil,\nwhich accounts for his leniency to the Christians and his placing a\nstatue of Christ among the gods. These legends, confused by time, may be\nregarded as traces left by Veronica at Rome, where a constant tradition\nasserts she herself brought the _Volto Santo_.\n\nThis precious relic must have been in great repute to have been placed\nat St. Peter\u2019s in 707 by Pope John VII. When removed to the Santo\nSpirito, it was confided to six Roman noblemen, each of whom had one of\nthe keys that gave access to it. For this service they annually received\ntwo cows at Whitsuntide, which were eaten with great festivities. In\n1440 it was restored to St. Peter\u2019s, where it is preserved in a chamber\nwithin one of the immense piers that sustain the wondrous dome. None but\na canon of the church can enter this chamber, but the Vera Iconica is\nannually exposed from the balcony. It seems to have all the solemn\ngravity traditional in the Greek representations of our Saviour.\nPetrarch respectfully speaks of it as the _verendam populis Salvatoris\nImaginem_.\n\nVeronica\u2019s statue is beneath\u2014one of the guardians that stand around the\ntomb of the apostles. Perhaps she came to Rome with St. Martial; for\nthere are traces of her wherever he announced the Gospel. Else remembers\ntheir visit, and says, when they left its walls, they directed their\ncourse towards Gaul. Mende and Cahors carefully treasure the shoes of\nthe Virgin she brought, and Puy has some of her hair. St. Antoninus,\nArchbishop of Florence, says that, according to the ancient traditions\nof the churches of Italy and France, Amadour and his wife Veronica\naccompanied St. Martial to Gaul. And St. Bonaventure, the great\nFranciscan, in the thirteenth century, in one of his homilies,\nrepresents St. Veronica in a humble cabin at Pas-de-Grave visited by St.\nMartial.\n\nSt. Amadour embraced the solitary life, and is believed to have been the\nfirst hermit of Aquitaine. His whole life is painted on the walls of the\nsubterranean chapel at Roc Amadour, where he died. The inscriptions\nattached to these frescoes thus sum up the legend respecting him:\n\n1. Zaccheus, because he is small and unable to see Jesus in the crowd,\nclimbs up into a sycamore-tree. Jesus, perceiving him, says: Zaccheus,\nmake haste and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house.\n\n2. Zaccheus is Jesus\u2019 disciple. Veronica, his wife, becomes one of\nMary\u2019s attendants. They are persecuted for the faith, but an angel comes\nto deliver them from the prison in which they are confined.\n\n3. An angel orders Zaccheus and Veronica to put to sea and land at\nwhatever port the vessel shall enter, there to serve Christ, and Mary\nhis holy Mother.\n\n4. The vessel arrives on the coast of M\u00e9doc at a place called Soulac,\nwhere they live in fasting and prayer. St. Martial visits them and\nblesses an oratory they have erected in honor of St. Stephen.\n\n5. Zaccheus, at the order of St. Martial, goes to Rome to see St. Peter.\nSt. Veronica remains in the Bordelais country, where she dies. Zaccheus\nreturns to Soulac, where he erects two monasteries and retires from the\nworld.\n\n6. St. Amadour, in the year of our Lord 70, chooses as his hermitage and\nplace of retreat a cliff inhabited by wild beasts, since known as Roc\nAmadour.\n\n7. The inhabitants of the country are almost savages. St. Amadour\ncatechises them and makes known the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ.\n\n8. St. Amadour erects an altar on the cliff in honor of Mary. This\nhumble altar, now so glorious, is consecrated by the blessed apostle\nMartial, who visits our saint several times in his retreat.\n\n9. St. Amadour, at the approach of death, is transported before the\naltar of Mary, where he expires.\n\nVeronica herself is said to have carried in her apron the turf or clay\nwhich served to build the chapel of Soulac. It was a mere cabin, which,\nwith the spring, was enclosed in the church built at a later period.\nThis was probably destroyed by the Normans when they ravaged the coast\nof France to the terror of the people, who doubtless joined heartily in\nthe verse then added to the liturgy, beginning:\n\n    Auferte gentem perfidam\n    Credentium de finibus, etc.\n\nAccording to the traditions of Aquitaine, Veronica lived to a great age,\nand, if already in the Temple at the Presentation of the Virgin, she\nmust have been about a century old at her death. She is believed to have\ndied about the year 70. She was, at first buried with great honor at\nSoulac in the oratory she had so signally endowed. It was Sigebert, or\nSt. Fort, who, says tradition, went to Soulac to pay her the last\nhonors. It was long the custom of the bishops of the diocese, before\ntaking possession of their see, to visit her tomb, and render homage to\nthe venerable traditions of the place. Her remains were afterwards\ncarried for safety to Bordeaux, where her tomb, of the Roman style, is\nstill to be seen in the crypt of St. Seurin. She is said to have been of\nuncommon stature, and this has been confirmed by the recent examination\nof her remains, so wonderfully preserved amid the storms of so many\nages. Placed under the seal of the archbishops of Bordeaux, and watched\nover with religious care, a source of miraculous grace, and the object\nof popular veneration, they have escaped the perils of wars and civil\ncommotions. Cardinal de Sourdis, who opened her tomb in 1616, said her\nfestival had been celebrated in his diocese from time immemorial on the\n4th of February.\n\nHer remains were carefully examined a few years since by a learned\nanatomist, who not only declared them of great antiquity, but said the\narticulation of certain bones showed the advanced age at which she died.\nThus science comes to the aid of tradition. The popular belief as to her\nmajestic stature was likewise confirmed by this examination.\n\nVeronica\u2019s oratory, probably destroyed by the Normans, as we have said,\nwas afterwards rebuilt by the Benedictines, but at what precise time is\ndoubtful. We only know there was a monastery at Soulac in 1022, which\nbecame dependent on that of Sainte Croix at Bordeaux. In 1043 Ama,\nCountess of P\u00e9rigord, gave the lands of M\u00e9drin to the monastery of\n_Sancta Maria de Finibus Terr\u00e6, ob remedium anim\u00e6 su\u00e6 necnon parentum\nsuorum_, to relieve the poverty of the monks who there served God and\nworthily fulfilled their duty. An old Benedictine chronicle says the\ndevotion of the faithful towards this holy spot increased to such a\ndegree that the monks were soon enabled to build a larger church, which\nthey enriched with much silver and many relics. This was in the twelfth\ncentury. This church, of the Roman style, to which the Benedictines were\npartial, enclosed the miraculous fountain of St. Veronica, which had\nalways been in great repute, and had an altar to her memory where solemn\noaths were administered as at the tomb of St. Fort. Her statue stood\nover the fountain, and, before leaving the church, the devout, after\ndrinking of the water and bathing their eyes, used to cross themselves\nand make a reverence to \u201cMadame Saincte V\u00e9ronique.\u201d\n\nThis church was no sooner completed than it began to be invaded by the\nsands, which every year grew higher and higher. The lateral doors had to\nbe walled up, and the pavement raised three times to be on a level with\nthe sands without. Veronica\u2019s fountain was kept open, but soon became a\nwell. The monastery and town finally disappeared under the dunes in the\nlatter part of the thirteenth century. The monks returned when the sands\nwere stayed. They found the church filled to the chancel arch and the\ncapitals of the pillared nave. They removed part of the roof, raised the\nAvails, and so arranged the church that it continued to be used till\ndevastated by the Calvinists of the sixteenth century. It was hardly\nrepaired before the sands besieged it anew and soon buried it utterly,\nwith the exception of the top of the belfry, which a boy could easily\nscale, presenting a curious and picturesque appearance on the lone\nshore. Under Louis XV. the open arches of this steeple became a kind of\nlight-house, and the pines sown by Br\u00e9montier soon took root among the\narches of the church totally hidden in the sands.\n\nTradition says Soulac was once important as a port, and alive with\ncommercial activity. Henry III. of England embarked at old Soulac for\nPortsmouth about the middle of the thirteenth century, which shows how\nextensive have been the sand deposits since. Once the church was so near\nthe water that in great storms the foundations were washed by the waves,\nthough built on a slight acclivity. It appears by documents still\npreserved at Bordeaux that the sands in 1748 covered the greater part of\nSoulac, causing the loss of many salt marshes and other sources of\nrevenue. Many other parishes on the shores of M\u00e9doc have wholly\ndisappeared. The church of La Canau was rebuilt three times before the\nmoving sands. Sainte H\u00e9l\u00e8ne has transported hers ten kilometres, leaving\nbehind what is now an islet with a few trees to mark the spot where it\nonce stood, still called by the people Senta L\u00e9notte, or Ste.\nH\u00e9lenotte\u2014that is, little St. Helen.\n\nSt. Pierre de Lignan, or, as called in old titles, Sanctus Petrus in\nLigno\u2014St. Peter on the Wood, or Cross\u2014said to have been originally built\nby Zaccheus, or St. Amadour, in memory of the martyrdom of the apostle,\nwhich he had witnessed at Rome, has been abandoned two hundred years,\nand now lies under the waves of the ocean.\n\nPauillac, sung by Ausonius in his epistle to Th\u00e9on:\n\n    \u201c_Pauliacus tanti non mihi villa foret_,\u201d\n\nis likewise half-buried in the sands.\n\nBut to return to Soulac. The thirteenth century was the most glorious\nera in the history of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres. Its popularity\nwas at that time increased by a terrible pestilence that visited M\u00e9doc.\nThe people had recourse to prayer, and went in crowds to the sanctuary\nof Soulac, vowing to renew their pilgrimage annually. The most noted of\nthese pilgrimages was that of Lesparre, a small town which excited our\ninterest by its reminiscences of the English occupation of the country.\nIts ruined fortifications; the square tower, sole remnant of the ancient\ncastle, and the church with its Saxon arches and coarse sculpture\u2014all\nbespeak great antiquity. In the twelfth century the castle and village\naround it were held by Baron Eyquem, a contentious lord, who liked\nnothing better than a brush with his neighbors. Perhaps it was this\nquarrelsome turn of mind that recommended the lords of Lesparre so\nstrongly to the favor of the English sovereigns. Henry III. of England\nsummoned Baron Eyquem to his aid at Paris. The baron\u2019s son also served\nthe same king with all the forces he could muster, and Henry so counted\non his devotedness that, in 1244, after promising to reward his\nservices, he commissioned him to aid by his sword and counsel in\nrepelling the King of Navarre, who had invaded Guienne. During the\nentire contest between England and France the Sires of Lesparre remained\nfaithful to the English; and when the last hour of English rule in the\ncountry sounded, the Baron de Lesparre took the lead in an effort to\nreplace Guienne under its dominion. He went secretly to England with the\nlord of Candale and several notable citizens of Bordeaux to assure the\nking that the whole country would rise in his favor as soon as the\nbanner of St. George should be once more seen on the Gironde. The\nEnglish eagerly responded by sending the valiant Earl of Shrewsbury,\n\n            \u201cThe Frenchman\u2019s only scourge,\n    Their kingdom\u2019s terror, and black Nemesis,\u201d\n\nto Bordeaux, but their last chance was lost by the defeat at Castillon\nin 1453, in which the gallant old earl, immortalized by Shakspere\u2014doubly\nimmortalized\u2014was slain. The Baron de Lesparre was banished, and the\nfollowing year beheaded at Poitiers for breaking his bounds. Charles\nVII. of France then gave the Seigneurie de Lesparre to the Sire\nd\u2019Albret, to whom in part he owed the triumph of his arms.\n\nLesparre having lost two-thirds of its inhabitants by a pestilence, the\nremainder, in their terror, went to prostrate themselves before the\naltar of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres, and made a solemn vow to\nreturn every year, if spared. The account of this annual pilgrimage\nreminds one of the caravans of the desert. The pilgrims were divided\ninto two bands. A part were mounted on horseback, preceded by the\ncross-bearer and the _cur\u00e9_; the rest followed on foot with baskets and\nsacks of provisions. The four bells of Notre Dame de Lesparre pealed\njoyfully out over the marshes to announce their departure. They stopped\nat every chapel they came to, to salute its tutelar saint by some hymn\nin his honor, and then kept on their way, chanting the litanies. Most of\nthese chapels were dedicated to saints specially invoked in time of\npestilence; for every grief of the middle ages left its record in the\nchurches. There was St. Catharine, always popular in this region. Then\ncame St. Sebastian, now destroyed, but which gave the name of La Cap\u00e8re\n(the chapel) to a little village we passed, and St. Roch still standing\nat Escarpon. As soon as the caravan came in sight of the belfry of\nSoulac, on a height between St. Vivian and Talais, the pilgrims\ndescended from their horses to salute the Virgin on their knees. Arrived\nat the holy sanctuary, each one offered his candle streaming with\nribbons\u2014a necessary adjunct in all religious offerings in M\u00e9doc. An\nenormous mass of these old ribbons have been preserved at new Soulac.\nAfter their devotions the pilgrims went out on the seashore to take\ntheir lunch. The next day they returned to Lesparre in the same order.\nThis annual pilgrimage was continued for five centuries, which accounts\nfor the vivid recollections of it among the people. Near the manor-house\nof the Baron d\u2019Ar\u00e8s, now buried in an immense dune, flowed a fountain as\nlate as 1830, but since filled up, where the pilgrims stopped to quench\ntheir thirst, with the pious belief that St. Veronica had brought here a\nvein of the sacred spring that flowed for the healing of the people in\nher sanctuary.\n\nLesparre, once the capital of M\u00e9doc, has now only about a thousand\ninhabitants. From the tower there is an extensive view over the broad\nmoor with its patches of yellow sand, here and there an oasis with a few\nvegetables, and perhaps an acre or two of oats, barley, or maize, which\ngrow as they can. In winter this vast heath becomes a marsh. The water\nstands in pools among the sand-hills. The peasant shuts himself up with\nhis beasts, and warms himself by the peat-fire, while the pools freeze\nand the sands grow white under the icy breath of the sea-winds.\n\nSt. Veronica\u2019s Church, so venerated in the middle ages, has within a few\nyears been dug out of the sands and repaired. The miraculous statue of\nNotre Dame de la Fin des Terres has been restored to its place on her\naltar, and, after a silence of one hundred and twenty years, the bell\nonce more awakens the echoes of the sand-hills, thanks to the interest\ntaken by Cardinal Donnet in reviving a devotion to this ancient place of\npilgrimage. Veronica is once more honored in the place where she died\u2014a\ndevotion that seems significant in these times. Perhaps she comes to\nhold up anew the bleeding face of Christ for the healing of the nations.\nThe _Volto Santo_ is said to have turned pale a few years since when\nexhibited at Rome. We may well believe it, in view of all the wounds\nsince inflicted on Christ\u2019s Bride\u2014the church. \u201cO Veronica!\u201d cries Padre\nVerruchino, a Capuchin friar, \u201csuffer us, we pray thee, to gaze awhile\nat thy holy veil for the healing of our sin-sick souls!\u201d\n\nAn old MS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century at Auch contains the\nfollowing sequence: _De Sancta Veronica Memoria_, showing how well our\nfathers in the faith, even in those dark ages, knew how to rise above\nevery type and shadow to the substance of things hoped for. It is good\nto echo the prayers of those earnest times.\n\n    Salve, sancta facies\n      Nostri Redemptoris\n    In qua nitet species\n      Divini splendoris,\n    Impressa panniculo\n      Nivei coloris,\n    Dataque Veronic\u00e6\n      Signum ob amoris.\n\n    Salve, decus seculi,\n      Speculum sanctorum\n    Quod videre cupiunt\n      Spiritus c\u0153lorum.\n    Nos ab omni macula\n      Purga vitiorum,\n    Inque nos consortium\n      Junge Beatorum.\n\n    Ave, nostra gloria,\n      In hac vita dura,\n    Labili et fragili,\n      Cito transitura.\n    Nos perduc ad patriam,\n      O felix figura,\n    Ad videndam faciem\n      Christi, mente pura.\n\n    Esto nobis, Domine,\n      Tutum adjuvamen,\n    Dulce refrigerium,\n      Atque consolamen,\n    Ut nobis non noceat\n      Hostile conamen,\n    Sed fruamur requie.\n      Nos dicamus: Amen.[27]\n\nFootnote 27:\n\n  Hail, holy face of our Redeemer, in which shines the image of the\n  divine Splendor, imprinted on a veil white as snow, and given to\n  Veronica in token of his love!\n\n  Hail, glory of the world, mirror of the saints, whom the celestial\n  spirits long to behold. Purify us from the stain of every vice and\n  bring us to the society of the Blessed!\n\n  Hail, our glory, in this rough, uncertain life, so soon to pass away!\n  Lead us to our true country, O blessed symbol! that with a pure heart\n  we may behold the face of Christ.\n\n  Be to us, O Lord! a sure help, the sweet refreshment and consolation\n  of our woes, that the efforts of the enemy may not injure us, but that\n  we may enter into the fruition of true rest. Let us say: Amen.\n\n\n\n\n                          DANTE\u2019S PURGATORIO.\n                           _CANTO FIFTEENTH._\n                      TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.\n\n    Between the third hour\u2019s close and dawn of day,\n      Much as appears of the celestial sphere\n    Ever in motion, like a child at play,\n      So much appeared now of the sun\u2019s career\n    To be remaining towards his western way.\n      There it was evening; here the middle night;\n    And on our front, the rays directly beat,\n      For we had circled so the hill that right\n    On towards the sunset we inclined our feet;\n      When on my brows I felt a load of light,\n    Greater in splendor than before had been,\n      And o\u2019er my sense, as \u2019twere from things unknown,\n    A stupor stole; and of my palms a screen\n      I made against the excess of light that shone.\n\n    As when from water or a mirror\u2019s face\n      The ray leaps upward to the opponent side,\n    Mounting in like mode as through equal space\n      The ray descendeth, and with line as wide\n    From the direct line of a falling stone\n      (As science shows, and art hath verified),\n    So did I seem, by some reflected light\n      Before me there, to be so struck that fain\n    I would have suddenly withdrawn my sight.\n\n    \u201cWhat is it, gentle Father, that in vain\n      I shield my visage from, and still towards us\n    Seems as in motion?\u201d He made this reply:\n      \u201cMarvel not if, as yet, the splendor thus\n    Of heaven\u2019s bright household overpowers thine eye.\n      This one is sent to ask men up the height;\n    Soon it shall be that to behold these things\n      Will cause thee no dismay, but bring delight,\n    Even as thy soul due disposition brings.\u201d\n     Soon as we reached the bless\u00e8d angel\u2019s side\n    He said, with glad voice: \u201cHere you enter in\n      By steps more easy than you yet have tried.\u201d\n    We thence departed, and, ascending now,\n      Heard _Beati Misericordes_ chanted\n    Below, behind us, and, \u201cBe joyful thou\n      To whom to conquer in this pass is granted!\u201d\n\n    My Master and myself in lonely mood\n      Still mounting, I considered as I went\n    How I might gather from his word some good,\n      And turned to him inquiringly: \u201cWhat meant\n    That spirit of Romagna speaking so\n      _Of partnership forbid_?\u201d He made reply:\n    \u201cOf his own worst defect he now doth know\n      The torment; therefore, do not wonder why\n    Others he chides to make their penance less.\n      Because you point your wishes at a prize\n    Where part is lost if it permit largesse,\n      Envy\u2019s bad bellows move your selfish sighs.\n    But if the love of the supernal sphere\n      Heavenward exalted every wish of yours,\n    Your bosom would not harbor that low fear;\n      For so much more as there they speak of Ours,\n    More love in that celestial cloister glows,\n      And so much more of good each soul secures.\u201d\n\n    \u201cNow to be satisfied my hunger grows,\u201d\n      I answered, \u201cand my mind is more in doubt\n    Than if no question I had asked of thee.\n      How comes it, that a blessing parcelled out\n    More rich its many owners makes to be\n      Than if a few possessed it?\u201d He replied:\n    \u201cBecause thy mind its reasoning cannot stretch\n      Beyond those things of earth to which \u2019tis tied;\n    Thou from true light dost only darkness fetch.\n      That Good ineffable and infinite\n    Who dwells above there, runs to love as fleet\n      As to a lucid body a ray of light,\n    And so much giveth as it finds of heat.\n      Broad as the flame of charity may burn,\n    The eternal flame above it grows more great:\n      And more their number is who heavenward yearn.\n    More for his love there are, and they love more,\n      Like mirrors that each other\u2019s light return.\n    Now, if thou hunger still, despite my lore,\n      Thou shalt see Beatris, and sure, she will\n    Give unto this and every wish repose;\n      Only may those five wounds remaining still,\n    That heal in aching, like the twain soon close.\u201d\n\n    Whiles I was musing, and would fain have said,\n      \u201cThou hast contented me,\u201d I looked, and, lo!\n    To the next cornice we had come; here fled\n      All power of speech, mine eyes were ravished so!\n    For, seized with ecstasy, I seemed to be\n      Rapt in a sudden vision of a crowd\n    Met in a temple. I could also see\n      That entering, 'mid those men, a woman stood\n    With sweet mien of a mother, saying: \u201cWhy\n      Hast thou so dealt with us, my darling son?\n    Behold, in every place thy sire and I\n      Have sought thee sorrowing.\u201d Soon as she had done\n    This vision vanished, and I next beheld\n      Another lady, with such drops besprent\n    As down the cheeks flow from a bosom swelled\n      With scorn of some one and by anguish rent;\n    Saying: \u201cIf thou be ruler of the town,\n      About whose name the gods had such a strife\n    And whence all knowledge gleams to give renown,\n      Pisistratus! avenge thee on his life\n    Whose bold embrace hath brought our daughter down!\u201d\n      And her lord seemed to me benign and mild,\n    Answering with aspect that her fury stemmed:\n      \u201cWhat should we do to one that harmed our child,\n    If one caressing her be so condemned?\u201d\n      Next I saw people raging hot in ire,\n    Slaying a youth with stones, and shouting loud:\n      \u201cMartyr him! martyr him!\u201d in tumult dire;\n    And I saw him drop down before the crowd\n      Dying, but lifting, ere he did expire,\n    Looks that might win compassion for his foes;\n      And with such eyes,\u2014they seemed the doors of heaven!\n    Praying the most high Father that, for those\n      Who wrought such wrong, their sin might be forgiven.\n\n    Soon as my mind that from itself had swerved\n      Came back to true things that outside it lie,\n    I knew my dreams false, but their truth observed.\n      My leader then, who could perceive that I\n    Walked like a man by somnolence unnerved,\n      Said: \u201cCome! what ails thee that thou canst not keep\n    Thy footing straight, but more than half a league\n      Hast moved, with faltering steps, as if by sleep\n    Or wine o\u2019ercome, and eyes that show fatigue?\u201d\n      I answered: \u201cO sweet Father! I will tell,\n    If thou wilt hear me, all that I have seen,\n      While my limbs failed me and my strength so fell.\u201d\n    And he replied: \u201cShouldst thou thy visage screen\n      Beneath an hundred masks, I still could spell\n    Each slightest thought of thine, and read thy dreams.\n      This vision came lest thou be self-excused\n    Thy heart from opening to the peace that streams\n      From love\u2019s eternal fount o\u2019er all diffused.\n    I did not ask 'what ails thee,\u2019 as men speak,\n      Who look with mortal eye that cannot see\n    The soul without its body. Thou wast weak,\n      And I, to strengthen, reprehended thee.\n    So men are wont dull servants to reprove\n      That when their watch comes round are slow to stir.\u201d\n\n    During these words we did not cease to move\n      On through the evening, and attentive were\n    To look beyond us, far as vision might,\n      Against the level sun\u2019s o\u2019erpowering rays;\n    And towards us, lo! a vapor, dun as night,\n      Little by little growing on our gaze,\n    Deprived us of pure air and dimmed our sight,\n      Nor was there shelter from the blinding haze.\n\n\n\n\n                           SIX SUNNY MONTHS.\n    BY THE AUTHOR OF \u201cTHE HOUSE OF YORKE,\u201d \u201cGRAPES AND THORNS,\u201d ETC.\n                              CHAPTER XII.\n                         \u201cTO BE, OR NOT TO BE.\u2019\n\n\nThe Signora\u2019s life in these days was disturbed by a doubt that was all\nthe more troublesome because she was obliged to solve it unaided, and\nthat without delay. What should she do with Mr. Vane?\n\nAdvice could be of no use, even if she had been willing to ask it. He\nsatisfied perfectly all the conditions concerning which outward\ninfluence could have weight with a woman of character and refinement. It\nis always possible to tell a woman that she should not marry a man, the\nreasons given being good ones; but it is never possible to tell her that\nshe should marry him, if she does not wish, however excellent he may be.\nThe question with the Signora was, Should she marry at all? She\ncertainly did not wish to marry. Was she willing? Here came up a host of\narguments for and against, till she was as tormented and uncertain as\nHamlet. If Mr. Vane would have consented to spend his life in Rome and\nremain her friend, without asking for more, she would have been\nsatisfied, and have thought that her life had gained by him a sweetness\nshe had never known, nor even thought of. For she had not been conscious\nof anything wanting, till his companionship had taught her that one\nniche in her house was vacant. She contemplated the possibility of\nmarrying him only in order to keep him near her, not because she wished\nto change their relations. But the choice was forced upon her to lose\nhim or to marry him.\n\nIt was a choice between two evils. Her life had been so exquisite, so\nnearer perfect than any one but herself could know, that to introduce\nnew and important interests there was a dangerous experiment. How much\nmore likely they would be to disturb than to complete the harmony! And\nyet, how pleasant was that masculine presence, like a shady tree in the\nmidst of a sunny garden of flowers! How pleasant the sense of a superior\nphysical strength and manly sympathy ever near! How pleasant the\nconsciousness of constantly pleasing one worth pleasing by the thousand\nlittle feminine ways and words, and by the very being what she was, like\na fragrant rose set in a chamber, silent and gracious. How many little\npleasures he gave her which a man gives only to the woman he prefers to\nall others! It seemed to her she had never been well listened to before.\nThen to see her do a favor to any one, perform some graceful little act\nthat might pass unregarded by others, even go about her ordinary duties,\ngave him a vivid pleasure. He appreciated the very rose in her hair, the\nribbon at her throat, the bow on her slipper. Little things: but it is\nthe little pleasures which make life sweet, as the little displeasures\nmay do more than afflictions can to make it bitter.\n\nShe watched to see what danger there might be of certain small\nannoyances which she had seen fretting the course of many a married\nlife, and he came out triumphantly from the ordeal. He did not hang for\never about the house till the women grew tired of him, any more than he\nwent to the opposite extreme of staying away too much. He preserved a\nrespectful ignorance of household affairs, in which he held that women\nshould be autocrats, and at the same time listened with interest to any\ndetails that might be vouchsafed him, as to curious particulars of a\ncountry he had never visited, but which sent him important supplies. He\nwas habitually polite to women, but never gallant, and he would have\ngiven a civil reply to a civil question proffered him even by an\ninfamous person; and in the most private life, he dropped only ceremony,\nnever respect. As far as personal habits went, he was a man who might\nhave been a hero, even to his _valet-de-chambre_.\n\nPoint by point the Signora tried him, and still found no defect which\ncould seem to indicate a disagreeable habit or an intolerable opinion.\nShe could but laugh\u2014a little nervously, indeed\u2014at her own perplexity.\n\n\u201cYou dear soul!\u201d she thought, \u201cwhy will you not do something hateful and\nset my mind at rest?\u201d\n\nHe would not. He was not even guilty of the one fault that might\nnaturally have been expected of him under the circumstances: he had no\nappearance of hanging upon her words and looks, as if for some\nindication of a change of intentions regarding him. She was free to act\nherself perfectly, without fear of misinterpretation. And yet, in spite\nof his forbearance, she felt that time was committing her, and that she\nmust soon either decidedly prevent or decidedly receive a renewal of his\noffer.\n\nThe Signora might easily be accused by persons of little refinement of\nbeing one who did not know her own mind. On the contrary, she was rather\nexceptionally prompt and clear as to her requirements. But she was past\nthe age when women usually marry in haste to repent afterward at\nleisure; and was, moreover, one of the comparatively few women who are\nfitted by their character to be friends to men without marrying them.\nThe insidious sisterhood which ends in wifehood or in mischief she saw\nthrough and reprobated. \u201cNo man can have a sister,\u201d she was wont to say,\n\u201cother than the daughters of his mother. But he may have a friend. And\nno man has a right to expect sisterly service and familiarity from a\nwoman not born his sister. It is a snare.\u201d As a friend, she would never\nhave charged herself with the care of Mr. Vane\u2019s collars and cravats,\nadvised him regarding the most becoming cut of his beard, nor performed\nthe sentimental service of \u201cbathing his fevered brow\u201d when he had a\nheadache, though she might have done all these things as a sister or a\nwife.\n\nIt was, altogether, a perplexing and even painful situation, and the\nSignora found all her pleasure disturbed by that ever-present fear of\neither throwing away a good which she might afterward regret, or\ncommitting herself to a state of life which she might regret still more.\nThe weather added to her annoyance. Summer had reached its meridian heat\nrather prematurely, the sun poured his rays down in a torrent, and at\nnoon the city was like a martyr at the stake. The nights began to lose\ntheir freshness and be scorched about the edges; the early stars,\ninstead of shedding dews, were like the coals left in a half-swept oven;\nand the mornings languished on the horizon. It was a time for not only\n_dolce far niente_, but _dolce pensar niente_. Besides, people, being at\nthis season so shut up together, need to be at ease with each other.\nThere was very little to call them out, few friends left in town, and\nbut few _festas_.\n\nOn one of these days came the _festa_ of the Nativity of St. John the\nBaptist, the vigil of which is unique in Rome, being a real witch\u2019s\nholiday, according to popular superstition. It is an ancient belief\namong the people that on this vigil the witches have liberty to go about\nwhere they will; and, since the world all goes to St. John Lateran, the\nwitches go there too. In order to detect them it was the custom to\nprocure a stick with a natural fork at the end. This fork was placed\nunder the chin, the two prongs coming up over the jaws. Looking at a\nperson over it in this wise, it could be known if he or she were a\nwitch. Moreover, since it was believed that the witches would take\nadvantage of the absence of the heads of the family to enter the houses\nand do harm to the children, the little ones being their favorite prey,\na new broom was bought, and set, broom-end upward, outside the door.\nBefore entering, the witch was obliged to count every spill of the\nbroom. As a further precaution, some salt was sprinkled on the\nthreshold, and, in case that should not prevent their entering, these\nwords were repeated while sprinkling it: \u201cCome tomorrow to borrow salt\nof me.\u201d The witch who entered was constrained to come and knock at the\ndoor the next day, and ask the loan of a little salt. For the further\nsafe-keeping of the children during the night, the mothers hang some\nobject of devotion about their necks or bind it around their bodies,\nand, when they are about going to sleep, whisper the _Credo_ in their\near, repeating every word twice, thus: \u201cI believe, I believe, in God, in\nGod,\u201d etc.\n\n\u201cWhat do they think a witch would do to the children, if she should\nenter?\u201d we asked our Roman informant.\n\n\u201cTake off the object of devotion and touch them, or do something to them\nso that they would die,\u201d was the reply. \u201cA child that has been touched\nby a witch pines away to a skeleton, and dies, without any one being\nable to find out what ails it. I believe, and I do not believe,\u201d she\nsaid with a shrug. \u201cWho knows? The Scriptures tell of evil spirits\nhaving power. Who knows how it may be? My sister, however, lived and\ndied persuaded that her only child was touched by a witch, though it was\nnot on St John\u2019s eve. She had been getting her baby to sleep one day,\nwhen a neighbor came and called her to the door for some reason. She\nwent out, leaving the door open and the baby in its cradle. When she\nreturned, there was an old woman bending over the cradle and talking to\nthe child\u2014an ugly, dirty old creature, that she had never seen before.\nMy sister took fright at once, and called out to her to go away. 'I saw\nthe door open and heard the baby crying, and I came in to soothe it,\u2019\nthe old woman said. My sister told her she had no right to come in, and\nchased her away. On the threshold the woman turned and shook her finger.\n'You will repent this,\u2019 she said. In fact, the babe, which had been\nhealthy, and was just dropping peacefully asleep, began to moan and cry,\nand nothing could pacify it. My sister examined and found that the\nlittle devotion it wore had been taken away. From that day the child\npined. She got nurses for it, she tried everything possible, but nothing\nhelped it. Finally, she carried it to the church of St. Theodore, in the\nRoman Forum, where all the mothers carry their sick babies. The priest\nblessed it, but told her that it was too late: the child would die. And\nit did die. She tried then one proof more. She took all its clothes that\nit died in, and that it had on when the witch touched it, put them in a\ngrate, and kindled a fire under them. They burned as if there had been\ngunpowder among them. That was a sure proof, they said. But for me,\u201d\ncontinued the story-teller, with another shrug, \u201cI believe, and I don\u2019t\nbelieve. _Chi lo sa?_\u201d\n\nIt is curious to find how this witch-idea is embodied in every nation,\nand always with very nearly the same features: old, ugly, child-hating,\npowerful for petty malice, but a slave to the most trivial spells,\nrepelling, disgusting\u2014a fair representation of the utter despicableness\nand feebleness of evil.\n\nAt the first soft fall of twilight the family of _Casa Ottant\u2019Otto_\nstepped into a carriage and drove out to the Lateran by the roundabout\nway of the Roman Forum. From the Colosseum up to the church, all about\nthe church and palace, in a part of the piazza, and the ends of the\nstreets leading to it, every nook and door-way and every rod of ground\nhad its table or booth, some lighted by a soft olive-oil lamp, others\nclear and bright with petroleum, others flaring with the red light of a\ntorch. Piles of cakes of every shape and size, wine in bottles, flasks,\nand jars, cones of the delicious Roman lemons, that are so juicy and\nfragrant, trinkets, scarfs, knick-knacks of various sorts, covered the\ntables and counters. Here and there a more ambitious salesman, probably\na Jew, had erected a little shop. Everywhere were pinks and lavender.\nEach table and counter held sprigs and bunches, and men, women, and\nchildren went about with their arms full of it. A little crowd of these\nnoisy venders surrounded the carriage the moment it stopped, and the\nladies supplied themselves with lavender for their drawers, and bought\nlarge bunches of red pinks, and each of them a St. John\u2019s bouquet. This\nbouquet consists of a little white flower surrounded by pinks, and\noutside four sprigs of lavender. The lavender for drawers is ingeniously\ndone up. A bunch is gathered with long stems to the sweet gray seeds and\nblue flowers, and a string is tied close under their little chins. The\nstems are then turned back to make a cage for the cluster, and tied\nagain at the other end; and yet again turned back and tied a third time,\nso that only glimpses can be had of the caged bloom; and all is\nlavender.\n\n\u201cWe should have come to first Vespers, if we wished to think of the\naustere St. John,\u201d the Signora said. \u201cThe scene is simply picturesque\nand beautiful at this hour, and will be bacchanalian later. The world\ndoesn\u2019t begin to come till twelve o\u2019clock, and at that time it will be\nalmost impossible to move for the crowd, which does not disappear\nentirely till daylight.\u201d\n\nThey drove off toward Santa Croce, and, turning there, stayed awhile\nunder the soft dusk of the trees, looking back on the twinkling lights\nand crowding figures, and talking a little. The fiery half-ring of the\nthree days\u2019 moon touched the tip of a pine-tree in the west and kindled\nit; the stars overhead seemed to be melting out of their orbits in a\nglowing rain; the air was full of a sweet fragrance and delicately\nfresh. Sounds of laughter and mingled voices reached them now and then.\nBut all\u2014the wafts of air, the sounds, the radiating lights, the\nmotions\u2014were so soft that the whole might be a great picture which they\nhalf imagined to be alive.\n\nThe Signora leaned back in her seat and gave herself up to the scene,\nmingling with it the ever-present thought: What should she do with this\nman who sat opposite her? His face was turned to look back, so that she\nsaw the profile, a fine one. She felt very feminine and weak just\nthen\u2014not at all like taking care of herself all her life long, being\nboth mistress and master of her house, and her own adviser and support.\nThe spirit of strength, of an enthusiastic liberty of effort and labor,\nfaded and fainted within her. They could not live in such a scene. She\nwanted to be taken care of. All the insidious arguments of the sluggard\nbegan to whisper themselves to her. Of what use was this constant toil\nand strain, which was but a daily rolling up hill of a burden that every\nnight rolled down again? Of what use the study, the thought, the\nself-denial? All had seemed pleasant; but, come to think of it, where\nhad been the repose? Had she ever looked at a flower without, after the\nfirst glance, studying how she should present its beauties in words to\nother eyes? Had she ever drunk a sunset with all its color down into her\nown soul, and left its glory there, but speedily her pen must dip the\nlight of it up to shine on a page for others to see? Whither had fled\nthe long, tranquil sleep, the calm folding of the hands, the deep and\nsteady thought for thought\u2019s sake? There was no one in the world, it\nseemed to her, who thought so much of others as she did. She analyzed\nher pains, her religious emotions, her very temptations, for them, and\nstudied her own breathing that she should be able to tell them how they\nbreathed. And what was the return? Bread, and not too much of that. She\nhad studied her art as the painter, the sculptor, and the musician\nstudy, making a science of it, and not one in a hundred looked on it as\nany more than an idle and facile play. She had felt her way, by a\nnatural gift and an acquired power, into the depths of souls, and had\nled them out alive into the light; yet how many an ignorant critic and\nshallow moralist had set up his wooden or card-paper model for her to\nfollow!\n\nHow odd she had not known before how tiresome it was! She had at times\nfelt tired, but to know that all was tiresome, and vanity of\nvanities\u2014that had but just broken on her. This soft and joyous scene,\nusurping the hours of sleep, making the work of the day to follow an\nimpossible thing to be done, and finding its playground under the\nstars\u2014this was what had opened her eyes. A careless laugh had done it.\nShe looked at Mr. Vane and thought: \u201cI hope he won\u2019t ask me to-night,\nfor if he should I shall certainly promise to marry him; and I do not\nlike cutting Gordian knots with sudden resolutions. I would rather untie\nthis a little more leisurely,\u201d she considered, still looking at him. \u201cIf\nI want honors and favors, I could win more by giving good dinners than\nby writing good books. A dinner is more powerful than an epic; for\nanybody can take in a dinner, but everybody cannot take in an epic. If I\nwant friends and the reputation of being amiable, the good-natured\ncomplacency of prosperous ease will go a great deal further than the\nsomewhat over-earnestness of a serious life.\u201d\n\nShe snatched her eyes and her thoughts quickly away from the subjects\nthat occupied both, and began to talk; for Mr. Vane turned, as if aware\nof being observed, and looked at her.\n\n\u201cI must have a little longer to think,\u201d she said to herself, with a\nfluttering heart. \u201cIt will never do to decide to-night.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf we are going to keep up our character of a sober and orderly\nhousehold, we must soon be on our way home,\u201d she said. \u201cThe witches are\ncertainly abroad\u2014I almost see them\u2014and we have no spell to prevent their\ngetting into our carriage.\u201d\n\nMr. Vane had been holding his breath for the last few moments. He knew,\nwithout looking, what eyes were on him, and almost knew what thoughts\nwere passing in the Signora\u2019s mind. He felt that his fate was in the\nbalance. The prize seemed to be within his grasp; for to hesitate, even,\nseemed to give consent. At the first word he felt that hope grow dim.\nConsent would have lingered in that enchanted scene, would have given\nitself up to some ideal dream, forgetting the flight of time. She was\nevidently resisting, if not refusing.\n\n\u201cLet us take one turn round by the wall and Santa Croce,\u201d he said. \u201cThen\nwe will go. I don\u2019t think I shall ever have another drive just like\nthis, and I would like to prolong it a little.\u201d\n\n\u201cProlong it as much as you please!\u201d the Signora exclaimed, with quick\ncompunction. \u201cI only made a suggestion, which came from habit. If you\nlike to stay, I shall be pleased.\u201d\n\nHis voice, a little quickened and a little deepened, had seemed to have\na touch of reproach in it, as though he should say: \u201cThink, at least, a\nlittle of me!\u201d But his answer to her was quite friendly: \u201cYou were\nright. We had better not stay long. One turn will be enough.\u201d\n\nThey went on, the Signora fighting now two forces instead of one\u2014for\npity for him was added to pity for herself. What a beautiful and noble\npatience his life had shown, and with what a sweet dignity he had\ncovered that painful thought that he had never been first to anybody!\n\nAs they passed round near the wall, approaching Santa Croce, the trees\nhid all the lights from them. The two daughters, one at either hand of\nthe father, leaned on his arm and sighed with delight; Marion, seated\nbeside the Signora, leaned forward to touch Bianca\u2019s hand, unable in\nthat shadow to see her. The darkness touched their faces like a down, so\nthick and moist was it, and so full of fragrance.\n\nThey came out before Santa Croce, and, turning, went back as they had\ncome. More than one of the company would have liked to propose walking\nback along the avenue, but did not venture to do so. A few minutes\nbrought them to the piazza of St. John\u2019s again, and into the midst of a\ncrowd of eager buyers and sellers. Here and there out of some dim corner\na face shone red in the flare of a half-shaded torch, small figures ran\nand danced across the lights, black as _silhouettes_; the whole coloring\nwas Rembrandt.\n\nThen home through the quiet streets, where occasionally they met a\ncouple or a party, all going toward St. John\u2019s.\n\n\u201cIt seems to me a kind of Santa Claus time, except that it is hot\nweather,\u201d Bianca said when they reached home. \u201cI feel as though somebody\nought to come down the chimney to-night.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy the way,\u201d the Signora exclaimed, \u201cI have never introduced you to my\nSanta Claus. How ungrateful I am! I am going to tell you my little\nstory; for I am almost sure that you four good people are as ignorant of\nthe genealogy of the Santa Claus of Christmas fame as I was when I came\nto Rome. If you are wiser, then you can at least hear how I was\nenlightened. When I had been in Rome but a little while, I made the\nacquaintance of an elderly prelate, who was so kind as to do for me many\nof those little services which a stranger needs, and was of the greatest\nuse to me in many ways. I seldom, almost never, asked anything of him,\nbut it was constantly happening that he offered some kindness at the\nvery moment it was needed. I never went to visit a city new to me but he\nintroduced me to some influential friend there, and I never heard of a\nnew old sight to see but he could tell me how to gain the best view of\nit. His kindness was so pleasant and opportune that after a while,\nwithout the least intention of being disrespectful however, I came to\ncall him in my own mind Santa Claus. His Christian name is Nicholas. One\nday, while talking with me, he asked if I had any of the manna of St.\nNicholas of Bari. I replied that I did not even know what it was. He\nlooked at me in astonishment, and explained that it was a limpid\nsubstance like water which had oozed from the bones of St. Nicholas the\nGreat, without ceasing, for more than fifteen hundred years, the saint\nhaving been born somewhere late in the third century; that every morning\nthe sacristan gathers it with a sponge and preserves it in bottles; and\nthat the people of Bari and all that region have so great a faith in the\nsaint and his miraculous 'manna\u2019 that they use it for every malady. He\nended by promising to send to his brother, an archbishop somewhere in\nthe south of Italy, to procure a bottle of this precious liquor for me.\nIn a few days he brought it. Here it is!\u201d The Signora brought from a\nlittle shrine that closed with a door in the wall, and displayed, a\nbottle filled with what appeared to be the brightest and most limpid\nwater. \u201cMonsignor showed me a similar bottle that he has had forty\nyears,\u201d she continued, \u201cand it was as pure and bright as this\u2014perfectly\nunchanged. He had opened it, now and then, to take out a few drops. Some\nyears ago he gave a bottle also to the Holy Father, who keeps it beside\nhis bed on a little shelf. Here is the picture of my saint.\u201d\n\nIt was a quaint old print, copied, doubtless, from a picture in the\nchurch of St. Nicholas, in Bari, and represented the sainted archbishop\nstanding on the shore, with the sea and ships behind him. At his right\nknelt a youth on the sands; at his left three infants were rising out of\na tub, commemorative of two of his miracles.\n\n\u201cAfter having given me this relic of his great patron, Monsignor, full\nof zeal for his honor and of pity for my ignorance, began to tell me\nsomething of his life, and how knowing of an impoverished noble family,\ndriven to desperation by need, and almost deciding to sell the daughters\nto a life of vice, since they had no money to marry them, this young\nsaint went slily by night, and dropped a bag of gold in at the window\nsufficient for a _dot_ for the eldest; and, after a while, in the same\nmanner, provided for the others, the family rejoicing over their escape\nand repenting of their evil resolution. When Monsignor had got so far\nwith his story, I broke out, 'Why, it is Santa Claus!\u2019 And, sure enough,\nit was. The great saint was no longer a stranger to me. I had known,\nwithout knowing, him all my life, from the time when I had first read\nthe wonderful illustrated story-books of Christmas, and seen my mother\nhang my stocking in the chimney-corner before taking me off to bed on\nChristmas eve.\u201d\n\nThe Signora was very glad to have this little story to tell by way of\nmaking an inclined plane to the saying of good-night. Undercover of it\nshe escaped to her own room without being entrapped into a private\ninterview, which she almost suspected Mr. Vane of plotting.\n\nThen they had a little expedition for the morning to see the making of\ntapestry in the great hospice of St. Michael.\n\n\u201cIf the weather and the time of day were not so hot,\u201d the Signora said,\n\u201cwe would go a little further on, to the scene of a miracle of Santa\nFrancesca Romana; but I don\u2019t believe we shall be able to do so. A\nlittle way from the hospital is the Porta Portese, and outside that is\nthe vineyard where that beloved saint and her companions worked one\nJanuary day from dawn till noon, without having anything to eat or\ndrink. They had forgotten to bring provisions; and Francesca, when she\nsaw her companions suffering from thirst, accused herself of having\nneglected to provide for them. She was then, you know, a\nmother-superior, and these were her oblates. Well, the youngest of them,\nalmost crying with thirst, begged to be allowed to go to a fountain out\non the public road. The saint told her to be patient, and, withdrawing\nherself, began to pray: 'Lord Jesus, help us in our need; for I have\nbeen thoughtless in neglecting to provide food for my sisters.\u2019 'She\u2019d\nmuch better take us home at once,' said the poor little nun to herself.\nAnd then Francesca, rising from her knees, pointed to a tree around\nwhich twined a vine loaded with large clusters of grapes\u2014just as many\nclusters as there were poor nuns to eat them. They had passed this very\ntree again and again, and seen the vine dead and withered that very day.\nThat same Santa Francesca is one of the dearest saints in the calender,\u201d\nthe Signora said. \u201cThough, to be sure,\u201d she added, \u201cwhen we think over\ntheir lives, each one seems to be the dearest.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy idea of saintliness is always associated with asceticism,\u201d said\nIsabel.\n\n\u201cIf only the asceticism be not sour, as it never is with the saints,\u201d\nresponded the Signora with a sigh. \u201cAbout the most uncomfortable company\none can have is that of a person who, we cannot doubt, is virtuous in\nmany ways, but who looks upon one with an expression full of suspicion\nand condemnation, without seeming aware that in so doing he has\ncommitted a sin against charity which, according to St. Paul, renders\nhis other virtues nothing. To my mind, one of the first requisites of a\nChristian character is to mind one\u2019s own business.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! I don\u2019t mean asceticism that goes only far enough to stir up the\nbile,\u201d Isabel said, \u201cbut that which clears the heart, so that the light\nof charity shines quite through it and brightens every object it looks\nupon.\u201d\n\nThey were already on their way to the asylum of St. Michael\u2014that immense\nestablishment, which contains a little world within itself, where beauty\nand charity dwell together; where the young find protection and\ninstruction, and the old a refuge, under the same roof; where music,\nsculpture, painting, and kindred arts have made their home. Here the\npoor, instead of being swept away like dead leaves from a garden, to\ndecay in obscure disgrace, slip, consoled and unashamed, into the grave,\nlike fallen leaves that die in peace between the embracing roots of the\ngreen tree they once helped to adorn. The long, arched corridors were\nfresh and cool, the brilliant day entering only in a tender light, or,\nhere and there, in some splash of gold that burned only the spot it fell\nupon. Fountains murmured in the courts, and all the business of the\nplace moved with a subdued and leisurely action which made work seem a\npleasure. It was not toil, but occupation\u2014that wise and healthy degree\nof work which makes work possible for many years, instead of crowding\nthe force of a whole life into a few feverish days. There was not a face\nwhich showed anxious and nervous hurry. All were calm and cheerful.\n\nOur friends did not attempt to see anything more than the\ntapestry-making and mending, the first in the men\u2019s department, the last\ndone entirely by women and girls. The two immense halls devoted to these\nworks, with the ante-chambers, were completely hung with old tapestries,\nmaking a softly and richly-colored picture-gallery of the whole place.\nIn the manufacturing hall upright frames held the great squares of the\nwarp, with the design drawn or stamped carefully on the\nclosely-stretched threads. Behind these sat the weaver, working in the\nfigures with long spools of colored wools, pressing down closely each\nstitch with a little instrument he held in the left hand. A score or\nmore of these bobbins hung at the back of the tapestry, each to be\ncaught up and woven in in its turn. Across the lower part of the carpet\nalready a yard was splendidly woven of solid and brilliant color. In\nanother part of the hall hung a large picture for a future weaving\u2014a\nbalcony with a vine and figures\u2014and on a table under it were arranged\nthe myriad selected shades and colors that composed it. Here all in the\nwork was brightly colored; but when they went to the other part of the\nbuilding, where the women were occupied in restoring, it was like\npassing from dazzling midsummer to a late October day. The very light\nand atmosphere of the place seemed different. Stretched on large frames\nlaid out like country quilting-frames were dim old tapestries with\nfigures of gods and goddesses, of mythical heroes and heroines, or of\nhistorical persons and events, the fabrics all more or less ragged, but\ninestimably precious. Girls were grouped around these, mending, directed\nby an artist. Hanging on the walls were other tapestries that had been\nrepaired, and so perfectly that it was impossible to distinguish what\npart had been restored without looking at the wrong side of the work.\nLying in bunches and snarls on the work, or hanging in long rows of\nvaried hues on the wall, were skeins of wool, of every shade and color,\ndim, dark, soft, or pallid, like colors seen by night, by the stars, or\nby the moon, or colors guessed at by eyes half-blind or by eyes that are\ndying. There was a suggestion of tragedy in those old new colors, as in\nsad or blighted faces of children. And how much more of interest and\ntragedy in the old tapestries for which they had lost all their\nbrightness! Nothing else is so interwoven with romantic possibilities as\nold tapestry. Luxury, which may have been regal, clings to it, but it is\nthe luxury of olden times, when the beggar touched the prince. Mystery\nand terror are its companions; for who knows who or what may sometimes\nhave been hidden behind that splendid curtain? Lifting its fold on some\nday of an age gone by, what white, cold face might have been found there\nbetween it and the wall, what sliding figure of a hiding spy, what\ntwinkle of a dagger-point in the dusky corner! And then what pageants\ndoes it not suggest of the times when life was a picture!\n\n\u201cIt really takes one out of the nineteenth century,\u201d Mr. Vane said.\n\n\u201cThe weaving of this tapestry,\u201d the Signora told her friends, \u201cwas first\ntaught here by a monk\u2014I have forgotten in the time of what pope. This\nmonk was a backslider and ran away from his convent; after being absent\nten years he repented, and came back to throw himself at the feet of the\nHoly Father. 'Give me any penance, Holy Father,\u2019 he said, 'and I will do\nit gladly.\u2019 The pope, rejoiced to receive this prodigal, asked him where\nand how he had passed the ten years of his absence, and was told that\nthey had been spent in the tapestry-works of Coblentz, where he had\nlearned all the art of tapestry-making. 'Go, then, to St. Michael\u2019s,\u2019\nsaid the pope, 'and teach them to make tapestry. That shall be your\npenance.\u2019 And so it was done; and that is the origin of the work in\nRome. The story was told me by a prelate who was formerly director of\nSt. Michael\u2019s.\u201d\n\nIt was too near noon when the inspection was over for them to go to\nSanta Francesca\u2019s vineyard. They could only hide themselves in the large\ncovered carriage, and drive slowly home through the almost silent\nstreets. They sighed with contentment when they reached the doorway,\nwhere, through the half-open valves, the floor showed freshly sprinkled\nand all the place cool and softly lighted.\n\nIsabel glanced back into the street. A sick beggar, who was at his post\non a doorstep of the opposite convent so constantly that one might well\nbelieve he had no other home, leaned back and seemed to sleep, his\npallid face whiter than the white stone it lay against. A poor man slept\nin the shadow of the garden wall above, lying flat on his face on the\npavement. Further up, a woman, with two little children clinging to her,\nsat on the ground in the shadow, and ate her dinner of a piece of bread.\n\n\u201cIt seems to me,\u201d the girl said thoughtfully, as she followed the others\nup-stairs, \u201cthat there should be a perpetual thanksgiving society which\nevery one who has a home or a roof to cover them should join.\u201d\n\nThe Signora touched Isabel\u2019s arm affectionately and smiled in her\npretty, sober face. She found this girl changing, or, rather, developing\ninto something nobler and more serious than she had expected.\n\n\u201cThere is a Perpetual Thanksgiving Society in Rome, my dear,\u201d she said.\n\u201cI am so glad you have had the thought without having heard of it. It is\none of the most beautiful societies in the world. It has its meetings\nthe third Thursday of every month, at the Caravita, a little church that\nused to belong to the Jesuits. There is an instruction, Benediction of\nthe Blessed Sacrament, and afterward the _Magnificat_ is sung. The\nspecial objects of the association are to thank God constantly for the\ngood we receive through the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, the Sacred\nHeart, and by the intercession of the Virgin Mary; and the special\nfestas of the society are Epiphany, Pentecost, Corpus Domini, Sacred\nHeart, Annunciation, Visitation, Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin, St.\nJohn the Evangelist, St. Gertrude, St. Felix de Cantalice, and Our Lady\nof Grace. The loveliest thing of all is the practice enjoined on the\nmembers of making constantly the aspiration, 'Thanks be to God.\u2019 I wish\nthis society were in every town in the world. We beg, we are always\nbegging, and the showers are always coming down. How beautiful is the\nidea of a society which asks nothing, but sends up a perpetual _Deo\ngratias_, as the earth sends up mists in return for the rain!\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall join that society at once,\u201d Isabel said with decision.\n\nThe Signora laughed. \u201cYou had better take off your bonnet and have some\ndinner now,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cYour society pleases me very much,\u201d Mr. Vane remarked. \u201cBut the most\nperfect act of thanksgiving I know is that in the _Gloria_: 'We give\nthee thanks for thy great glory.\u2019\u201d\n\nThere was a little moonlight reception and tea-party that evening out on\nthe _loggia_. Clive Bailey came to take leave before going away for a\nfew weeks into the country. Mr. Coleman also had been unexpectedly\ncalled to England on business, and was so afflicted about going that the\nSignora was vexed.\n\n\u201cI cannot bear to have a man about who cannot get along without me,\u201d she\nsaid privately to Isabel, \u201cespecially when I can get along perfectly\nwell without him. When a man falls into that dependent and moony state,\nhe loses all his character and becomes despicable. It disgusts me the\nmore, besides, because it is usually the strong-willed, driving women\nwho have such masculine appendages. I do hope I\u2019m not getting into that\nway. For pity\u2019s sake, tell me if I show signs of it. I have seen\nladies\u2014I recollect at this moment a lady, clever, pretty, prompt, and\ncircumscribed in character, who makes all her familiar gentlemen\nacquaintances either hate her or serve her like dogs. I\u2019ve seen her take\na man whom I thought a very respectable sort of person, with a mind of\nhis own, and, by dint of smiling and scolding, rewarding him promptly\nwhen he was good, and punishing him promptly when he didn\u2019t obey, end by\nmaking a perfect ninny of him. He couldn\u2019t brush his boots or tie his\ncravat except just as she directed him; if she was vexed with a person,\nhe didn\u2019t dare be civil to them; if she was reconciled to the same, he\nimmediately beamed upon them with the most unconscious and imbecile\nservility. Yet the two were not lovers, and never dreamed of being so, I\npresume, and both of them would have been astonished, or would have\npretended to be astonished and indignant, if one had hinted that his\nfirmness had been nothing but starch, and she had washed that out of\nhim. I wouldn\u2019t be such a woman for the world. I wouldn\u2019t be a driving,\npositive woman for anything. I wouldn\u2019t be a woman persistent in small\nthings for my eyes. Mr. Coleman makes me feel as if I were growing so.\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense!\u201d Isabel laughed. \u201cIt isn\u2019t in you to be so. Mr. Coleman needs\nchange of scene, that is all. He has been circling round you so long\nthat he has got dizzy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m glad he\u2019s going off at a tangent,\u201d the Signora replied, only\nhalf-reassured. \u201cHe certainly would provoke me dreadfully, if he were to\ngo on in this way under my eyes. Don\u2019t let him come near me this\nevening, and don\u2019t give him a chance to say good-by to me. Take him\nquite off my hands\u2014that\u2019s a dear girl.\u201d\n\nIsabel promised, and kept her promise so well as to make of the poor\nbewildered gentleman as nearly an enemy as he was capable of being to\nany one. He had another source of disquiet, too, and that was the\nexceeding politeness and cordiality with which the Signora treated the\nvery cruel relative who had come to take him away, and whom he had\nbrought up with him that evening in the vain hope that she would help\nhim to escape. On the contrary, she merely sealed the compact.\n\n\u201cYou are quite right, sir,\u201d she said. \u201cThese affairs of property can so\nmuch better be attended to in person than by proxy.\u201d\n\n\u201cBesides,\u201d replied the cousin, \u201ca man who has property in the country\nhas really some duties there. He should spend a little of his money for\nthe benefit of the state, his neighbors, and the church.\u201d\n\nHe privately despised this city of Rome, which he now visited for the\nfirst time. Its dinginess, its dirt, and its religion disgusted him.\n\n\u201cChurch!\u201d echoed the Signora with calm inquiry. \u201cI was not aware that\nMr. Coleman belonged to any church.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has certainly deteriorated very much since he left England,\u201d was the\nrather sharp response, \u201cbut our family are all Catholic.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed!\u201d she exclaimed, in real surprise. \u201cI have always understood\nfrom Mr. Coleman that his family belonged to the English Episcopal\nChurch.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe claim that to be the Catholic Church, madam,\u201d the gentleman\nresponded proudly. \u201cOr, rather, we claim the title for that older branch\nof it which now restores the ceremonies and beliefs it laid aside for a\nwhile.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! the family are Ritualists,\u201d said the Signora.\n\nThe gentleman drew himself up. \u201cThe term does not describe us,\u201d he said.\n\u201cWe have a ritual, of course; but that is not all. I consider the title\ntrivial and disrespectful.\u201d\n\n\u201cI did not intend the least disrespect in the world,\u201d the Signora made\nhaste to say. \u201cI merely repeat the name I have heard. I have always\nconsidered Ritualism very\u2014refined\u2014and\u201d\u2014she seemed to be laboriously\nseeking some words of suitable praise\u2014\u201cand\u2014delicate. It has many\nbeauties\u2014and\u2014in short, is, it seems to me, an\u2014eminently\u2014lady-like\nreligion.\u201d\n\nMr. Vane took pity on the Englishman, who looked confounded, as if not\nknowing whether to believe his ears, which had heard, or his eyes, which\nbeheld, the perfectly simple and courteous expression of his\nentertainer. Mr. Vane, without seeming to have heard a word, introduced\nthe subject of property, on which men can always talk unflaggingly for\nany length of time.\n\nThe Signora gave her attention to an enthusiastic Catholic lady, who was\nmaking a pilgrimage of her visit to Italy. This lady was one of those\ncharming Christians who sometimes puzzle us a little. Her whole life was\ngiven up to what may be called religious pursuits. She attended\nfunctions unceasingly, and on every day was to be found in the church\ndedicated to the saint whose day it was. She visited relics, shrines,\nand scenes of religious events, and she did all with an enthusiasm which\nexpressed itself in the most gushing manner. In short, she luxuriated in\nreligion. She knew all about the lives of the saints, and spoke of them\nwith the ease and familiarity of an intimate friend. One could perceive\nby her conversation that she believed them to be particularly watchful\nover her, and rather more ready to do her favors than to attend to the\nwishes of most others. She exhorted people a little now and then,\ngently, with the air of one who knows. The whole manner of the woman, in\nthings religious, was that of a favorite daughter in her own father\u2019s\nhouse, to which the world at large was welcomed with a smiling charity\nand hospitality. But that others were there also in their own father\u2019s\nhouse, and equally beloved by him, did not seem to occur to her. The\nclergy and all religious she admitted and gave precedence to, seeking\nand admiring them almost as she did the saints. But, after them, she\nseemed to walk alone; or rather, she entered with them, and others\nwaited a permission. People in the laity, like herself, were, in some\nmysterious manner, assumed to be unlike her. The silence of deep\nreligious feeling in others she treated as indifference, and sometimes\nstrove, with seeming good intention, to stir up the souls of those\nalready more deeply moved than herself. She abounded in little\ndevotions, little pictures, little lamps and candles, a multiplicity of\npious knick-knacks, enough to bewilder a person of simpler tastes. She\nwore every scapular, and all the medals she could get, and her girdle\nwas laden with rosaries. By most people she was called a very pious\nwoman; by many she was believed to be a saintly woman. She certainly was\na fairly good woman and a nice lady of religious tastes. But, looked at\nby clear eyes, she was a little puzzling, like some others of her kind.\nOne missed there a central virtue, the sweet humility that makes little\nof its own goodness, and the charity which rejoices to see others\nbeloved and preferred. With such assumption, one would have expected\nthese virtues. Looking so, moreover, one suspected the existence of a\ndeep and pernicious pride. How did she receive a word of exhortation\nfrom an equal? Not as she expected her own exhortations to be received,\ncertainly, but with an expression of astonishment, mortification, and\neven displeasure. When did she sacrifice herself for others, and say\nnothing about it? when did she do an act of charity, and conceal that\nshe had done it? when did she hesitate to obtain for herself an\nadvantage because it was to be at the cost of another, unless that other\nwere a person in orders or in religion?\n\nThe Signora looked at this lady, and liked her, and admired her in many\nways, but she could not help wishing that there were a little less\nself-complacency in spiritual matters, and a little more willingness to\nsacrifice her own wishes and aims at times. The thought would intrude\nitself into her mind that it was less a real, working Christian that she\nbeheld than a religious sybarite. She could not say of her, as a famous\nauthor has said of some characters rather similar, that \u201ctheir celestial\nintimacies did not seem to have improved their earthly manners, and\ntheir high motives were not needed to account for their conduct\u201d; but\nshe was frequently pained to perceive a striking discrepancy between the\nprofession and the practice.\n\n\u201cI have been to-day for the first time to see Santa Maria degli Angeli,\u201d\nthe lady said, in the gay and pleasant way habitual to her. \u201cThere seems\nto be no one left there but a few old, old men. They were in choir when\nI went to the church, but I should never have suspected it. I asked the\nsacristan if there would be a Mass soon. 'After _coro_,\u2019 he said. I\nasked when _coro_ would be, and he replied, looking at me with some\nsurprise, that it was going on then. I had heard a sound like a little\ncompany of bumble-bees among the clover, but that it had anything in\ncommon with the great, ringing chorus of St. Peter\u2019s or the other great\nchurches I never dreamed. By and by choir and Mass were over, and they\nall came out. Such a group of dear old Rip Van Winkles! They were all\ntall, had long hair and long beards of white, or streaked black and\nwhite; they drooped in walking, and their black and white robes, not\nvery fresh, gave me a strange impression of antiquity and decay. It must\nhave been the color and oldness of their clothes that made me think of\nRip Van Winkle. I was quite ashamed of the thought. More than one head\namong them would have answered for a St. Jerome. That dear St. Jerome!\u201d\nshe added, drooping into pensiveness, as if, in uttering the name, she\nhad been rapt away.\n\nShe recovered herself after an instant, and came back smilingly to the\npresent. \u201cYou have no idea what a devotion I have for St. Jerome,\u201d she\nsaid.\n\n\u201cI can quite understand it,\u201d the Signora replied. \u201cHis character is one\nto inspire a great admiration and reverence. Here in Rome one becomes\nmore familiar, in a certain way, with the saints. One is so much nearer\ntheir earthly lives, their relics and their _festas_ abound so, and one\ncomes so constantly upon places which they have inhabited or visited,\nthat one has a sense of shame and humiliation at coming no nearer their\nvirtues.\u201d\n\nThe lady smiled. \u201cI had not thought of that,\u201d she said. \u201cI approach the\nsaints with all confidence and simplicity.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is a very pleasant feeling,\u201d the Signora said calmly, \u201cand, to an\nextent, may be a virtue. But do you not think that we should have also a\nfeeling of awe in view of that splendid faith of theirs, and of that\nsublime constancy and ardent charity, which led them to face torments\nand death without flinching, while our lives seem but a series of\ncompromises, and dispensations from everything that does not agree with\nour delicate and pampered natures? It seems to me that, if we remember\nthe difference between our lives and theirs, we shall almost expect that\nwhen we approach their shrines they will perform one miracle more, and\nspeak an audible reproof to us.\u201d\n\nThe lady looked disconcerted and a little displeased. But, some one\ninterrupting them, the subject was dropped.\n\nAfter they were gone Mr. Vane displayed a letter he had received that\nday from the prior of Monte Cassino, inviting him and his family to\nvisit their monastery. This clergyman had been on very friendly terms\nwith Mr. Vane in America, where he had spent a good many years, and now,\nhearing of his conversion, was anxious to renew a friendship which would\nhave a charm it had not before possessed, and to welcome to a\nbrotherhood of faith one who had always been kin to him by a community\nof generous nature.\n\n\u201cHe writes that we can stay a few days on the mountain and see\neverything there at our leisure,\u201d Mr. Vane said. \u201cThere is a house\noutside the gate where you ladies can stop, and I can have a bed inside.\nWhat do you say to it?\u201d\n\nThe invitation was accepted by acclamation. Monte Cassino was one of the\nplaces to see in Italy\u2014a gem of nature, religion, and art. Before\nsleeping that night their plans were made. They would put off the visit\na little, hoping for cooler days, as the journey was one of five or six\nhours. Meantime they had a little trip to Genzano in view, to see the\n_festa_ of the Santissimo Salvatore. And close upon them was Santa Maria\ndelle Neve.\n\nTo Be Continued.\n\n\n\n\n                             \u201cMAY-FLOWERS.\u201d\n\n\n    Dear Mother, on our country\u2019s breast\u2014\n      Our country that is thine\u2014\n    Our poets place as scutcheon flower\n      Small argent stars that shine\n    With pallid light when scarcely wake\n      The leaf-buds from their sleep,\n    When, nursing summer\u2019s waiting bloom,\n      The storm-stained leaves lie deep.\n\n    Fair, little stars that faintly gleam\n      Like planets sunset-dimmed,\n    The dearer for their glory scant\n      On barren heavens limned.\n    Pale May-flowers, whose stainless cheek\n      Seems born of winter snow\u2014\n    One rosy drop of living blood\n      Flushing the veins below.\n\n    Whose faint-breathed perfume seems to rise\n      Like prayer of anchorite,\n    The heart that pours its incense forth\n      Low hidden from our sight;\n    Whose sweetness seems like nimbus pale\n      Crowning some saintly head,\n    The light of self-forgotten life\n      In holy odor shed.\n\n    Kind Mother, see, these little flowers\n      Our land is given to wear,\n    When still the forest arches stand\n      Of leafy tracery bare;\n    When still the heavens\u2019 softened blue\n      Grows dim with wind-swept snow,\n    And lonely-seeming Ph\u0153be chants\n      Disconsolate and low.\n\n    This precious bloom bears thy dear name\u2014\n      Though given unaware\u2014\n    And in its gentle life we trace\n      The gleam of thine more fair.\n    In France\u2019s thoughtful land they give\n      Bright flowers to be thine eyes,\n    Within their blue forget-me-nots\n      Thy glance\u2019s calmness lies.\n\n    Upon our matin blossom rests\n      No depth of peaceful blue,\n    Yet breaks the rosy dawn of love\n      Its cheek\u2019s pure whiteness through.\n    Amid the darkened leaves it lies\n      In blest humility,\n    A lowly handmaid of the Lord,\n      Unstained of earth, like thee\u2014\n\n    A hidden life e\u2019er pouring forth\n      An offering pure of prayer;\n    The sweet unconsciousness of grace\n      Soft\u2019ning the rude, bleak air.\n    The blood-stained heart the sword hath pierced\n      The spotless breast within,\n    The quiet shining on a world\n      Bitter and drear with sin.\n\n    A crown of stars that perfects all\n      With heaven-won aureole\u2014\n    Let France\u2019s blossom claim thine eyes,\n      Claim ours thy spotless soul;\n    Whose gracious blessing ever rest\n      On this broad land of ours,\n    That not in vain her poets\u2019 shield\n      Be quartered with May-flowers.\n\n\n\n\n                      THE LEPERS OF TRACADIE.[28]\n\n\nFootnote 28:\n\n  This article is condensed from one which appeared in the _Revue\n  Canadienne_, by M. de Bellefeuille.\n\n\n    \u201cAh! little think the gay, licentious crowd,\n    Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround\u2014\n    Ah! little think they, while they dance along,\n    How many pine! how many drink the cup\n    Of baleful grief! how many shake\n    With all the fiercer tortures of the mind!\u201d\n\n\u2014THOMSON\u2019S _Seasons_.\n\n    \u201cIn a rage, I returned to my dwelling-place, crying aloud: 'Woe unto\n    thee, leper! Woe unto thee!' And as if the whole world united\n    against me, I heard the echo through the ruins of the Ch\u00e2teau de\n    Bramafan repeat distinctly: 'Woe unto thee!' I stood motionless with\n    horror on the threshold of the tower, listening to the faint tones\n    again and again repeated from the overhanging mountains: 'Woe unto\n    thee!'\u201d\n\n\u2014XAVIER DE MAISTRE.\n\nOn the low and miry land forming the borders of the county of Gloucester\nin New Brunswick, fifty miles from Miramichi and twenty-five south of\nCaraquet, between a narrow river and the waters of the Gulf of St.\nLawrence, stands a little village. The situation it occupies is dreary\nand sad to a degree. On one side moans the gray sea, on whose dull and\nturbid waters rarely is seen a sail. On the other stretches a long, low\nline of coast, dotted at intervals by the huts of the fishermen. The\nwhole landscape is painfully monotonous, desolate, and mournful. The\ncottages are mean in the extreme, while the simple church is without\narchitectural merit. Afar off frowns forbiddingly a large building shut\nin by high walls. In this melancholy spot the passing traveller says to\nhimself: \u201cIs this place accursed alike by God and man?\u201d\n\nAccursed, alas! it has indeed been by despairing lips and hearts; for\nthe building is the lazaretto of Tracadie. Before the year 1798 no\nregister was kept of baptisms, marriages, or burials in the parish.\nSince that date, however, and up to 1842, Tracadie was under the care of\nthe _cur\u00e9s_ of Caraquet, a neighboring parish.\n\nOn the 24th of October, 1842, arrived the first resident priest, M.\nFran\u00e7ois Xavier Stanislas Lafrance, who remained there until January,\n1852. M. Lafrance has since died. At Tracadie he was succeeded by the\npresent _cur\u00e9_, M. l\u2019Abb\u00e9 Ferdinand Gauvreau,[29] with whose name the\nhistory of these poor lepers must always be interwoven.\n\nFootnote 29:\n\n  The author writes: From this excellent and faithful priest I have\n  obtained the greater part of my information on this subject. In\n  addition, M. Gauvreau has allowed me free use of his notes and\n  documents.\n\nProbably the most terrible chastisement inflicted on a guilty people is\nthat known as leprosy. In ancient times it was only too well known, for\nit was then more frequent than in our day. It made such fearful ravages\nin certain parts of the world that its very name was whispered in\naccents of horror and dread.\n\nFrom time immemorial has this scourge been looked upon as utterly\ndistinct from all other diseases; more virulent in its effects; more\ninsidious in its approaches, and above all by reason of the frightful\nmanner in which it distorts and disfigures its victims.\n\nLeprosy has probably been known from the creation of the world. Nothing\nin history leads us to reject this idea, and, indeed, many interpreters\nwho have exercised their talent on certain obscure passages of Holy Writ\nhave found no better way of defining the terrible sign with which God\nmarked the fratricide Cain than by supposing it to be leprosy. The alarm\nthat has always been felt in regard to this most loathsome disease\narises not alone from its hideous results, but also from the conviction\nthat has always existed as to the absolute hopelessness of cure.\n\nBefore the time of Moses leprosy was well known. The first mention made\nof it in Holy Writ is in the fourth chapter of Exodus. God, having\nchosen Moses to deliver the Hebrews from the tyranny of the Egyptians,\norders him to present himself before his afflicted people and to\nannounce himself to them as their deliverer. Moses objected, saying:\n\u201cThey will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice; for they will say,\nThe Lord hath not appeared unto thee!\u201d Then the Lord, to convince Moses\nof his divine mission, said unto him, \u201cPut now thine hand into thy\nbosom,\u201d and he put his hand into his bosom; and when he took it out,\nbehold his hand full of leprosy, white as snow\u2014\u201c_instar nevis_.\u201d\n\nHere, then, was leprosy easy to recognize, since it had the whiteness of\nsnow. Let us not forget this peculiar feature, for we shall see it again\nlater.\n\nFrom this incident we see clearly that the disease was by no means\nunknown to Moses, because on seeing his hand he said: \u201c_Leprosam instar\nnevis._\u201d Therefore we have a right to believe that the disease existed\nbefore Moses. To the support of this opinion Dom Calmet, in his\n_Biblical Dictionary_, cites Manetho the Egyptian, Lysimarchus, Appian,\nTacitus, and Justin, who have advanced the idea that the Jews went out\nfrom Egypt on account of the leprosy. Each one of these historians\nnarrates the events in his own fashion, but all agree that the Hebrews\nwho left Egypt were attacked by leprosy.\n\nNot only does leprosy fasten on mankind, but it clings to clothing and\nto the stone walls of houses. It is to be presumed, however, that the\nleprosy brought by the Israelites out of Egypt was not of this malignant\ntype; for Moses, by the order of God, takes pains to mention another and\nmore virulent kind known in the land of Chanaan, the promised land of\nthe Israelites.\n\nIn Leviticus, chapter xiii., we find the following: \u201cIf there be a spot,\ngreenish or reddish, in the garment, of wool or of skin, the garment\nmust be shown to the priest; and the priest shall look on the plague,\nand shut it up for seven days; and if at the end of the time the spots\nhave spread, the priest will burn the garment, for it is a fretting\nleprosy. If the priest find, however, that the spots have not spread, he\nshall order the garment to be washed; and, behold, if the plague have\nnot changed his color, and be not spread, it is unclean: thou shalt burn\nit in the fire.\u201d\n\nAs to the suspected taint of leprosy in their houses, let us see their\nmethod of proceeding: \u201cWhen you be come into the land of Chanaan, if you\nthink there be leprosy in the house, he that owneth the house shall go\nto the priest, who shall order the house to be emptied. If the priest\nfinds in the walls hollow streaks, greenish or reddish, he shall shut\nthe house for seven days. The priest shall come again the seventh day,\nand shall look; and if the plague be spread, the stones shall be taken\naway, and cast into an unclean place without the city. Then the rest of\nthe house shall be scraped within and without, and they shall pour the\ndust without the city, and they shall take other stones and put them in\nthe place of these, and other mortar to plaster the house.\n\n\u201cAnd if the plague come again, and break out in the house, it is a\nfretting leprosy, and the house is unclean and shall be destroyed.\u201d\n\nThus it is seen that the leprosy known to the ancients\u2014this lamentable\nscourge, \u201cthis eldest daughter of death\u201d\u2014attacked in its fury not man\nalone, but his clothing and the very walls of his house. The primary\ncause of an evil so malignant and so wide-spread must for ever remain a\nmystery. The learned Dom Calmet, as commentator of the Bible rather than\nas a physician, offers a theory in his notes on Leviticus. He maintains\nthat the disease is caused by a multitude of minute worms. These\nparasites glide between skin and flesh, gnawing the epidermis and the\ncuticle, and then the nerves, producing, in short, all the symptoms that\nare remarked in the beginning, the progress, and the end of leprosy. Dom\nCalmet concludes by saying that \u201cvenereal diseases are but forms of\nleprosy which were only too well known to the ancients.\u201d In this century\nleprosy still exists in some portions of Italy and in Norway to a very\nconsiderable extent, according to the reports of Drs. Danielson and\nBo\u00ebk. It is still to be met with in Turkey in the village of\nLooschori\u2014the ancient Mytilene of the \u00c6gean Sea\u2014in the Indian\nArchipelago, on the coast of Africa, and in the West Indies. I myself\nhave seen it in Jerusalem and at Naplouse, ancient Samaria; at Damascus\nalso, where there is a lazaretto very poorly supported by public\ncharity. To Mr. Charles A. Dana, one of the editors of the _New American\nCyclop\u00e6dia_, the _maladie de Tracadie_ is not unknown; for he says that\nleprosy exists in Canada and in other portions of America.\n\nBut to return to the Scriptures: Moses is not the only one of the\ninspired writers who speaks of leprosy, and more than once our blessed\nLord, on his journeys through Judea, exercised his charity and showed\nhis goodness by curing lepers who threw themselves at his feet,\nentreating mercy. Job was struck by the hand of God with this scourge,\nand has described it with marvellous beauty and pathos. He was forsaken\nby his wife and his friends in his humiliation and suffering; they\nshrank from him, saying that he must have committed some fearful crime\nto have drawn upon himself so heavy a chastisement. A similar horror of\nthis disease existed among all nations. In P\u00e9rsia no citizen infected by\nit could enter a village or have any intercourse with his\nfellow-creatures, while a stranger was driven pitilessly forth into the\ndesert (Herod., _Clio_).\n\n\u00c6schines, giving an account of his sea voyage, states that, the ship\nputting into Delos, they found the inhabitants suffering from leprosy,\nand the travellers hurried away in fear and trembling, lest they\nthemselves should fall victims.\n\nIn Egypt Pliny[30] says that when this evil attacked kings, it was most\nunfortunate for their people; for to cure them baths of warm human blood\nwere believed to be efficacious.\n\nFootnote 30:\n\n  _Hist. Nat._, l. xxvi. c. i. proem.\n\nIn later days we find that lepers have been the victims of most unjust\nand cruel laws among almost all nations. Thus, among the Lombards, in\n643, one law ordered not only that lepers should be confined to isolated\nlocalities, but declared them also civilly dead, deprived them of their\nproperty, and confided them to the charity of the public. Several\nprovinces in France adopted this law with some qualifications. In\ncertain localities even the posterity of lepers were excluded\u2014as at\nCalais\u2014from all rights of citizenship, and in 757 an ordinance of Pepin\nle Bref permitted divorce between a healthy wife and leprous husband, or\na healthy husband and leprous wife. Charlemagne augmented the severity\nof laws already so hard. He ordered lepers to live apart, permitted them\nno social intercourse whatever, and finally, as their crowning misery,\nthese unfortunates saw themselves thrust on one side by the church\nitself from communion with the faithful.\n\nAt the time of the separation of the lepers from family, home, and\nfriends, the church pronounced over them the prayers for the dead.\nMasses were said for the repose of their souls, and, to complete the\nmournful illusion, a handful of earth was thrown upon their bodies. They\nwere forbidden to enter any church or any place where food was prepared,\nnor could they dip their hands in a running stream, nor accept food or\nanything handed them, save with a fork or the end of a stick. They were\ncompelled, moreover, to wear a particular costume that could be seen and\nrecognized from afar off, and, under threats of severe penalties for\ndisobedience, were ordered to ring a little bell to announce their\ncoming. More recently, in France, lepers herded together, in secluded\nplaces, which were called _l\u00e9proseries_. In the year 1244 there were\nthroughout all Christendom 19,000 of these l\u00e9proseries, and in France\nalone 2,000.\n\nThere these poor wretched creatures passed their desolate lives,\nseparated from the outside world, without occupation or interest, save\nthat of watching the slow but sure progress of their companions toward\nthe inevitable and horrible death that was impending.\n\nIn the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, says Mgr. Gaume,\nleprosy extended its ravages over a large part of the world. The\npestilence attacked suddenly all parts of the body at once, drying it\nup, as it were; and, like the plague, leprosy was unquestionably most\ncontagious. To receive the infection it was but necessary to touch the\nclothes or the furniture, or even to breathe the tainted air;\nconsequently, every one fled in dismay at the sight of a leper. They\nwere driven from the vicinity of towns, and they were seen from afar\nwandering over the fields and hillsides like living corpses, while at a\ndistance they were compelled to signal their approach by a rattle or\nbell. Abandoned by the whole world, and a prey to horrible sufferings,\nthey called on death to deliver them.\n\nThe King of France, anxious to protect his subjects from exposure to\nthis disease, formed a complete code of laws for lepers. \u201cEvery person,\u201d\nsaid M. Deseimeris in his _Medical Dictionary_, \u201cwho is suspected of\nleprosy must submit to a thorough examination by a surgeon. The\nsuspicion confirmed, a magistrate takes possession of the individual to\ndispose of him according to law. If he be a stranger, he must be sent at\nonce to the place of his birth, bestowing first upon him, however, the\npoor gifts of a hat, a gray mantle, a beggar\u2019s wallet, and a small keg.\nThe poor creature, on arriving at his native village, must carefully\navoid all contact with his fellow-creatures.\u201d Even the church rejects\nhim. Each town or village was compelled to build for his reception a\nsmall wooden house on four piles, and, after the death of its inmate,\nthe house, with all that was in it, was consigned to the flames.\n\nAs the number of lepers was constantly increasing, the erection of so\nmany of these small tenements became a source of great expense. It was\ntherefore finally decided to unite them under one roof, and give them\nthe name of a l\u00e9proserie. In this way their support became less onerous,\nwhile their seclusion was far greater, and their diet and medical\ntreatment was easier of regulation.\n\nLouis VIII. published in 1226 a code of special laws for the government\nof l\u00e9proseries. These laws were intolerably severe. A leper once\nincarcerated within the walls of a lazaretto incurred the penalty of\ndeath if he passed over the threshold again; scaffolds were erected\nwhere they could be seen from the hospital, thus keeping this fact ever\nin the remembrance and before the eyes of the miserable inmates.\n\nI have recounted these details to demonstrate the utter horror with\nwhich leprosy was regarded. It must not be supposed that only the\nignorant and superstitious were overwhelmed by foolish dread, or that it\nwas an idle prejudice, a relic of barbarism; for in the nineteenth\ncentury we witness the same horror, and here on our own shores encounter\nthe same rigorous legislation. We should also find the lepers as uncared\nfor, as shunned and neglected, as they were of old, were it not for the\nCatholic Church, which, with its customary zeal in all labors of charity\nand mercy, aroused in the hearts of a humble priest and a few weak nuns\nthe wish and determination to consecrate their lives to the service of\nthis most miserable class of their fellow-creatures.\n\nThe first settlements on the Miramichi River were made after the treaty\nof Utrecht in 1718 by the subjects of France\u2014Basques, Bretons, and\nNormans. Under the administration of Cardinal Fleury stringent measures\nwere taken to encourage and protect these colonies. After a time, when\ntheir prosperity seemed secure, a certain Pierre Beauhair was sent from\nFrance as intendant to rule and arrange matters for the French\ngovernment. He erected a small villa on a point of land that since his\ndeath bears his name, at the mouth of the northwestern branch of the\nMiramichi River. The island opposite l\u2019Ile Beauhair was strongly\ndefended, and tradition states that the intendant built within the walls\nof the fort a foundry for cannon, and other buildings for the\nmanufacture of munitions of war.\n\nDuring the summer of 1757 the colony on the Miramichi suffered much from\nthe war between France and England, which sadly interrupted their\ntraffic in fish and furs. Consequently, the following winter was one of\ngreat suffering, and many of the colonists died of hunger. Two transport\nships, laden with provision and supplies of all kinds, were sent out by\nthe French government in 1758, but both vessels were captured by the\nEnglish fleet then assisting at the siege of Louisburg.\n\nWhile these colonies were enduring suspense and starvation a French\nvessel, called the _Indienne_, from Morlaix, was wrecked at the mouth of\nthe Miramichi near the \u201cBaie des Vents\u201d\u2014a name now corrupted into \u201cBaie\ndu Vin.\u201d Tradition states that this ship, before coming to America, had\ntraded in the Levant, and that a large number of bales of old clothes\nhad been taken on board at Smyrna. The clothes were strewn upon the\nbeach after the vessel went to pieces, were seized by the inhabitants,\ndried, and afterwards worn. However this may be, it is certain that from\nthat date arose a most terrible pestilence among the Canadians, who were\nalready decimated by famine. The first victim of this malady was M. de\nBeauhair, and he, with eight hundred others, it is said, were buried at\nPoint Beauhair. The survivors abandoned Miramichi and fled, some to\nl\u2019Ile Saint-Jean\u2014now Prince Edward\u2019s Island\u2014and the greater number\nsettled along the western coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where they\nformed scattered hamlets under the names of Niguaweck, Tracadie, and\nPokemouche, combined in one parish\u2014that of Caraquet.\n\nFor eighty years, although it was known that isolated instances of\nleprosy existed in the different colonies, they attracted little or no\npublic attention up to 1817, when a woman named Ursule Laudry died of\nthe disease.\n\nAn account written by one of the nuns of l\u2019H\u00f4tel Dieu attributes a\nsomewhat different origin to this scourge. This good sister writes that\nthe disease was carried to New Brunswick in 1758 by a ship from the\nLevant; the vessel having made the port late in the autumn, the crew\nwere paid off and dispersed, many seeking a temporary home in Caraquet.\nUnfortunately, this crew was afflicted by a malady that was unsuspected\nby any one. The colonists were kind to the sailors; the women washed\ntheir clothes and in this way contracted the disease, which was\ntransmitted from one to another and from father to son, and in time\nacquired its peculiar features. Hamilton Gordon, the Lieutenant-Governor\nof New Brunswick in 1862, has assigned a similar origin to the malady in\nan interesting pamphlet entitled _Wilderness Journeys in New Brunswick\nin 1862-3_.\n\n    \u201cA vague and uncertain tradition exists,\u201d he says, \u201cthat somewhere\n    about a hundred years ago a French vessel was wrecked on the coast\n    of Gloucester or Northumberland, and that among the crew were some\n    sailors from Marseilles, who in the Levant had contracted the\n    hideous leprosy of the East, the veritable elephantiasis Gr\u00e6corum;\n    however this may be, it is beyond all question that for many years a\n    part of the French population of these two counties has been sorely\n    afflicted by this mysterious disease, or by one that closely\n    resembles it, and which may be, indeed, the form of leprosy so well\n    known on the coast of Norway.\u201d\n\n    \u201cIt is difficult,\u201d says in his turn M. Gauvreau, _cur\u00e9_ of Tracadie\n    and chaplain of the lazaretto, in a letter published in the _Journal\n    de Montreal_, November 30, 1859\u2014\u201cit is difficult to persuade one\u2019s\n    self that this malady could be the spontaneous generation of the\n    locality where it now exists. The geographical position of Tracadie\n    is on the sea-coast, with the fresh currents of a river close at\n    hand, the waters of which are salt for eight or nine miles above the\n    mouth. The soil in some portions is sandy, in others clayey; in the\n    vicinity are no marshes, no stagnant water, consequently no\n    injurious malaria. These facts seem to justify the opinion which I\n    have long held, and which as yet I see no reason to change, that the\n    poisonous virus was not the growth of this spot, but was brought\n    here by some traveller.\u201d\n\nThese traditions are, in the main, probably correct as to the origin of\nthe scourge in this Canadian village. The inhabitants of other villages\nthan Tracadie subsist almost entirely on fish, are equally poor, equally\nill-fed and insufficiently clothed, living in the same damp and foggy\natmosphere; but it is only in Tracadie or its vicinity that a leper is\nto be seen. The inhabitants of Labrador and Newfoundland eat fish almost\nexclusively, and live amid similar climatic conditions, paying no more\nenlightened attention to hygienic laws, and yet the \u201cmaladie de\nTracadie\u201d does not attack or decimate them.\n\nFrom the date of the introduction of this disease into the village it\nincreased slowly but steadily until 1817, when certain precautions began\nto be taken; but not until 1844 did the authorities try any active\nprecautions. In that year a medical board was organized, who made a\nreport of their investigations to the government, and later in the same\nyear an act of the Provincial Legislature was passed, renewed and\namended in 1850. It authorized the lieutenant-governor to establish a\nhealth committee. This committee recommended the erection of a lazaretto\non l\u2019Ile de Sheldrake, an isolated spot in the middle of the Miramichi\nRiver eighteen miles above Chatham. \u201cWhoever was found to be\nunquestionably tainted by the disease,\u201d says the article, \u201cmust be torn\nfrom his family, using force if needful. The husband must be taken from\nhis wife, the mother from her children, the child from its parents,\nwhenever the first symptom of leprosy declares itself. An eternal\nfarewell to all they hold most dear must be said, and the poor creature\nis sent to the lazaretto. It often happens that a leper refuses to go\nquietly; he is then dragged by ropes like a beast to the shambles\u2014for\nnone is willing to lay a finger upon him. Often the unhappy beings are\ndriven with blows to the very door of the lazaretto.\u201d Things, of course,\ncould not long remain in this brutal condition. The lepers, driven to\ndesperation by their physical and mental sufferings, by a wild longing\nfor the liberty denied them, and for the sight of their loved ones,\nsometimes effected their escape.\n\nAn attempt was finally made to ameliorate their condition, and in 1847\nthe lazaretto was removed to the spot where it now stands, about half a\nmile from the parish church of Tracadie. A large tract of land was here\npurchased by the government, and the present building was erected,\nsurrounded by a wooden wall twenty feet high, set thick with nails to\nhinder the escape of the lepers. The windows of the lazaretto were\nbarred heavily with iron, and thus added to the melancholy aspect of the\nbuilding. The lepers, weary of the revolting resemblance to a prison,\nthemselves tore most of the bars away, and, when the nuns arrived there\nthey at once ordered the remainder to be removed.\n\nIn 1868 the nuns from the H\u00f4tel Dieu of Montreal took possession of the\nlazaretto of Tracadie. For some few years a strong necessity had been\nfelt for the reorganization of this institution. A wish was expressed\nthat it could be placed under the care of the Hospital Nuns. I have now\nbefore me a letter from the Rt. Rev. James Rogers, Bishop of Chatham, in\nwhich is given an account, for the _Conseil Central de la Propagation de\nla Foi_ at Paris, of the steps that had been taken up to December, 1866:\n\n    \u201cSince my first visit to the establishment,\u201d says the bishop, \u201cI\n    have always thought that it would be most desirable to place it\n    under the care of the Sisters of the H\u00f4tel Dieu, who would watch\n    over the souls and the bodies of these sufferers, whose number\n    varies from twenty to thirty. But so many great and pressing needs\n    claimed my attention\u2014while my resources were insufficient even for\n    the alleviation of physical suffering, and also, perhaps, for the\n    spiritual wants of certain souls\u2014I was compelled to postpone my\n    plans in regard to the lazaretto, until my diocese could satisfy the\n    religious needs of its inhabitants by an increase of the number of\n    priests, and by the erection of chapels in places where they had\n    long and earnestly been demanded, and also by the establishment of\n    schools for the Christian education of youth. Another obstacle to\n    the immediate execution of my intention was the lukewarm approbation\n    and co-operation of the government. The total lack of suitable\n    lodging for the nuns, as well as the uncertainty whether the\n    Protestant element which pervades our government and our legislature\n    would be willing to grant us funds or permit us to make needful\n    preparations for the sisters to take charge of the lazaretto\u2014all\n    conspired as hindrances to my desires.\n\n    \u201cLast spring I petitioned the government, but political changes\n    interfered, and no steps were taken until now. This is the reason\n    why the worthy _cur\u00e9_ of Tracadie continues to be the only priest\n    who administers the consolations of religion to that portion of his\n    flock so bitterly afflicted.\u201d\n\nThe steps taken by Bishop Rogers seem to have been singularly\nfelicitous. He obtained from Bishop Bourget the assistance of the nuns\nof the H\u00f4tel Dieu of Montreal, and the government appears to have\nregarded with favorable eyes this regeneration of the lazaretto, which\nproduced in a very brief period of time the best possible results upon\nthe patients. Abb\u00e9 Gauvreau draws a sad picture of the state in which\nthese poor creatures lived before the nuns went to their assistance. In\na letter dated April 28, 1869, addressed to the mother-superior of the\nH\u00f4tel Dieu of Montreal, he says:\n\n    \u201cI am absolutely incapable of describing the state of abject misery\n    in which our poor lepers passed their lives before the coming of the\n    sisters. I can only say that from the hour of their transfer from\n    l\u2019Ile aux Bec-scies (Sheldrake) at the entrance of the river\n    Miramichi, discord, revolt, and insubordination toward the\n    government, divisions and quarrels among themselves, made the\n    history of their daily lives. The walls rang with horrible\n    blasphemies, and the hospital seemed like a den of thieves.\u201d\n\nThe Board of Health spared nothing to make the lepers comfortable. Good\nfood, and abundance of it, appropriate clothing, and careful medical\nattendance were liberally provided; but, in spite of these efforts, the\nhearts of these poor creatures were as diseased as their bodies. Some of\nthem revolted against the summons of death, notwithstanding the constant\nexhortations of the chaplain, and even after their last communion clung\nstrongly to the futile hope of life. Of this number was one who had been\nwarned by the physician that his hours were numbered and that a priest\nshould be summoned. His friends, and those of his relatives who were\nwithin the walls of the lazaretto, implored him to prepare for death.\n\u201cLet me be!\u201d he cried. \u201cI know what I am about!\u201d\n\nAbout nine o\u2019clock in the evening he begged his companions in misery not\nto watch at his bedside, and, believing himself able to drive away\nDeath, who was hurrying toward him with rapid strides, insisted on\nplaying a game of cards. The game had hardly begun, however, when the\ncards dropped from his hands and he fell back on his bed. Before\nassistance could reach him all was over.\n\nWith the arrival of the nuns a new order of things began. Without\nentering into a detailed account of all the labors performed by the\nsisters since their arrival, it is enough to state that cleanliness and\norder prevail and true charity shows itself everywhere. The poor\ncreatures, who formerly revelled in filth and disorder, now see about\nthem decency and cleanliness. They are induced to be submissive and\nobedient by the hourly example of the sisters; their modesty and\nreserve, their virtue and careful speech, their watchful care and\ndevotion, their tender attention to the sick, teach the inmates of the\nhospital the best of lessons. It is easy to imagine with what joy the\npoor lepers welcomed the nuns who came to consecrate their lives to this\nservice, and also to understand with what affection and respect these\nholy women are regarded.\n\n    \u201cThe enclosed grounds of the lazaretto,\u201d says Governor Gordon in his\n    _Wilderness Journeys_, \u201cconsist of a green meadow three or four\n    acres in extent. Within these limits the lepers are permitted to\n    wander at their will. Until recently they were confined to the\n    narrowest limits\u2014a mere yard about the lazaretto. I entered these\n    dreary walls, accompanied by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Chatham,\n    by the secretary of the Board of Health, by the resident physician,\n    and by the Catholic priest of the village, who is also the chaplain\n    of the institution.\n\n    \u201cWithin the enclosure are several small wooden buildings, separated\n    from each other, consisting of the kitchen, laundry, etc. A\n    bath-house has recently been added to these, which will be a source\n    of infinite comfort to the patients. The hospital contains two\n    larger halls\u2014one devoted to the men, the other to the women. Each\n    room has a stove and a table with chairs about it, while the beds\n    are ranged against the wall. These halls are both well lighted and\n    ventilated, and at the time of my inspection were perfectly clean\n    and fresh. At the end of these halls is a small chapel arranged in\n    such a way that the patients of both sexes are able to hear Mass\n    without meeting each other. Through certain openings they also\n    confess to the priest and receive the holy communion.\u201d\n\nMany changes in the interior arrangements of the lazaretto followed the\narrival of the sisters. The patients and the nuns now hear Mass at the\nsame time. The male patients occupy two rooms twenty-five feet square,\nwhile similar apartments above are reserved for the females. The grounds\nof the lazaretto have also been enlarged.\n\n    \u201cBefore giving the characteristics of this appalling disease,\u201d says\n    Mr. Gordon, \u201cI wish to reply to a question which you undoubtedly\n    wish to ask: How is this malady propagated? No one knows. It seems\n    not to be hereditary, since in one family the father or mother may\n    be attacked, while the children entirely escape. In others the\n    children are leprous and the parents healthy. In 1856 or '57 a woman\n    named Domitile Brideau, wife of Fran\u00e7ois Robichaud, was so covered\n    with leprosy that her body was one mass of corruption. While in this\n    state she gave birth to a daughter, whom she nursed\u2014the mother\n    shortly afterward dying in the hospital. Meanwhile, the child was\n    absolutely healthy, and remained until she was three years of age in\n    the hospital without any unfavorable symptoms being developed. The\n    girl grew to womanhood and married, and to-day she and her children\n    are perfectly healthy. Many similar examples might be cited.\u201d\n\nThis malady, then, can hardly be contagious, since in one family husband\nor wife may be attacked, while the other goes unscathed. There is now at\nTracadie a man, Fran\u00e7ois Robichaud by name, who has had three wives; the\ntwo first perished of leprosy, the third is now under treatment at the\nlazaretto\u2014the husband in the meanwhile enjoying perfect health. In one\nfamily two or more children are lepers, while the others are untainted.\nOne servant-woman resided for eight years in the hospital, ate and drank\nwith the patients, yet has never shown any symptoms of the disease. The\nlaundress of the institution lives under its roof, and has done so for\ntwo years; she is a widow, her husband having died of the scourge, she\nbeing his sole nurse during his illness. She is in perfect health. It\nhas also happened more than once that persons suspected of leprosy, and\nplaced in the hospital, after remaining there several years and\ndeveloping no further symptoms, are discharged as \u201cwhole.\u201d\n\nAll the patients now in the hospital agree that the disease is\ncommunicated by touch, and each has his own theory as to where he was\nexposed to it\u2014either by sleeping with some one who had it, or by eating\nand drinking with such.\n\nI am strongly persuaded that this disease, whatever may be its origin,\nis greatly aggravated by the kind of life led by the natives of\nTracadie, who are all fishermen or sailors. Their food is fish,\ngenerally herring, and their only vegetables turnips and potatoes. Such\nis their extreme poverty that there are not ten families in Tracadie who\never touch bread.\n\nLet us follow Governor Gordon into the lazaretto.\n\n    \u201cAt the time of my visit,\u201d he says, \u201cthere were twenty-three\n    patients, thirteen men and ten women. They were all French and all\n    Catholics, belonging to the lower class. They were of all ages, and\n    had reached various stages of the disease. One old man, whose\n    features were distorted out of all semblance to humanity, and who\n    had apparently entered his second childhood, could hardly be\n    sufficiently aroused from his apathy to receive the benediction of\n    the bishop, before whom all the others sank on their knees.\n\n    \u201cThere were also young people who, to a casual observer, seemed\n    vigorous and in health; while, saddest of all sights was that of the\n    young children condemned to spend their lives in this terrible\n    place. Above all was I touched by the sight of three small boys from\n    eleven to fifteen years of age. To an inexperienced observer they\n    had much the look of other children of their own age and class.\n    Their eyes were bright and intelligent, but the fatal symptoms that\n    had sufficed to separate them from home and kindred were written on\n    their persons, and they were immured for life in the lazaretto.\n\n    \u201cThe greatest sympathy must naturally be felt for these younger\n    victims when one thinks of the possible length of years that\n    stretches before them, hopeless and cheerless; to grow to manhood\n    with the capacities, passions, and desires of manhood, and condemned\n    to live from youth to middle age, from middle age to decrepitude\n    possibly, with no other society than that of their companions in\n    misery. Utterly without occupations, amusements, or interests, shut\n    off from all outside resources, their only excitement is found in\n    the arrival of a new disease-stricken patient, their only occupation\n    that of watching their companions dying before their eyes by inches!\n\n    \u201cBut few of the patients could read, and those who could were\n    without books. There was evident need of some organization that\n    might furnish the patients with employment. Both mind and body\n    required occupation. Under these circumstances I was by no means\n    surprised to learn that in the last stages of the disease the mind\n    was generally much weakened.\n\n    \u201cThe suffering of the majority of the patients was by no means\n    severe, and I was informed that one of the characteristic features\n    of the malady was profound insensibility to pain. One individual was\n    pointed out to me, who by mistake had laid his arm and open hand on\n    a red-hot stove, and who knew nothing of it until the odor of\n    burning flesh aroused his attention.\u201d\n\nAfter Governor Gordon\u2019s visit the condition of the lepers was much\nimproved. The sisters taught the young to read and employed them in\nmaking shoes and other articles.\n\nThe investigations of Governor Gordon, although made during a brief\ninspection of the lazaretto, are correct as far as they go, but are far\nfrom complete. The Abb\u00e9 Gauvreau has been for eighteen years chaplain of\nthe hospital. He has watched keenly the progress of the disease in over\na hundred cases. He has noted every symptom of its slow and fatal march.\nHe has been present at the deathbeds of many of the lepers, and he\nrecounts with horror the terrible scenes he has witnessed.\n\n    \u201cWithout wishing to impose my opinions on you,\u201d he says, \u201cI cannot\n    resist the conviction that, apart from divine will, this scourge of\n    fallen man is a most subtle poison introduced into the human body by\n    transmission or by direct contact, or even, perhaps, by prolonged\n    cohabitation.\n\n    \u201cBut whichever of these suppositions is the more nearly correct,\n    when once the poison is fairly within the system its action is so\n    latent and insidious that for some years\u2014two, four, or even more\u2014the\n    unfortunate Naaman or Giezi perceives in himself no change either in\n    constitution or sensations. His sleep is as refreshing and his\n    respiration as free as before. In a word, the vital organs perform\n    all their functions and the various members are unshorn of their\n    vigor and energy.\n\n    \u201cAt this period of the disease the skin loses its natural color, its\n    healthy appearance, and is replaced by a deadly whiteness from head\n    to foot. This whiteness looks as if the malady had taken possession\n    of the mucous membrane and had displaced the fluids necessary to its\n    functions. Without knowing if the leper of the Orient possesses\n    other external indications, it is certain that in this stage the\n    malady of Tracadie is precisely similar to the leprosy of the\n    ancients\u2014I mean in the whiteness of the skin. In the second stage\n    the skin becomes yellow. In the third and last it turns to a deep\n    red; it is often purple, and sometimes greenish, in hue. In fact,\n    the people of Tracadie, like myself, are so familiar with the early\n    symptoms of the disease that they rarely fall into a mistake.\n\n    \u201cOnly one death has ever occurred in the first stage\u2014that of Cyrille\n    Austin. All the other cases have passed on to the second or third\n    stages before death; and, strangely enough, it has been remarked by\n    the patients themselves that the treatment of Dr. La Bellois had\n    always a much better chance of success during the third period than\n    during the second.\n\n    \u201cAt first the victim feels devouring thirst, great feverish action,\n    and a singular trembling in every limb; stiffness and a certain\n    weakness in the joints; a great weight on the chest like that caused\n    by sorrow; a rush of blood to the brain; fatigue and drowsiness, and\n    other disagreeable symptoms which now escape my memory. The entire\n    nervous system is then struck, as it were, with insensibility to\n    such a degree that a sharp instrument or a needle, or even the blade\n    of a knife, buried in the fleshy parts or thrust through the tendons\n    and cartilage, causes the leper little or no pain. Some poor\n    creature, with calm indifference, will place his arm or leg on a\n    mass of burning wood and tar, and let it remain there until the\n    entire limb, bones and all, is consumed; yet the leper feels no\n    pain, and may sleep through it all as quietly as if in his bed.\u201d\n\nIn another letter the abb\u00e9 gives the following example of this\nastonishing insensibility:\n\n    \u201cOne of these afflicted beings who died at the lazaretto, and to\n    whom I administered the last sacraments, lay down to sleep near a\n    hot fire; in his slumbers he thrust one arm and hand into the\n    flames, but continued to sleep. The overpowering smell of burning\n    flesh awakened one of his companions, who succeeded in saving his\n    life.\u201d\n\nOne of the nuns says: \u201cSince we reached Tracadie two of the patients\nhave burned their hands severely, and were totally unconscious of having\ndone so until I dressed the wounds myself.\u201d In regard to this torpidity\nof the system, M. Gauvreau remarks that it is but temporary, but he\nknows not its duration; and the nun adds that the torpidity is not\ninvariable with all the patients, and with some only in a portion of the\nbody. In certain individuals it is only in the legs; in others, in the\nhands alone; but all complain of numbness like that of paralysis.\n\n    \u201cBy degrees,\u201d says M. Gauvreau, \u201cthe unnatural whiteness of the skin\n    disappears, and spots of a light yellow are to be seen. These spots\n    in some cases are small and about the size of a dollar-piece. When\n    of this character, they appear at first with a certain regularity of\n    arrangement, and in places corresponding with each other, as on the\n    two arms and shoulders\u2014more generally, however, on the breast. They\n    are distinct, but by degrees the poison makes its way throughout the\n    vitals; the spots enlarge, approach each other, and, when at last\n    united, the body of the sick man becomes a mass of corruption. Then\n    the limbs swell, afterward portions of the body, the hands, and the\n    feet; and when the skin can bear no further tension it breaks, and\n    running sores cover the patient, who is repulsive and disgusting to\n    the last degree.\n\n    \u201cThe entire skin of the body becomes extremely tender, and is\n    covered with an oily substance that exudes from the pores and looks\n    like varnish. The skin and flesh between the thumb and forefinger\n    dry away, the ends of the fingers, the feet, and hands dwindle to\n    nothingness, and sometimes the joints separate, and the members drop\n    off without pain and often without the knowledge of the patient.\n\n    \u201cThe most noble part of the being created in the image of God\u2014the\n    face\u2014is marred as much as the body by this fell disease. It is\n    generally excessively swollen. The chin, cheeks, and ears are\n    usually covered by tubercles the size of peas. The eyes seem to\n    start from their sockets, and are glazed by a sort of cataract that\n    often produces complete blindness. The skin of the forehead thickens\n    and swells, acquiring a leaden hue, which sometimes extends over the\n    entire countenance, while in other cases the whole face is suffused\n    with scarlet. The explanation of these different symptoms may be\n    found, of course, in the variety of temperaments\u2014sanguine, bilious,\n    or lymphatic. This face, once so smooth and fair, has become seamed\n    and furrowed. The lips are two appalling ulcers\u2014the upper lip much\n    swollen and raised to the base of the nose, which has entirely\n    disappeared; while the under lip hangs over the chin, which shines\n    from the tension of the skin. Can a more frightful sight be\n    imagined? In some cases the lips are parched and drawn up like a\n    purse puckered on strings. This deformity is the more to be\n    regretted is it precludes the afflicted from participation in the\n    holy communion. Leprosy\u2014that of Tracadie, at least\u2014completes its\n    ravages on the internal organs of its victims. It attacks now the\n    larynx and all the bronchial ramifications; they become obstructed\n    and filled with tubercles, so that the unhappy patient can find no\n    relief in any position. His respiration becomes gradually more and\n    more impeded, until he is threatened with suffocation. I have been\n    present at the last struggles of most of these afflicted mortals. I\n    hope that I may never be called upon to witness similar scenes.\n    Excuse me from the details. If I undertook them my courage would\n    give out; for I assure you that many of you would have fainted. Let\n    me simply add that these lepers generally die in convulsions,\n    panting for air; frequently rushing to the door to breathe; and,\n    returning, they fling themselves on their pallets in despair. The\n    thought of their sighs and sobs, the remembrance of their tears,\n    almost breaks my heart, and their prayers for succor ring constantly\n    in my ears: 'O my God! have mercy on me! have mercy on me!\u2019\n\n    \u201cAt last comes the supreme moment of this lingering torture, and the\n    patient dies of exhaustion and suffocation. All is over, and another\n    Lazarus lies in Abraham\u2019s bosom!\u201d\n\nAfter the above vivid picture of this loathsome disease we naturally ask\nif the evil be such that no medical skill can combat it with success.\nThe Hospital Nun in the infirmary of the lazaretto tells us all that she\nhas yet learned upon this point.\n\nIn 1849 and 1850 Dr. La Bellois, a celebrated French physician residing\nat Dalhousie, treated the lepers for six months and claimed to have\ncured ten of them: T. Goutheau, Charles Comeau, T. Brideau, A. Benoit,\nL. Sonier, Ed. Vienneau, Mme. A. Sonier, M. Sonier, Mme. Ferguson,\nMelina Lavoie. \u201cAll the above cases are now quite well, and the\ntreatment I adopted was entirely for syphilitic disease, thus\nestablishing without any doubt the nature of the disease\u201d (extract from\nLa Bellois\u2019 report, Feb. 12, 1850).\n\nMeanwhile, from the report of the secretary of the Board of Health\u2014Mr.\nJames Davidson\u2014we gather that all the sick above mentioned returned\nafter a time to the hospital; that they died there, with the exception\nof three, of whom two died in their own houses and the third still\nlives. Of this one Dr. Gordon, of Bathurst, says: \u201cThe disease is slow\nin its progress, but it is sure, and the fatal termination cannot be far\noff.\u201d\n\nDr. Nicholson undertook the treatment at the lazaretto. By a certain\ncourse of medicine, the details of which he kept a profound secret, and\nwith the aid of vapors, he wonderfully improved the physical condition\nof the lepers, who in many instances indulged sanguine hopes of\nrecovery. Unfortunately, however, this physician suddenly abandoned his\nprofession, and, to the sorrow of his former patients, died three years\nlater. The lepers soon relapsed into their former hopeless state, and\nsince then no change has taken place.\n\n    \u201cOn our arrival at Tracadie,\u201d said the sister, \u201cwe found twenty\n    inmates of the hospital, and since three more have been admitted.\n    These poor creatures, being firmly persuaded that we could cure\n    them, besieged us with entreaties for medicine, and were satisfied\n    with whatever we gave. At first I selected three who had undergone\n    no medical treatment; these three were also the only ones who\n    suffered from contraction of the extremities. The first, twenty-two\n    years of age, had been at the hospital four years, and as yet showed\n    the disease only in the contraction above mentioned, and in a\n    certain insensibility of the feet and hands. The second, fifteen\n    years old, had been in the hospital for two years, his hands and\n    feet were drawn up, and he suffered from a large swelling on the\n    left foot. This young fellow is very delicate, and suffers intensely\n    at times from spasms of the stomach. The third case is a lad of\n    eleven, who for two years has suffered from the disease. His hands\n    are twisted out of shape, and his body is covered with spots, red\n    and white; these spots are totally without sensibility. I have\n    administered to these patients the remedies as prescribed by Mr.\n    Fowle\u2014_Fowle\u2019s Humor Cure_, an American patent medicine. The first\n    and second patient experienced no other benefit from this remedy\n    than a certain vigor previously unfelt. To the third the sensibility\n    of the cuticle returned, but the spots remained the same. This in\n    itself is very remarkable, because in no previous case have these\n    benumbed or paralyzed parts regained their sensation. To another, a\n    patient of twenty-two, I gave the same remedy. For eight years he\n    had been a martyr to the virulence of the disease. When we arrived\n    at the lazaretto, we found his case to be one of the worst there.\n    His nose had fallen in; the lips were enormously puffed and swollen;\n    his hands equally so, and looked more like the paws of a bear than\n    like the hands of a human being. The saliva was profuse, but the\n    effort of swallowing almost futile. Soon after taking this same\n    medicine the saliva ceased to flow and he swallowed with comparative\n    ease.\n\n    \u201cOn the 23d of January he was, by the mercy of God, able to partake\n    of the holy communion, of which he had been deprived for four years.\n    His lips are now of their natural size, and he is stronger than he\n    has been for years. But the pains in his limbs are far worse than\n    they have ever before been. I have also given Fowle\u2019s cure to all\n    the patients who had been under no previous medical treatment, and\n    invariably with beneficial results. In some the tint of the skin is\n    more natural; in others the swelling of the extremities is much\n    abated; but the remedy seems always to occasion an increase of pains\n    in the limbs, although it unquestionably acts as a tonic upon the\n    poor creatures. In all of them the mouth and throat improve with the\n    use of Fowle\u2019s cure. And here let me say that this disease\n    throughout bears a strong resemblance to syphilis. In both diseases\n    the throat, the tongue, and the whole inside of the mouth are\n    ulcerated. In both diseases the voice is affected to such a degree\n    that it can hardly make itself heard. They cough frightfully, and\n    some time after our coming a leper presented himself for admission\n    at our hospital doors. The poor creature was covered with ulcers and\n    every night was bathed in a cold perspiration. After he had rested\n    for a few days, I gave him a powerful dose of _la liqueur\n    arsenicale_, which has since been repeated. The night-sweats have\n    disappeared, and the ulcers are healed, with the exception of one on\n    the foot. His lips are still unhealthy, but he is much stronger, and\n    the spots on his person are gradually disappearing.\n\n    \u201cTwo others, later arrivals have taken _la liqueur arsenicale_ and\n    have improved under its use. Suspecting that the origin of this\n    malady may be traced to another source, and remembering the opinion\n    of Dr. La Bellois, I gave the bichloride of mercury, in doses of the\n    thirty-second part of a grain, to the worst case in the hospital. It\n    is too soon, however, to judge of its effects. The improvement in no\n    one of these cases is rapid, but we trust that it is certain. We\n    look to God alone for the success for which we venture to hope. I\n    can find no statistics which will enable me to give you the number\n    of victims that have fallen under this dread malady of Tracadie. I\n    find, however, a letter from M. Gauvreau, bearing the date of\n    November 30, 1859, that sixty persons perished from its ravages in\n    the previous fifteen years, and that twenty-five of both sexes, and\n    of all ages, were then inmates of the lazaretto, awaiting there the\n    end of their torments.\u201d\n\nIn 1862 Mr. Gordon said that he saw twenty-three patients at the\nhospital, and the Sisters of the H\u00f4tel Dieu found twenty there when they\nreached the lazaretto, and have since admitted three in addition; it\ndoes not seem, therefore, as if the \u201celdest sister of Death\u201d had relaxed\nher hold on this unhappy village. Yet if the disease can but be confined\nto this locality, wonders will be achieved. Good care, regular medical\nattendance, incessant vigilance, with intelligent adherence to hygienic\nlaws, may eventually cause its entire disappearance from our soil. Let\nus hope that the faithful sisters will succeed in their good work; for\nwe ourselves, every one of us, have a personal interest in it.\nUnfortunately, this good result is far from certain, as the Abb\u00e9\nGauvreau desires us to understand.\n\n    \u201cOne or more of these unfortunates,\u201d he says, \u201cfeeling the insidious\n    approaches of the disease, and shrinking from the idea of the\n    lazaretto, have at times secretly escaped from Tracadie. They leave\n    Miramichi on the steamer, intending to land at Rivi\u00e8re-du-Loup, at\n    Kamouraska, perhaps at Quebec or at Montreal. As yet no ulcers are\n    visible, nor, indeed, any external symptoms which could excite the\n    smallest suspicion. On landing at some one of the places mentioned\n    they procure situations in different houses, and remain in them for\n    a month or two, perhaps, saying nothing all this time of their\n    symptoms to any one, not even to a physician. They eat with their\n    master\u2019s family, and, even if they take the greatest precaution,\n    they convey this poisonous virus to their masters. When they have\n    reason to fear that suspicion is about being aroused, they depart,\n    but it is too late, and they go to scatter the contagion still\n    further.\n\n    \u201cThe following instance came under my own observation: A youth\n    suffering from this disease, and dreading the lazaretto, went to\n    Boston, where he secured a position on a fishing vessel, hoping that\n    the sea air, with the medicines that he would take, would effect his\n    cure. He soon found that these hopes were groundless, and was\n    obliged to enter the hospital in Boston, where, in spite of the care\n    and attention bestowed upon him by the physicians of the medical\n    school at Cambridge, he died, far from friends and home.\u201d\n\nOne naturally asks, with a thrill of horror, whether, before the\nadmission of this poor creature to the hospital, he did not transmit to\nhis shipmates the poisonous virus that filled his own blood.\n\nThe total disappearance of this disease\u2014if such disappearance may be\nhoped for\u2014will be due exclusively to the noble and untiring exertions of\nthe sisters. Tracadie and its afflicted population would not alone owe a\ndebt of eternal gratitude to these Hospital Nuns. America itself would\nshare this feeling. With an example like this of charity and\nself-abnegation before us, we cannot cease to wonder at, and to deplore,\nthe narrow minds of those persons who condemn the monastic institutions\nof the church. Let us compassionate all such; for to them light is\nlacking, and they have yet to learn the great truth that the duty most\ninculcated by the church, after the love of God, is the love of our\nneighbors.\n\n\n\n\n         TESTIMONY OF THE CATACOMBS TO SOME OF THE SACRAMENTS.\n\n\nIn a former article,[31] whilst following Mr. Withrow and other\nProtestant controversialists through their evasions and\nmisinterpretations of the evidence to be found in the Catacombs on\nbehalf of certain points of Catholic doctrine and practice, we pointed\nout that prayers either _for_ the dead or _to_ them were the only two\narticles on which it would be reasonable to look for information from\nthe inscriptions on the gravestones. We said that these prayers were\nlikely to find expression, if anywhere, by the side of the grave. As\nthey took their last look on the loved remains of their deceased friend\nor relative, the affectionate devotion of the survivors would naturally\ngive utterance either to a hearty prayer for the everlasting happiness\nof him they had lost, or to a piteous cry for help, an earnest petition\nthat he would continue to exercise, in whatever way might be possible\nunder the conditions of his new mode of existence, that same loving care\nand protection which had been their joy and support during his life; or\nsometimes both these prayers might be poured forth together, according\nas the strictness of God\u2019s justice, or the Christian faith and virtues\nof the deceased, happened to occupy the foremost place in the\npetitioner\u2019s thoughts.\n\nFootnote 31:\n\n  THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1876, p. 371 Jan., 1877, p. 523.\n\nWhen, therefore, we proceeded in a second paper to question the same\nsubterranean sanctuaries on another subject of Christian doctrine\u2014the\nsupremacy of St. Peter\u2014we called into court another set of witnesses\naltogether: to wit, the paintings of their tombs and chapels. Exception\nhas been taken against the competency of these witnesses, on the plea\nthat they are not old enough; they were not contemporary, it is said,\nwith those first ages of the church whose faith is called in question.\nTo this we answer that the objection is entirely out of date; it might\nhave been raised twenty or thirty years ago, and it might have been\ndifficult at that time satisfactorily to dispose of it. Those were days\nin which writers like M. Perrot in France could affect to pronounce\ndogmatically on the age of this or that painting, solely on the evidence\nof its style, without having first established any standard by which\nthat style could be securely judged. There are still a few writers of\nthe same school even at the present day, such as Mr. Parker in England,\nwho assigns precise years as the dates of these subterranean monuments\nwith as much confidence as if he had been personally present when they\nwere executed, and (we may add) with as wide a departure from the truth\nas if he had never seen the pictures at all. Such writers, however, have\nbut few disciples nowadays. Their foolish presumption is only laughed\nat; and it is not thought worth while seriously to refute their\nassertions. Men of intelligence and critical habits of thought are slow\nto accept the _ipse dixit_ of a professor, however eminent, upon any\nsubject; and all who have studied this particular subject\u2014the paintings\nin the Catacombs\u2014are well aware that the question of their antiquity has\nnow been carried beyond the range of mere conjecture and assumption; it\nhas been placed on a solid basis of fact through the indefatigable\nlabors of De Rossi. Those labors have been directed in a very special\nway towards establishing the true chronology of the several parts of the\nCatacombs; and when this had been done, it was manifest to all that the\nmost ancient _are\u00e6_ were also those which were most abundantly decorated\nwith painting, whilst the are\u00e6 that had been used more recently\u2014_i.e._,\nin the latter half of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century\u2014were\nhardly decorated at all. This gradual decline of the use of pictorial\ndecoration has been traced with the utmost exactness through the\nsuccessive _are\u00e6_ of a single Catacomb; six or seven tombs being found\nthus decorated in the first _area_, two in the second, one in the third,\nnone at all in the fourth; and the same thing has been seen, with more\nor less distinctness, throughout the whole range of subterranean Rome.\nThen, again, every casual visitor to them can see for himself that\nbefore the abandonment of burial here\u2014_i.e._, before the year 410\u2014many\nof the paintings were already considered old enough to be sacrificed\nwithout scruple to the wishes of those who would fain excavate new tombs\nin desirable sites. Men do not usually destroy to-day the paintings\nwhich they executed yesterday; certainly they do not allow the\nornamentation which they have just lavished on the tombs of their\nfathers to be soon effaced with impunity. We may be sure, then, that\nthose innumerable paintings which we see broken through in order to make\nmore modern graves must have been of considerable antiquity at the time\nof their destruction. Then, again, it must not be forgotten that some of\nthese paintings were actually appealed to as ancient testimony in the\ndays of St. Jerome, on occasion of a dispute between that doctor and St.\nAugustine as to the correct rendering of a particular word in his Latin\ntranslation of the Scriptures. Finally, it is notorious that the fine\narts had rapidly decayed and the number of their professors diminished\nbefore the days of Constantine\u2014in fact, before the end of the third\ncentury.\n\nWe cannot, however, pretend to give in these pages even a brief summary\nof De Rossi\u2019s arguments and observations whereby he establishes the\nprimitive antiquity of Christian art in the Catacombs. We can only\nmention a few of the more popular and palpable proofs which can be\nappreciated by all without difficulty; and we will only add that it is\nnow possible, under the sure chronological guidance of De Rossi, to\ndistinguish three successive stages in the development of painting in\nthe Christian cemeteries, the latest of which was complete when the\nConstantinian era began, and the first falls hardly, if at all, short of\neven apostolic times. This is no longer denied by the best instructed\neven among Protestant controversialists; they acknowledge that painting\nwas used by the earliest Christians for the ornamenting of their places\nof burial; only they contend that it was done \u201cnot because it was\ncongenial to the mind of Christianity so to illustrate the faith, but\nbecause it was the heathen custom so to honor the dead.\u201d The author of\nthis remark, however, has omitted to explain whence it comes to pass\nthat the great majority of the paintings which survive in the cemeteries\nare more engaged in illustrating the mysteries of the faith than in\ndoing honor to the dead.\n\nBut we must not pursue this subject any further. We have said enough, we\nthink, to establish the competency of these paintings as witnesses to\nthe ancient faith, and we will now proceed to question them concerning\none or two principal mysteries of the faith\u2014those that are called its\nmysteries _par excellence_: its sacraments. We do not doubt that, if\nduly interrogated, they will have some evidence to give. We say, if duly\ninterrogated, because it is the characteristic of ancient Christian art\nto be eminently symbolical; it suggested rather than declared religious\ndoctrines and ideas, and it suggested them by means of artistic symbols\nor historical types, which must be inquired into and meditated upon\nbefore they can be made fully to express their meaning. This is of the\nvery essence of a symbol: that it should partly veil and partly manifest\nthe truth. It does not manifest the truth with the fulness and accuracy\nof a written historical description, or it would cease to be a symbol;\non the other hand, it must not be so obscure as to demand a sibyl for\nits interpretation; it must have a tendency to produce in the mind of\nthe beholder some leading feature of the object it is intended to\nrepresent. And where should symbols of this kind be more abundantly\nfound for the Christian preacher or artist than in the histories of the\nOld Testament? Ancient Christian art, says Lord Lindsay, \u201cveiled the\nfaith and hope of the church under the parallel and typical events of\nthe patriarchal and the Jewish dispensations.\u201d\n\nWe need not remind our readers that the principle of this method of\ninterpreting Holy Scripture has express apostolic sanction; but few who\nhave not studied the subject closely will have any adequate idea of the\nextent to which it was followed in the ancient church. We will give a\nsingle example, selected because it closely concerns the first mystery\nof which we propose to speak\u2014the Sacrament of Baptism.\n\nTertullian, who lived at the end of the second and beginning of the\nthird century, wrote a short treatise on this sacrament. This treatise\nhe begins by bringing together all that Holy Scripture contains about\nwater, with such minuteness of detail that he is presently obliged to\ncheck himself, saying that, if he were to pursue the subject through all\nHoly Scripture with the same fulness with which he had begun, men would\nsay he was writing a treatise in praise of water rather than of baptism.\nFrom the first chapter of the Book of Genesis to the last of the\nEvangelists, and even of the Apocalypse, he finds continual testimony to\nthe high dignity and sacramental life-giving power of this element. The\nSpirit of God, he says, moved over it at the first; whilst as yet the\nearth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,\nand the heaven was as yet unformed, water alone, already pure, simple,\nand perfect, supplied a worthy resting-place on which God could be\nborne. The division of the waters was the regulating power by which the\nworld was constituted; and when at length the world was set in order,\nready to receive inhabitants, the waters were the first to hear and obey\nthe command and to bring forth creatures having life. Then, again, man\nwas not made out of the dry earth, but out of slime, after a spring had\nrisen out of the earth, watering all its surface. All this is out of the\nfirst two chapters of Genesis; and here he makes a pause, breaking into\nthat apology which has been already mentioned. Then he resumes the\nthread of his discourse, but passing much more briefly over the\nremainder of the Old Testament. He notes how the wickedness of the old\nworld was purged by the waters of the Deluge, which was the world\u2019s\nbaptism; how the waters of the Red Sea drowned the enemies of God\u2019s\npeople and delivered them from a cruel bondage; and how the children of\nIsrael were refreshed during their wanderings through the wilderness by\nthe water which flowed continuously from the rock which followed them,\n\u201cwhich rock was Christ.\u201d Then he comes to the New Testament, and briefly\nbut eloquently exclaims: Nowhere is Christ found without water. He is\nhimself baptized with it; he inaugurates in it the first manifestation\nof his divine power at the wedding-feast in Cana; when he preaches the\nGospel, on the last and great day of the feast, he stands and cries,\nsaying, \u201cIf any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.\u201d He sums up\nhis whole gift to man under the image of a fountain of water, telling\nthe Samaritan woman that he has living water to give, which shall become\nin him that receives it a fountain of water springing up unto life\neverlasting. When he gives instruction upon charity, he instances a cup\nof cold water given to a disciple; he sits down weary at a well and asks\nfor water to refresh himself; he walks on the waves of the sea, and\nwashes his disciples\u2019 feet; finally (Tertullian concludes), \u201cthis\ntestimony of Jesus to the Sacrament of Baptism continues even to the\nend, to his very Passion; for, when he is condemned to the cross, water\nis not absent\u2014witness the hands of Pilate; nay, when wounded after death\nupon the cross, water bursts forth from his side\u2014witness the soldier\u2019s\nspear.\u201d\n\nThere may be something in this symbolism that sounds strange to modern\nears; but we are not here criticising it; we have nothing to do with its\nmerits or demerits, but only with the fact of its general use\u2014so general\nthat it was the one principle of exegesis which every commentator on\nHoly Scripture in those days followed, and we have every right to\nsuppose that Christian artists would have followed it also. When,\ntherefore, we find in the Roman Catacombs (as, for example, the other\nday in the cemetery of San Callisto) a glass vessel, very artistically\nwrought, with fishes in _alto rilievo_ swimming round it in such a way\nthat, when full of water, it would have represented a miniature image,\nas it were, of the sea, is it a mere fanciful imagination which bids us\nrecognize in such ornamentation a reference to holy baptism, and\nconjectures that the vessel was perhaps even made for the administration\nof that sacrament? It may be so; but we cannot ourselves think so; we\ncannot at once reject the explanation as fanciful; the work of the\nartist corresponds too exactly with the words of the theologian to allow\nus to treat the coincidence as altogether undesigned. \u201cWe little fish\nare born,\u201d says Tertullian, \u201cafter the likeness of our great Fish in\nwater, and we cannot otherwise be safe than by remaining in the water.\u201d\nAnd we seem to ourselves to read these same words, written in another\nlanguage, in the beautiful vessel before us. We read it also in another\nsimilar vessel, which looks as though it had come out of the same\nworkshop, yet was found in an ancient cemetery at Cologne; and in\nanother of bronze, dug up in the vineyard over the cemetery of\nPretextatus, that used to be shown by Father Marchi in the Kircherian\nMuseum at the Roman College. In all these instances we believe that this\nis the best account that can be given, both of the original design of\nthe vessel and also of its preservation in Christian subterranean\ncemeteries. However, if any one thinks otherwise, we do not care to\ninsist upon our explanation as infallibly certain. We will descend into\nthe Catacombs themselves, and look about upon the paintings on their\nwalls or the carving on their gravestones, and see whether baptism finds\nany place there also.\n\nAnd, first, we come across the baptism of our Lord himself. We are not\nnow thinking of the subterranean baptistery in the cemetery of Ponziano,\nwith the highly-decorated cross standing up out of the middle of it, and\nChrist\u2019s baptism painted at the side. For this is one of the latest\nartistic productions in the Catacombs\u2014a work of the eighth or ninth\ncentury possibly. We are thinking, on the contrary, of one of the\nearliest paintings in a most ancient part of the excavations, in the\ncrypt of Lucina, near the cemetery of Callixtus, with which, in fact, it\nis now united. We shall have occasion to return to this same chamber\npresently for the sake of other paintings on its walls having reference\nto the Holy Eucharist; just here we only call attention to the baptism\nof our Lord, which is represented in the space over the doorway. We do\nnot know of any other instance of this subject having been painted in\nthe Catacombs besides the two that we have mentioned, but it is quite\npossible that others may be hereafter discovered; but of baptism as a\nChristian rite, veiled, however, under its types and symbols, we have\ninnumerable examples.\n\nFew figures recur more frequently among the paintings in the Catacombs,\nand none are more ancient, than that of a man standing in an open box or\nchest, often with a dove, bearing an olive-branch in its mouth, flying\ntowards him. When this was first seen after the rediscovery of the\nCatacombs in the sixteenth century, men set it down to be the picture of\nsome ancient bishop preaching in a pulpit, and the Holy Ghost, under the\nform of a dove, inspiring him as to what he should say, according to the\nlegend told of St. Gregory the Great and some others. Nobody now doubts\nthat it was intended for Noe in the ark; not, however, the historical\nNoe and the historical ark\u2014for nothing could be more ludicrously false\nto the original\u2014but those whom that history foreshadowed: Christians\nsaved by the waters of baptism and securely housed in the ark of the\nchurch. Some persons, who seem to take a perverse delight in assigning a\npagan rather than a Christian origin to everything in the early church,\naccount for the difference between the Biblical and the artistic\nrepresentation of the ark by saying that the Christian artist did but\ncopy a pagan coin or medal which he found ready to his hands. It is\nquite true that certain coins which were struck at Apamea in Phrygia\nduring the reigns of Septimius Severus, Macrinus, and Philip the\nelder\u2014_i.e._, at different periods in the first half of the third\ncentury\u2014exhibit on one side of them a chest, with a man and a woman\nstanding within it, and the letters \u039d\u03a9, or \u039d\u03a9\u0395, written on the outside;\nand that these figures were intended to be a souvenir of the Deluge,\nwhich held a prominent place in the legends of Phrygia. It is said that\nthe town of Apamea claimed to derive its secondary name of \u03ba\u03b9\u03b2\u03c9\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2, or\nark, from the fact that it was here that the ark rested; and it is quite\npossible that the spread of Christian ideas, gradually penetrating the\nRoman world, and filtering into the spirit even of those who remained\nattached to paganism, may have suggested the making of the coins we have\ndescribed; but it is certain, on the other hand, that we can claim\npriority in point of time for the work of the Christian artists in the\nCatacombs. The coins were struck, as we have said, in the beginning of\nthe third century; the earliest Christian painting of the same subject\nis assigned to the beginning of the second.\n\nBut whatever may be the history of the forms under which Noe and the ark\nare represented, there can be no question as to their meaning. We have\nthe authority of St. Peter himself (1 iii. 20, 21) to instruct us upon\nthis point; and Tertullian does but unfold what is virtually contained\nin the apostle\u2019s words when he says that the ark prefigures the church,\nand that the dove sent out of the ark and returning with an olive-branch\nwas a figure of the dove of the Holy Spirit, sent forth from heaven to\nour flesh, as it emerges from the bath of regeneration. And if we quote\nTertullian again as our authority, this is not because he differs in\nthese matters from other Christian writers who preceded or followed him,\nbut because he has written at greater length and specially on that\nparticular subject with which we are now engaged. St. Augustine, writing\ntwo hundred years later, gives the same explanation, and says that \u201cno\nCatholic doubts it; but that it might perhaps have seemed to be a merely\nhuman imagination, had not the Apostle Peter expressly declared it.\u201d It\nis, then, from no private fancy of our own, but simply in conformity\nwith the teaching of all the ancient doctors of the church, that we\ninterpret this scene of a man standing in an ark, and receiving an\nolive-branch from the mouth of a dove, as expressing this Christian\ndoctrine: that the faithful obtain remission of their sins through\nbaptism, receive from the Holy Spirit the gift of divine peace\u2014that\npeace which, being given by faith in this world, is the gage of\neverlasting peace and happiness in the next\u2014and are saved in the\nmystical ark of the church from the destruction which awaits the world.\nAnd if the same scene be rudely scratched on a single tomb, as it often\nwas, and sometimes with the name of the deceased inscribed upon the\nchest, we can only understand it as denoting a sure and certain hope on\nthe part of the survivors that their departed friend, having been a\nfaithful member of the church, had died in the peace of God and had now\nentered into his rest.\n\nWe pass on to another of the Biblical stories mentioned by several of\nthe Fathers as typical of baptism; and we will select as our specimen of\nit a painting that was executed about the very time that Tertullian was\nwriting his treatise on that sacrament. It is to be seen more than once\non the walls of a series of chambers which open out of a gallery in the\nCatacomb of San Callisto, not far from the papal crypt. The first figure\nthat greets us from the wall on the left-hand side as we enter these\nchambers is Moses striking the rock and the water gushing forth. Are we\nto look upon this as a mere historic souvenir of the Jewish legislator,\nor are we to see in it a reference to Christian baptism? The artist in\nthe present instance does not allow us to doubt. Side by side with it he\nhas painted a fisherman, and we need not be reminded who it was that\ncompared the work of the Christian apostle to that of fishermen; and\nimmediately he adds, with still greater plainness of speech, a youth\nstanding in the water, whilst a man pours water over his head. Finally,\nhe fills the very little space that remains on the wall with the picture\nof a paralytic carrying his bed, and it would be easy to show that the\nFathers recognized in the pool of Bethsaida, to which place this history\nbelongs, a type of the healing waters of baptism. Was it possible for\nthe Christian artist to set forth the sacrament more unequivocally?\nThere is no legend to interpret the painting, but surely this is not\nneeded. The mystery is veiled, indeed, from all who were uninstructed;\nbut it was perfectly intelligible to all the baptized; it was veiled\nunder types and symbols taken partly from the Old Law and partly from\ncommon life.\n\nWe need hardly say that this same figure of Moses striking the rock\noccurs in scores of other places throughout the Catacombs; but we have\nselected this particular specimen, both because it appears with a more\ncopious _entourage_ of other symbols determining its sense beyond all\ndispute, and also because it is here brought, as we shall presently see,\ninto immediate proximity with the other sacrament, to which it is a\nnecessary gate of introduction\u2014the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. But\nbefore we pass on to examine the symbols of the Holy Eucharist, let us\nfirst inquire whether there is anything further about baptism to be\ngleaned from the Catacombs\u2014not now from their paintings, but from their\ninscriptions.\n\nWe must remember that the most ancient inscriptions were very brief\u2014very\noften the mere name of the deceased and nothing more, or a short\nejaculatory prayer was added for his everlasting happiness. It is clear\nthat we should search here in vain for any mention of the sacraments. By\nand by, when it became usual to say something more about the deceased,\nto mention his age and the date of his death or burial, or other similar\nparticulars, perhaps room might be found also for saying something about\nhis baptism. Accordingly, there are not wanting monuments of the fourth\nor fifth centuries which tell us that the deceased was a neophyte, or\nnewly illuminated\u2014which means the same thing: viz., that he had been\nlately baptized\u2014or that he had lived so many months or years after he\nhad received the initiatory sacrament of the Christian covenant.\nOccasionally, also, a faint reference may be found to another\nsacrament\u2014the Sacrament of Confirmation. This was often, or even\ngenerally, administered in olden times immediately after baptism, of\nwhich it was considered the complement and perfection. \u201cFrom time\nimmemorial,\u201d says Tertullian (_ab immemorabili_), \u201cas soon as we have\nemerged from the bath [of regeneration] we are anointed with the holy\nunction.\u201d Hence it is sometimes doubtful which sacrament is intended, or\nrather it is probable that it was intended to include both under the\nwords inscribed on the epitaphs\u2014the verbs _accepit_, _percepit_,\n_consecutus est_ (the same as we find in the fathers of the same or an\nearlier age), used for the most part absolutely, without any object\nwhatever following them; but in one or two cases _fidem_ or _gratiam\nsanctum_ are used. An epitaph of a child three years old adds:\n_Consecuta est D. vi. Deposita viii. Kal. Aug._ Another says simply:\n_Pascasius percepit xi. Kal. Maias_; and a third: _Crescentia q. v. a.\nxxxiii. Accepit iii. Kal. Jul._ A fourth records of a lady that she died\nat the age of thirty-five: _Ex die acceptionis su\u00e6 vixit dies lvii._; to\nwhich we append another: _Consecutus est ii. Non. Decemb. ex die\nconsecutionis in s\u00e6culo fuit ad usque vii. Idas Decemb._ This last\ninscription is taken from a Christian cemetery in Africa, not in Rome;\nbut it was worth quoting for its exact conformity with the one which\nprecedes it. In both alike there is the same distinction between the\nnatural and the spiritual age of the deceased\u2014_i.e._, between his first\nand his second birth. After stating the number of years he had lived in\nthe world, his age is computed afresh from the day of his regeneration,\nthus marking off the length of his spiritual from that of his merely\nanimal life.\n\nA Greek inscription was found a few years since on the Via Latina,\nrecording of a lady who had belonged to one of the Gnostic sects in the\nthird century, that she had been \u201canointed in the baths of Christ with\nhis pure and incorruptible ointment\u201d\u2014an inscription which probably\nrefers to two separate rites in use among the Gnostics, in imitation of\nthe two Christian sacraments. Of a Christian lady buried in Spoleto, her\nepitaph records that she had been confirmed (_consignata_) by Pope\nLiberius; this, of course, belongs to the middle of the fourth century.\nAnd we read of a boy who died when he was a little more than five years\nold: _Bimus trimus consecutus est_\u2014words which were a veritable enigma\nto all antiquarians, until the learned Marini compared with them the\nphrases of Roman law, _bima trima die dos reddita_, _bima trima die\nlegatum solutum_, and pointed out that as these phrases undoubtedly\nsignified that such a portion of the dowry or legacy was paid in the\nsecond year, and such another portion in the third, so the corresponding\nwords in the Christian epitaph could only mean that the deceased had\nreceived something when he was two years old, and something else when he\nwas three; and although the particular gifts received are not mentioned\nbecause of the _disciplina arcani_, we can have no difficulty in\nsupplying baptism and confirmation. De Rossi adopts this interpretation;\nindeed, it does not seem possible to suggest any other.\n\nIt seems, then, that there is not much evidence to be derived from the\nCatacombs as to the Sacrament of Confirmation; that, on the contrary,\nwhich has reference to the Holy Eucharist is most precious and abundant,\nand it is generally to be found in juxtaposition with monuments which\nbear testimony to the Sacrament of Baptism. The chamber in the crypt of\nLucina which gives us the oldest painting of the baptism of our Lord\ngives us also what are probably the oldest symbolical representations of\nthe Holy Eucharist; and certainly the chambers in the cemetery of San\nCallisto, in which we have just seen so many and such clear\nmanifestations of the Sacrament of Baptism, contain also the most\nnumerous and the most perfect specimens of the symbolic representations\nof the Holy Eucharist carried to their highest degree of development,\nyet still combined with mysterious secrecy. Before enumerating these in\ndetail it will be best to make two or three preliminary remarks helping\nto clear the way before us. First, then, we may assume as known to all\nour readers, both that the doctrine about the Blessed Sacrament belonged\nin a very special way to the discipline of the secret, and also that\nfrom the very earliest times one of the most common names under which\nour Blessed Lord was spoken of was the _fish_, because the letters which\ngo to make up that word in Greek were also the initials of the words\nJesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. And, secondly, we must say a few\nwords about the different circumstances under which a fish appears in\nthe artistic decorations of the Catacombs; at least, of the different\nkinds of feasts or entertainments in which it seems to be presented as\nan article of food. These feasts may be divided into three classes:\nFirst, the fish merely lies upon a table\u2014a sacred table or tripod\u2014with\none or more loaves of bread by its side, and not unfrequently with\nseveral baskets full of bread on the ground around it; secondly, bread\nand fish are seen on a table, at which seven men are seated partaking of\na meal; and, thirdly, they are seen, perhaps with other viands also, at\na feast of which men and women are partaking indiscriminately, and\nperhaps attendants also are there, waiting on the guests, pouring out\nwine and water, hot or cold. Paintings of this latter class have not\nuncommonly been taken as representing the _agap\u00e6_, or love-feasts, of\nthe early church. But this seems to be too literal an interpretation,\ntoo much out of harmony with the symbolical character of early Christian\nart. More probably it was meant as a representation of that\nwedding-feast under which image the joys of heaven are so often set\nforth in Holy Scripture; and in this case it is not necessary to suppose\nthat there was any special meaning in the choice of fish as part of the\nfood provided, unless, indeed (which is not at all improbable), it was\ndesired to direct attention to that mystical food a participation in\nwhich was the surest pledge of admission to that heavenly banquet,\naccording to our Lord\u2019s own words: \u201cHe that eateth this bread shall live\nfor ever.\u201d However, it is not necessary, as we have said, to suppose\nthis; it is quite possible that in these instances the fish may have\nbeen used accidentally, as it were, and indifferently, or for the same\nreason as it sometimes appears on pagan monuments\u2014viz., to denote the\nabundance and excellence of the entertainment.\n\nPaintings of the first class, however, are much too peculiar to be thus\nexplained, neither is there anything resembling them in the works of\npagan artists which could have suggested them; and those of the second\nclass, we hope presently to show, can only have been intended to\nrepresent a particular scene in the Gospel history. It is only with\npaintings belonging to one or other of these two classes that we need\nconcern ourselves to-day. And, first, of the bread and fish when placed\nalone, without any guests at all. In the crypt of Lucina it appears\ntwice on the wall opposite our Lord\u2019s baptism, and in a very remarkable\nform indeed. The fish is alive and apparently swimming, and he carries\non his back a basket full of loaves, in the middle of which is a vessel\nof glass containing some red liquid. What can this mean? Nobody ever saw\nanything like it in nature. We know of nothing in pagan art or mythology\nwhich could have suggested it. Yet here it finds a place in the chamber\nof a Christian cemetery, and as part of a system of decoration, other\nparts of which were undoubtedly of a sacred character. Is this alone\nprofane or meaningless, or does not rather its hidden sense shine forth\ndistinctly as soon as we call to mind the use of the fish as a Christian\nsymbol on the one hand, and the Christian doctrine about the Holy\nEucharist on the other? The fish was Christ. And he once took bread and\nbroke it, and said, This is my body; and he took wine and blessed it,\nsaying, This is my blood; and he appointed this to be an everlasting\nordinance in his church, and promised that whosoever should eat of that\nbread and drink of that chalice should inherit everlasting life. Here\nare the bread and the wine and the mystical fish. And was it possible\nfor Christian eyes to attach any other meaning to the combination than\nthat it was intended to bring before them the remembrance of the\nChristian mysteries, whereby death and the grave were robbed of all\ntheir gloom, being only the appointed means of entrance to a\nnever-ending life? If anybody is tempted to object that the vessels here\nrepresented as containing the bread and wine are too mean ever to have\nbeen used for such a purpose, we must remind him that it had already\nbeen put on record by arch\u00e6ologists, before the discovery of this\nmonument, that the early Christians in the days of poverty and\npersecution continued to use vessels of the same humble materials as had\nbeen used in the sacrificial rites of Jews and Gentiles before them, and\nthat these were precisely such as are here represented. Nay, further\nstill, that even when vessels of gold and silver had come into use in\nthe church, still there were exceptional times and circumstances when it\nwas lawful, and even praiseworthy, to return to the more simple and\nancient practice. St. Jerome praises St. Exuperius, Bishop of Toulouse\nin his day, because, having sold the church-plate to relieve the\npressing necessities of the poor, he was content to carry the body of\nChrist in a basket made of wicker-work, and the blood of Christ in a\nchalice of glass. Most assuredly St. Jerome would have been at no loss\nto interpret the painting before us.\n\nBut let us now pass on into the cemetery of San Callisto, and enter\nagain the chamber in which we saw Moses, and the fishermen, and the\nministration of baptism, and the paralytic. Let us pursue our walk round\nthe chamber, and immediately after the paralytic, on the wall facing the\ndoorway, we come to the painting of a three-legged table with bread and\nfish upon it, a woman standing on one side in the ancient attitude of\nChristian prayer, and a man on the other stretching out his hands over\nthe fish and the bread, as though he were blessing them. Can it be that\nwe have here the act of consecration of the Holy Eucharist, as in the\nadjacent wall we had the act of baptizing, only in a somewhat more\nhidden manner, as became the surpassing dignity of the greater mystery?\nNobody, we think, would ever have disputed it, had the dress of the\nconsecrator been somewhat more suited to such an action. But his breast\nand arm and one side of his body are considerably exposed, as he\nstretches out his arm from underneath his cloak; and modern taste takes\nexception to the exposure as unseemly in such a time and place. We have\nno wish to put a weapon into the hands of the anti-ritualistic party.\nNevertheless, we believe that it is pretty well ascertained that at\nfirst no vestment was exclusively appropriated to the celebration of\nMass. We are not sure that Dean Stanley was in error when he wrote the\nother day that St. Martin, the Apostle of Gaul and first Bishop of\nTours, wore a sheepskin when he officiated, and that \u201che consecrated the\nEucharistic elements with his bare arms coming through the sheepskin.\u201d\nAnd at any rate it is certain that in the days of Tertullian, to which\nthe picture before us belongs, many ministers of Christ\u2019s word and\nsacraments used the pallium as the dress most suitable to their own\nprofession. The writer we have named published a short treatise on the\nsubject, in which, with his usual wit and subtlety, he commends its use,\nand he concludes with these words: \u201cRejoice, O Pallium! and exult; a\nbetter philosophy claims thee now, since thou hast become the vestment\nof a Christian.\u201d Forty years later a fellow-countryman of this writer,\nSt. Cyprian, expressed a strong objection to the dress, both as immodest\nin itself and vainglorious in its signification. Thus everything\nconspires to support the interpretation which the picture itself\nsuggests and the age to which it has been assigned; and we conclude with\nconfidence that those who first saw it never doubted that it was meant\nto set before them the most solemn mystery of their religion.\n\nThey would have recognized the same mystery again without hesitation,\nunder another form, in the painting which follows immediately\nafterwards, in which seven men are seen seated at a table, partaking of\nbread and fish. Our own thoughts, as we look at it, fly naturally to the\nlast chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, where such an incident\nas this is minutely described after the miraculous draught of fishes\nwhich was the occasion of it. But unless we are very familiar with the\nwritings of the Fathers, our thoughts would probably go no further; they\nwould rest in the mere letter of the narrative; we should not penetrate\nbeneath the surface, and see (as all the Fathers saw), in every\ncircumstance related, a prophetic figure of the whole history of the\nchurch: first, the immense number of souls caught in her net, then the\nunion of those souls with Christ, \u201cthe fish that was already laid on the\nhot coals\u201d (_Piscis assus, Christus passus_), their incorporation with\nhim through partaking of that living Bread which came down from heaven,\nand consequently their sure hope of abiding with him for ever in the\nworld to come. This is no private or modern interpretation; it is drawn\nout at greatest length by St. Augustine; but it is to be found also in\nall other patristic commentaries on Holy Scripture; and the marvellous\nunity, not only in dogmatic teaching, but even in the use of allegories\nand artistic symbols, which reached from east to west in the ancient\nchurch, warrants us in assuming that it was not unknown to him who\nselected this scene as the central piece of decoration for the principal\nwall of this chamber.\n\nNext after it he painted Abraham with his son Isaac, the ram, and the\nfaggot for the sacrifice\u2014a type both of the sacrifice on Mount Calvary\nand (in a yet more lively manner) of the unbloody sacrifice still\nperpetually renewed on Christian altars.\n\nThus there is the most exact similitude between the illustrations used\nto set forth the Holy Eucharist on the one wall and those of holy\nbaptism on the other. Both sacraments are at the same time veiled from\nunbelievers, yet indicated to the faithful, by types taken from the\nhistory of the Old Law, by incidents belonging to the life of Christ,\nand by representations, sufficiently simple yet obscure, of the actual\nmanner of their administration. And then the last wall was reserved for\nthe setting forth of our resurrection, in the example of Lazarus, which\nwas, in truth, the natural end and completion of all that the sacraments\nled to.\n\nWe have not left ourselves space to speak at length of the miracles of\nchanging water into wine, or the multiplication of the loaves and\nfishes, as other figures of the Holy Eucharist often to be seen in the\nCatacombs. That they were painted there in this sense we cannot doubt,\nwhen we consider how they were connected with that sacrament in the\nsermons and catechetical instructions of the early church. In the first\nmiracle the substance of water was changed into the substance of wine;\nin the second a limited substance was, by Christ\u2019s power, so multiplied\nas to be made present in a thousand places at once, capable of feeding a\nthousand persons, whereas a minute before it had been only present in\none place and was sufficient only to satisfy the appetite of one. The\nanalogy is obvious; but these miracles do not seem to have entered so\nearly into the system of decoration of the Catacombs (except in a very\nfragmentary and indirect manner), neither do they anywhere enter into so\nlong and beautiful a series of mystical figures, as those others which\nwe have been just now examining. Those form a series of rare and very\nspecial interest. They are repeated, as we have already said, in several\nsuccessive chambers, whose date can be determined, by a number of\nconcurrent indications, as not later than the first quarter of the third\ncentury. In these chambers the same histories and the same symbols are\nrepeated in the same style, freely changed in their arrangement and in\nsome accessories of the composition, yet constant in their hidden\nmeaning and theological sense; and that sense is briefly this: the idea\nof a new life imparted to the Christian soul by baptism, fed by the Holy\nEucharist, and continued uninterruptedly throughout eternity.\n\n\n\n\n                            TWO MAY CAROLS.\n                           BY AUBREY DE VERE.\n\n\n                               DARKNESS.\n\n\n    The authentic Thought of God at last\n      Wanes, dimly seen, through Error\u2019s mist:\n    Upon that mist, man\u2019s image cast\n      Becomes the new God-Mechanist.\n\n    The vast _Idea_ shrivels up:\n      Truth narrows with the narrowing soul:\n    Men sip it from the acorn\u2019s cup:\n      Their fathers drained the golden bowl.\n\n    Shrink, spelled and dwarfed, their earth, their skies;\n      Shrinks in their hand their measuring-rod;\n    With dim, yet microscopic eyes\n      They chase a daily-dwindling God.\n\n    His temple thus to crypt reduced,\n      For ancient faith is space no more,\n    Or her, its Queen.[32] To hearts abused\n      By sense, prime truths are true no more.\n\nFootnote 32:\n\n  Father Newman has, I think, remarked that in the Protestant scheme\n  there is _not room_ for Mary.\n\n\n                                 LIGHT.\n\n\n    The spirit intricately wise\n      That bends above his ciphered scroll\n    Only to probe, and analyze,\n      The self-involved and sunless soul,\n\n    _Has_ not the truth he holds\u2014though plain;\n      For truth divine is gift, not debt:\u2014\n    Her living waters wouldst thou drain?\n      Let down the pitcher, not the net!\n\n    But they, the spirits frank and meek,\n      Nor housed in self, nor science-blind,\n    Who welcome truths they did not seek;\u2014\n      Truth comes to them in every wind.\n\n\n    Beside his tent\u2019s still open door,\n      With open heart, and open eye,\n    The patriarch sat, when they who wore\n      That triad type of God drew nigh.\n\n    The world of faith around us lies\n      Like nature\u2019s world of life and growth:\n    Seeing, to see it needeth eyes\n      And heart, profound and simple both.\n\n\n\n\n              LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.\n                            FROM THE FRENCH.\n\n\nNOVEMBER 16, 1869.\n\nTh\u00e9r\u00e8se has followed her sister.... At the last moment reason returned;\nshe looked at her mother and said: \u201cHere is Mad; give me your blessing!\u201d\nO my God! it is, then, true\u2014the nest is empty.\n\nKate, how are Berthe and Raoul to be consoled?\n\n\nNOVEMBER 22, 1869.\n\nMargaret is here again\u2014a ray of sunshine after the storm, in this\ndwelling, twice visited by death. Oh! how we wept in embracing her. And\nwith what affection she hastened to Berthe, this devastated,\ndisinherited, wounded, and bleeding heart! \u201cHow shall we leave this\ncemetery now?\u201d said my mother to Gertrude. Oh! I would wish to remain\nhere with her. To return to Orleans, to find their traces everywhere,\nwould be too much grief. What a crushing blow! What incredible,\nunforeseen suddenness! It is enough to take away one\u2019s reason. Raoul\nspeaks no more, hears no more, sees no more; Berthe is in tears: we have\nto console and support them. Help us with your prayers, happy Kate, who\nwitness no death! In the middle of the park are two trees which Raoul\nplanted on the day his daughters were born. They are to be transplanted\nto their tombs. Dear children, so united, so beautiful, and inseparable,\neven in death! O the mother! what sorrow is hers. Ought children to die\nbefore their mother?\n\nMme. de T\u2014\u2014 is heroic in self-denial, and yet these deaths revive all\nher troubles. Ah! who could have foretold that my happiness would so\nsoon have declined, and that God would so quickly have claimed his\nportion of our treasure! See, here are Gertrude and Berthe\u2014two mothers\nwithout children: Ellen and Edith in eternity; Marcella at Naples. I now\nexperience an indescribable apprehension, and count the beloved heads by\nwhich I am still surrounded.... I remember the L\u2014\u2014 family, carried off\nin one year.\n\nA radiant letter from Marcella, who does not yet know of our mourning.\n_Beati qui lugent!_ Let us love God, let us love God!\n\nIt is in him that I cherish you, my Kate.\n\n\nNOVEMBER 28, 1869.\n\nAll our Ireland in letters of fraternal condolence. The saintly Isa\nspeaks to me sweetly of the happiness of the souls thus called away, and\nexhorts me to perfect love. Lizzy invites me to cross the Channel to\nreceive the consolations of those whom I consoled formerly. Sarah and\nthe others comfort me in our beloved tongue. O Kate! it was so\nbeautiful, our peaceful home, with its assembly of children and\ngrandchildren, forming, as it were, a glorious crown around my venerated\nmother; and now a void has been made, the birds have spread their wings,\nand, like the dove from the ark, return no more.\n\nO charming towers, silent witnesses of our happiness! O vast sea, coming\nto murmur at our feet! O flowers they loved! O thickets where their\nvoices, fresh and pure, resounded! O lawn whereon they tried their\nearliest steps; dear abode which witnessed their growth! O forests\nthrough which they sped along, lively and swift of foot, in chase of\nbutterflies or of their favorite dog! O solitary paths which they so\noften traversed to go and lavish on the poor their gold and their\nlove!\u2014speak to us of _them_, and of _them_ always.\n\nDear Kate, pray for the desolate parents. \u201cAll my future has vanished,\u201d\nsays Berthe. May God be with her! Everything else is very small in\ntrials so great as these. My mother begs you to ask for fifty Masses at\nFourvi\u00e8res; we have not the strength to write.\n\nLife, the sunshine, and blue sky\u2014all have disappeared. Adieu, dear\nsister.\n\n\nDECEMBER 5, 1869.\n\nAdrien is reading to us _Herminie de la Bassemo\u00fbturie_, a true narrative\nof a life of suffering and humiliation, borne with a courage so heroic\nand supernatural that one\u2019s heart kindles at it. Margaret is going away,\nperhaps to-morrow. On the 30th Heaven sent Lucy a dear little daughter,\nwho was baptized yesterday without any pomp. Gertrude was godmother, and\nthe godfather is a brother of my pretty sister\u2019s. They have called this\nlittle daughter of Brittany _Anne_\u2014a good name.\n\n_Dec. 6._\u2014I have just returned from accompanying our friends as far as\nto D\u2014\u2014. Emmanuel continued to send me kisses while the carriage went\nslowly away.... Dear Margaret! how much I regret her. Everybody loves\nher, wherever she goes. Now we are alone.... Johanna, Paul, and their\nchildren leave us this evening to spend some months at Paris. I never\ntell you about Arthur and Edward, whose vacation is over, and who are\nvery good friends together. The _abb\u00e9_ remains with us, that we may not\nbe deprived of daily Mass. From henceforth follow me in thought into the\ngreat drawing-room, once so bright with the dear young creatures whom I\nso loved, and there you will see, in her large easy-chair, my mother,\nwhom grief has aged, with your Georgina on a low chair at her feet.\nGertrude, with needlework in her hands, occupies the other side of the\nfire-place, Berthe is near her, then Adrien, Ren\u00e9, Raoul, Edouard, and\nthe _abb\u00e9_ round the table, near which is seated also the charming Lucy.\n\nBut a ray from on high pierces the sombre veils: our dear ones see God;\nthey contemplate him in eternal ecstasy. I had bought at Orleans a\npoetic little picture\u2014a lily broken on earth, which flowered again in\nheaven\u2014and underneath it a verse of the beautiful lines by Mlle.\nFleuriot on the death of _Alix_. How this lily recalls Picciola to my\nmind! Ren\u00e9 is working at a miniature which he intends to give to Berthe:\nin the foreground the twins are embracing a poor old man; in the\ndistance are two lilies on a tomb and two doves taking flight. I am\ncontinuing the _History of the Popes_; it will be for Marguerite and\nAlix.\n\nHow I wish you were here! My heart aches for Berthe, formerly so happy,\nand so lonely now. Ah! what burning tears are those that spring from the\nhearts of mothers when God takes back from them the precious ones lent\nthem for a day. O remediless grief, deep void, unfathomable abyss!\n\nYes, we shall remain in Brittany. The noise of the festivities of this\nworld would be to us a martyrdom; but I am athirst for my Kate, and it\nseems as if I shall be stronger when her gentle hand has laid balm upon\nmy wounds. Ren\u00e9 and I will be in Paris on the 23d for a few days.\n\nMistress Annah shed many tears at the moment of leave-taking. Margaret\nwas pale and greatly moved; why should there be any separations, sister?\nAh! doubtless because earth would be too delightful. May God be always\nwith you!\n\n\nDECEMBER 12, 1869.\n\nDo you know that Overbeck is dead? Edith MacMoor sends me long and\ninteresting details from Rome. Edith has taken up her abode in the city\nwhich is the fatherland of Catholics, and her old sympathy with me, she\nsays, has reawakened before the _Sibyls_. Dear, ardent soul, always so\namiable! O our artist, so beloved, so admired! The world is no more\nanything to me but a _Campo Santo_.\n\nHave you heard of the _Pearl of Antioch_? I am reading this Christian\nromance with Ren\u00e9.\n\nOn the 8th we observed as a special festival the opening of the great\nsittings of this Council which will crown with a new glory the reign of\nPius IX. Our life is quite monastic: no more joyous laughter rings along\nthe corridors; silence\u2014the \u201cfirst power in the world,\u201d as the P\u00e8re\nLacordaire called it\u2014dwells with us. We are in mourning for our beloved\nchildren, and these dark dresses are of a solemn sadness which strikes\nour visitors. Every day, no matter what the weather may be, Ren\u00e9\naccompanies me to the cemetery. In spite of the cold, there are flowers,\nand this marble is almost _joyous_. The _Revue_ gives an interesting\nstory\u2014\u201cLaurence,\u201d an account of a young girl who wished to die because\nher sister, on whom she lavished all her love, had departed to heaven. I\ndo not think that Th\u00e9r\u00e8se wished for death, but think rather that\nPicciola asked of God that she might share her felicity.\n\nLucy is well, and thanks you for your sisterly prayers. We are expecting\nnews from Margaret and Marcella. Mary and Ellen write regularly to\nBerthe and to me. Good and kind hearts, full of gentleness and\naffection!\n\nKate dearest, what do you say to my idea?\u2014the adoption of these children\nwould console my sister. Would it be well to propose it to her?\n\nI find Ren\u00e9 changed. Pray for us.\n\n\nDECEMBER 15, 1869.\n\nMargaret sends me her Journal since the departure, every line of which\nis redolent of poetry and affection. Emmanuel is hourly asking for us.\nMarcella sends me pages bathed with tears: \u201cWhy did you allow me to go\naway, dear and generous friend? I feel that your soul would have taken\nrefuge with mine in these sad days.\u201d\n\nKate, what, then, is happiness, since it lasts so short a time?\n\nMarcella is going to spend the winter at Rome; Anna continues to grow\nboth taller and stronger, \u201cbut the departure of her friends makes her\nwish for heaven, and everything gives me the presentiment that in a few\nyears my beloved one will enter a convent. You will scold me for\nthinking this so long beforehand, but you will agree with me that her\npiety is beyond what is ordinary. I have so unlearnt happiness that I\nlive always in uncertainty.\u201d A friend of Adrien\u2019s tells him of the\nreception given at Naples to the happy family party: Mme. de V\u2014\u2014 is\nallied to the Princess of X\u2014\u2014. How fair a future has opened before my\nfriend! \u201cTo return to Rome, where so many of my memories linger, was my\nearnest desire; blessed be God, who permits it to be realized!\u201d\n\nRen\u00e9 is writing to you. Good-by for to-day, dearest sister!\n\n\nDECEMBER 18, 1869.\n\nRead an admirable pastoral letter by Mgr. Berthaud. \u201cIt is a fountain of\nliving water, a springing fountain,\u201d writes Louis Veuillot, who has the\nhappiness to be in Rome.\n\nBerthe yields to the entreaties of her mother, who begs her to go to her\nin her old castle on the banks of the Rhine. Lucy is going away at the\nsame time to show her sisters the beautiful little Anna, her rosebud. I\nlook forward with fear to the feeling of solitude which will seize upon\nus after they are gone. O my God! these will all return, but thou\nkeepest thine angels.\n\nThe happy Karl sends the most fraternal letters that he has ever yet\naddressed to me. He is now in retreat, almost ready to mount the steps\nof the altar and accomplish Ellen\u2019s last desire. \u201cI am never lonely,\u201d he\nwrites. What ardor consumes him! How he burns to shed his blood for\nChrist! \u201cMy whole soul springs forth towards those disinherited souls\nwho know not God! If you still take an interest in your unworthy\nbrother, wish for him crosses, trials, sorrows, and persecutions. But I\nam not worthy to participate in the Passion of my Redeemer, and it may\nbe that my cross may be the burden of a useless life.\u201d Saintly friend!\nnoble heart! His director, who is a relative of our good _abb\u00e9_, never\nwearies in his praises of Karl. According to all probability, he will\nset out for Marseilles the day after his ordination, where the first\nship that sails will take him on board. What am I, my God, by the side\nof this brother left me by Ellen?\n\nI am coming to see you, dear Kate, to refresh myself with you\u2014a too\nrapid apparition, too fleeting a happiness, and one in which I scarcely\ncan believe.\n\n\nDECEMBER 22, 1869.\n\nDear Kate, this sacrifice must also be made. Yesterday a frightful\naccident threw us all into the greatest agitation. My mother\u2019s horses\nran away. The footman, losing all presence of mind with terror, leaped\ndown and was killed by the fall. He was taken up quite mutilated....\nHorrible! horrible! My mother has fever; we remain. The unfortunate\nAntoine will be buried to-morrow morning. He leaves three children. He\nwas an excellent Christian, and was preparing to make his Christmas\ncommunion.... I am writing to Karl, and at the same time to the\nvenerable superior to obtain permission for our friend to give us one or\ntwo days previous to quitting France and Europe.\n\nMy mother was coming back from the town, whither we had all gone to take\nthose of our party who were leaving. Ren\u00e9 and I were to have taken our\ndeparture this evening. All in this world is nothingness, except the\npure and holy love of God. I had so set my mind on this journey that I\ncan only give it up by doing violence to my heart. But if the shock my\nmother has undergone should bring on an illness, I should never forgive\nmyself for having gone away.\n\nPray, dear Kate!\n\n\nDECEMBER 25, 1869.\n\nMy mother is better, dear sister, although the doctor condemns her still\nto repose. The good _cur\u00e9_ is very unwell, and, since my mother would\nnot have been able to attend the midnight Mass, the _abb\u00e9_ offered to\nsay it at the parish church. Ah! if the twins had been here. We left the\nhouse at ten. What a night! What impressions! In a clear and calm night,\nwith the sky spangled with thousands of stars, to go through\nhedge-bordered paths to this old Breton church, so vast and so full; the\nsinging, the sounds of the organ played by Ren\u00e9, the _Gloria in\nExcelsis_, so sweet and grand, the numerous communions, the\ndimly-lighted sanctuary\u2014all these things had about them an indescribable\nold-world poetry, a certain interior and heavenly charm, which made me\nask if we were not at Bethlehem, and if we were not suddenly about to\nbehold with our bodily eyes, like the shepherds, the adorable new-born\nSaviour in the manger. \u201cThe Cedar of Lebanon is gone forth from the\nhyssop in our valley.\u201d Lord Jesus, grant thy blessing upon France!\n\nIt is two years to-day since Ellen entered into glory. With what ecstasy\n_she_ must behold Karl at the altar! Dear Kate, I know not what\natmosphere is surrounding me, but it seems to me that every sorrow\nbrings me nearer to God.\n\nMy mother was visibly affected on reading your kind lines; how she loves\nus! Gertrude is more saintly than ever; her self-denial is increasing.\nShe has owned to me that she never loses the presence of God. We five\nform a severe group, in which the highest questions are discussed.\nGertrude is on fire when she speaks of charity. There is no sort of\nmortification in which she does not take delight; how I startled her\nyesterday by coming suddenly upon her as she was exchanging her shoes\nfor those of a beggar! She fasted on bread and water the three last days\nof Advent, and has asked me if I would go with her barefoot to the\ncrucifix on the mountain, the path to which is covered with brambles.\nYou see she is a worthy imitator of the _Acta Sanctorum_.\n\n_A Dieu_, best beloved!\n\n\nDECEMBER 28, 1869.\n\nKarl arrives on the 31st. Dear Kate, his letter showed me heaven. Good\nnews of everybody, and my mother is in the drawing-room. So the year is\nabout to end\u2014this year, so eventful, and so plentiful in tears! O my\nGod! how many loving looks follow me no more. In my meditation this\nmorning I asked myself whether I am yet submissive and resigned. Alas! I\ntruly wish whatever God wills, but I am weak.\n\nJust now two little birds came and perched on my window, fluttering as\nif wanting to come in. I opened it gently and crumbled a cake for them,\nand the pretty little hungry creatures pecked up the crumbs gladly. Then\nthey flew away, and I began to think of the two sweet birds which,\nalmost before we were aware, have flown away also. I was so proud of\nthis beautiful family, so happy to belong to it! Oh! you know well,\nKate, that it is above all for the sake of the poor father, the\nsorrowing mother, that I regret these two attractive creatures! Raoul\nwrites that Berthe is more calm, and he thinks she will remain some time\nwhere she is. What an image of death is this silence and the solitude\nthat now surrounds us! I work hard, take long walks, teach two little\nboys their catechism, and yet, in spite of everything, as soon as Ren\u00e9\nis no longer there, as soon as I recall the past, my heart is ready to\nbreak.\n\n\u201cTake care, my dear daughter,\u201d my mother says to me. \u201cStrengthen your\nsoul; throw yourself upon God.\u201d And Gertrude: \u201cThe thought of God\nsoftens everything. He has permitted it\u2014let us submit; let us live in\nheaven.\u201d\n\nWould that we could go thither together, dear sister!\n\nAccept all my best wishes for the New Year\u2014wishes for every day and\nevery hour, for your earthly and eternal happiness.\n\n\nJANUARY 5, 1870.\n\nDear Kate, how good God is! This is the cry of my heart, crushed beneath\nthe weight of its gratitude. Karl has been our Good Samaritan. If Berthe\nand Raoul could only hear him! What unction in his words!\n\nHe made his appearance like the angel of Providence amongst us. It was\nin the evening. Ren\u00e9 had gone to wait for him; we had heard no noise,\nwhen the door opened.... It was he! There was a moment of emotion and\ntears, and when he consented to bless us, and I saw him in the light, I\nunderstood the words of Gertrude: \u201cHe has found true happiness.\u201d Then\nhis Mass the next day, the Communion, and Thanksgiving said aloud, the\nchanting of the _Magnificat_ and of the _L\u00e6tatus_\u2014it was heaven. This\nimpression still remains; thanks to a concurrence of circumstances in\nwhich I perceive the intervention of our good angels, the newly elect of\nthe priesthood remains with us until the 20th\u2014an unhoped-for and most\nprecious favor. Alas! shall we see him again?\n\nHe has given me a little book which he had kept by permission of his\nsuperior; you are aware that this generous Karl despoiled himself of\neverything before giving _himself_ also to God. This _Basket of\nEucharistic Flowers_ is full of sweetness to my heart. I find in it some\nverses on Picciola\u2014not mine, but the flower\u2014and the heavenly utterances\nof the pious Marie Jenna, my favorite poetess. Listen to this:\n\n    \u201cOui, cette vie en larmes est f\u00e9conde;\n    J\u2019ai peu v\u00e9cu, j\u2019ai d\u00e9j\u00e0 bien souffert.\n    Mon Dieu, j\u2019ai soif, et les routes du monde\n    Ne me sont rien qu\u2019une aride d\u00e9sert.\n    Mais \u00e0 tes pieds mon \u00e2me se repose.\n    O tendre Ami, Divin Consolateur,\n    Qu\u2019importe \u00e0 moi de perdre toute chose,\n    Si je te garde, amour de mon Sauveur!\u201d[33]\n\nFootnote 33:\n\n      Yes, this our life is plentiful in tears.\n      Though I am young, still I have suffered much.\n      My God, I thirst! and this world\u2019s weary ways\n      Are but an arid desert unto me.\n      But at thy feet my soul finds her repose,\n      O tender Friend and Comforter Divine!\n      What matters it to me if I lose all,\n      But still keep thee, my dearest Saviour\u2019s love!\n\nAnd this cry of the soul:\n\n    \u201cJesus, pour seul bonheur, ah! donnez-moi des larmes\n            Que vous consolerez.\u201d[34]\n\nFootnote 34:\n\n      Jesus, for my sole happiness, oh! give me tears\n              Which thou wilt wipe away.\n\n\nJANUARY 10, 1870.\n\nKarl has spoken to me much of you, dear sister. He wishes that his last\nsculpture in Europe should be for our chapel: Ren\u00e9 and his brothers have\nfor some time past been working at a pulpit; the principal figure will\nbe our missionary\u2019s work. He has consented to let me prepare his\nbaggage. Kate, I was complaining of our solitude, and now it has become\nsweet to me, because I love God more. Oh! what a blessing to the soul it\nis to love.\n\nI am slipping these few words in with Ren\u00e9\u2019s, and send you a thousand\nloving messages.\n\n\nJANUARY 14, 1870.\n\nImpossible not to give you the history of our day, although it is very\nlate. I wished to go to Auray with Karl, and my mother felt strong\nenough to go with us. On the way we met with a German, poor as Job, a\ntrue disciple of Luther, his Bible in his hand. His gentle and\nmelancholy air interested us. We entered into conversation with him,\nKarl preached to him, he came with us to Auray, and when we came out of\nthe church he told us that his mother was a Catholic, that the sight of\nour fervor had touched him, etc., etc. In short, we brought him back\nwith us to the ch\u00e2teau, and Karl is going to catechise him and finish\nhis conversion. You see the good Saint Anne has indeed had a hand in\nthis. Is it not a charming episode?\n\n15th.\u2014Letters: 1st, Margaret, who sends you her heartful of good wishes;\n2d, Marcella, with the chronicle of the Council and the account of an\naudience with the Holy Father; 3d, Lizzy, who wants to make me admire\nher Daniel; 4th, Lucy, who is impatient to come back, because her pretty\nAnne cannot be happy without us, says our amiable sister; 5th, my Kate.\nI mention all in chronological order; you know very well that you are\nfirst in order of affection. But how short it is, dearest! Tell me soon\nthe reason of this brevity; you must have so much to say!\n\n_A Dieu_, my dearest Kate. All and each of the happy inhabitants of my\nBrittany offer you their homage and respect.\n\n\nJANUARY 19, 1870.\n\nWell, dearest, he leaves us to-morrow\u2014this friend, this good brother and\ngenerous priest. Our German is converted, but for reasons of prudence\nthe baptism is deferred. The worthy man does not wish to quit us, and\ndoes his utmost to render himself useful. He is passionately fond of\nmusic, and teaches it to our pastors, who in return _strengthen_ him (as\nhe says) in the catechism. How sadly we shall miss Karl! But then,\nsouls, souls! Ah! I would not keep him back, even if I could.\n\nI have had a strange dream. I was with you in your cell. You seemed to\nbe asleep; I spoke to you, but you did not answer me. I went to kiss\nyou, and in this kiss I felt so strange a thrill, as if your beautiful\nface had been of marble, that I woke, crying out in a manner which\nalarmed Ren\u00e9. It is in vain that I say to myself again and again that it\nis but a dream; the impression remains\u2014a profound terror, and an anguish\nwhich oppresses my heart. Write to me; reassure me, dear Kate. I have\nlost faith in happiness. What am I saying? So long as I belong to God,\nand nothing can separate me from him, shall I not have the only\nhappiness worthy of the name?\n\nKarl promises to write to us. He is going to China, that literary\ncountry, where barbarism and civilization are so strangely mingled. My\nmother, _the Adriens_, and we are putting together our savings to give\nthem to the dear missionary, that with them he may have more facilities\nin his work of gaining souls. How I bless fortune on these occasions!\n\nA thousand lovingnesses, dear sister\u2014the dearest of sisters.\n\n\nJANUARY 26, 1870.\n\nWe accompanied Karl to his ship, which I visited, and which we saw start\non her voyage. Thus he is now between sea and sky, exposed to tempests.\nOh! \u201chow beautiful are the feet of those\u201d who have left all\u2014family,\nfriends, country, repose, comforts, enjoyments\u2014to go in search of the\nlost sheep. It seems to me that the angels of faith and love must spread\ntheir wings over the vessel and keep far away all contrary winds.... We\nseem as if impregnated with sanctity. Grief is a powerful lever to raise\none to God and to transform souls!\n\nYou do not write. Ren\u00e9 is uneasy and tries in vain to conceal his\nanxiety from me. Did you receive his letter of the 24th? Dear Kate, if\nyou are ill, send one word and we will hasten to you. O my God! Ill!\nYou! Could it be possible? That terrible dream is always before my eyes.\nYou will scold me, dearest.... Remember that for some months past I have\nsuffered so much that even the thought of a misfortune overwhelms me.\n\nOh! may God guard you, darling Kate, my sister, my soul. Take care of\nyourself for the love of me.\n\nMy mother entreats you to write; she suffers on account of my anxiety.\nMy God! grant that that may have been only a dream.\n\n\nJANUARY 29, 1870.\n\nStill nothing; perhaps your letter is lost.... May God protect you! The\n_Univers_ pleases me. Mgr. Berthaud has had a triumph at Sant\u2019 Andrea\ndella Valle\u2014the dear church where we have prayed. \u201cHis imagery is rich\nand abundant,\u201d writes Louis Veuillot, \u201cbecause his faith keeps alive in\nhim a perpetual enthusiasm for the works, the mercies, and the love of\nGod. His thoughts are an endless song. What he says he sees; what he\nsees he admires and adores. External things, enveloped and, as it were,\ntranspierced by the rays of the divine Sun, appear to him as magnificent\nas he describes them to be. Things are the works of God; men are the\nchildren of God, divinities in flower, called by their adoption to the\nineffable glory of the divine union. As soon as they are in their way,\ntheir vocation, their order, their accidental defects are effaced; there\nis no more ugliness, there are no more rags, no more miseries\u2014all is\nalready transfigured, already at the attainment of its end, and the\nlyre, vibrating to the touch of a sacred enthusiasm, gives forth sounds\nat once vehement and sublime.\u201d\n\nWhat eulogy! What style!\n\nMgr. Mermillod made a magnificent discourse at Saint Louis des Fran\u00e7ais,\non the perpetuation in the church of the Gospel scene of the Magi. \u201cThe\naction of God in the world, the redemption of souls, the perpetuity and\ndefinition of the truth, all repose upon these three great weaknesses: a\nChild at Bethlehem, a Host in the tabernacle, an aged man at the\nVatican.\u201d\n\nKate dearest, I admire, but nothing dispels my preoccupation, the\ndominant note of my thoughts\u2014you! yourself! Why this silence? I must\nknow it! Write to me; I am suffering....\n\n\nJANUARY 31, 1870.\n\nIt is here, on my writing-table, this white page on which you have\ntraced but one word.... \u201cIt was not a dream!\u201d We start at once; this\nnote will precede us by a few hours. Oh! live for me, my beloved sister;\nask God to cure you.\n\nMy God, I have so often prayed thee to preserve her to me\u2014to let her\nlive as long as I!\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nJOURNAL OF GEORGINA AFTER HER SISTER\u2019S DEATH.\n\nFEBRUARY 15, 1870.\n\n    O amare! O perire tibi!\n    O advenire ad Deum!\n\nStill would I write to you, beloved sister who have left me! Oh! can\nthis be possible? You, my Guardian Angel! It is in heaven that I now\nlook for you, that I now behold you\u2014in heaven, your true home\u2014in heaven,\nwhere you have found again our mother. O my God! my God! Always shall I\nremember this last journey, of which you were the object; the anguish on\nthe way, the haste to arrive, the chill that fell on my heart at the\ngate of the convent. Oh! you knew that I could not bear to see you\nsuffer; and then, perhaps, you might think you would recover, for I\ncannot believe that you desired to die.... Ah! to see you dying; to\nembrace you, watch by you, hear the last effusions of that tenderness to\nwhich my mother had bequeathed me; to see this flame, which was my life,\ndie out, and yet not die myself\u2014Kate, Kate, I can think only, speak\nonly, of you!\n\nI have been very ill. I feel weak, very weak\u2014almost discouraged to live.\nTell me that you are not gone away; soul of my sister, speak to my soul!\nOh! how it seems to me as if I had lost everything. You it was who gave\nso great an interest to my life, animating everything with your\naffection. And now....\n\n\nFEBRUARY 28.\n\nDear Kate, obtain strength for me. I desire to live for Ren\u00e9. Why did\nyou not stay with us, my beloved? I have bitter regrets.... I should\nhave wished to nurse you, to keep you here. O foolishness of love! what\nright have I to wish to keep you from your own country? Dear sister, the\ncorrespondence which was my daily delight must not end: I will write my\njournal for _you_. God, who is so good, even when he separates two\nhearts which were one, could not refuse anything to his elect. Ask him,\nthen, my sister, that you may every day come to me, if even only for an\ninstant. Oh! would that I could see you. It seems to me that with you\nall died; that nothing more will ever in this world smile on me, that\nthe eternal mourning of my soul can never more be comforted. Our friends\nwrite to me. Margaret and Marcella weep with me. My mother, Adrien,\nGertrude, and Ren\u00e9 are full of unspeakable tenderness and solicitude\ntowards me; and yet I have scarcely any response to make them but my\ntears. All is night around me: the Sun has set.\n\nOh! speak to me, Kate\u2014only one word, one vibration of your dear voice,\none of your smiles. Is it true, my God, that for twenty-five days past\nthis face so dearly loved has been covered with a shroud?\n\nIs it true? Has death indeed come between us? Had we not enough of\nabsence and of separation, that other mourning of the soul? I still hear\nher last word.... Oh! who will give me back my past joys, fled away, and\nthe affection which enfolded all?\n\nAdrien is reading me the _Beatitudes_, by Mgr. Landriot. There are some\nadmirable conferences on the divine words, _Beati qui lugent_. \u201cThere\nare,\u201d says the P\u00e8re Lacordaire, \u201ctears in all the universe; and they are\nso natural to us that even if they had no cause, they would flow\n_without_ cause, solely from the charm of that ineffable sadness of\nwhich our soul is the deep and mysterious well.\u201d Again: \u201cMelancholy is\nthe great queen of highly sensitive souls; she touches them without\ntheir knowing how or why, in a secret and unexpected moment. The ray of\nlight which gladdens others brings veils to them; the festive rejoicing\nwhich moves and delights others pierces them with an arrow. It is with\nmuch difficulty that God and our Lord can scatter from the heart which\nloves them these vain and chilling clouds; the suffering is so much the\nmore difficult to vanquish from having a less real cause.\u201d\n\nOh! the cause of my sorrow, can I forget it? Kate, obtain strength for\nme. How truly I feel you present!\n\n\nMARCH 5.\n\nWe are come back to Brittany. They say that I have become a mere shadow.\nKate dearest, I wish to be courageous, but my poor human nature gives\nway on this Calvary. O my memories! They are a golden book in which I\nread every hour, in which every leaflet recalls my other self, her\ndevotedness and love. Your papers have been given to me\u2014the private\npages which God alone has read with me. How you have loved me! Dearest,\nI weep no more, except over myself. You were hungering for heaven, as\nwere Mad and Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, Ellen and Edith. Oh! gone\u2014you also, you my\nguardian angel!\n\nI wanted to write, to relieve myself a little; my heart swelled, and I\ncould do nothing but sob. I have fearful moments. Oh! speak to me, Kate.\nLast night I seemed to witness your death again. Oh! those eyes, those\neyes which I almost worshipped\u2014I had to close them. Kate, what is\nhappiness? Mine has fled away like a cloud, and I seek after it in vain.\n\nI know that you are happy, and yet my selfishness grieves. Pray for your\nGeorgina!\n\n\nMARCH 8.\n\nStrange blindness of heart! You were to me so sweet, so infinitely\nprecious, that the thought of an _adieu_ without ever meeting here again\nhad never occurred to me.\n\nYou were six years old when you imprinted your first kiss on the brow of\nyour Georgina. Our most distant memories show me your beloved image. You\nnever left me; the sight of you was a talisman that stopped my tears;\nyour voice taught me my first baby-words. Oh! this union of ours from\nthe very cradle was my mother\u2019s pride\u2014this mother, so beloved and so\nbeautiful, who saw herself over again in you. You did not know that you\nwere fair; you early disdained earthly frivolities; and how much it must\nhave cost you, later, to remain in the world for me!\n\nEverywhere you were surrounded by sympathy and respect; your sisterly\ndevotion made you an aureole. Kate, who was like you?\n\nTell me that you hear me, that you see me every day. How shall I live\nwithout you? A great void has been made in me; my heart is like a\ndesert. Ah! I loved you too well, and our God is a jealous God.\n\nI adore his will, and, in spite of my inexpressible desolation, I kiss\nhis divine hand beneath the blow which overwhelms me. I desire to become\ntruly your sister by sacrifice and love.\n\nHelp me! I know not how to climb up Calvary!\n\n\nMARCH 10.\n\nNo, I cannot believe that it is at an end; that I have no more a sister.\nAt times I believe myself to be under the influence of a nightmare. My\nblack dress\u2014this sombre vestment which made me afraid\u2014is become dear to\nme since I wear it for you; but ... what faintings of heart! In what an\nocean of grief my soul is plunged!\n\nTo-day I wished to go out and visit my poor; my strength failed. Kate,\nsorrow is killing me.\n\n\nMARCH 12.\n\nAn unexpected consolation\u2014a visit from the P\u00e8re de G\u2014-. His touching,\npenetrating words roused me. Pardon me, Kate! I was cowardly. God\nforbids not tears, but he forbids despair. Alas! formerly I comforted\nothers, and now I am unwilling to accept any solace in my trouble; I\nwish for no truce to my regret. Oh! be happy, soul of my sister. Obtain\nfor me grace to love much, more than ever, all who suffer, all the elect\nof misfortune. The gentle Abb\u00e9 Perreyve used to say: \u201cThe greater part\nof souls would remain closed to other souls, if they had not suffered;\ntrial bruises them, and compels them to shed around them floods of\nlove.\u201d\n\nI loved them already\u2014these dear poor of the good God! But I feel that my\ntime belongs to them, that I owe myself also to those who love me, and\nthat it remains to me to pray and suffer while I love.\n\nHelp me, dear Kate, help me!\n\n\nMARCH 15.\n\nHow kind Ren\u00e9 is, dear Kate, and how fraternal! He understands my wish\nto write to you still, to continue my life so violently cut in twain,\nand unceasingly to speak to you. I am stronger, but not yet resigned.\nCan one be resigned to such a loss?\n\nI saw yesterday a young girl whom Gertrude knows, and who has opened her\nheart to me as to a friend. With what ardor of desire she dreams of the\nreligious life! God permits her to be cruelly tried: her mother is\nutterly opposed to her departure. There are several other sisters, one\nof whom shares the aspirations of my new acquaintance. How they both\nsuffer! Would that a heavenly light might illuminate the heart of their\nmother, who little comprehends the martyrdom of her children! How\neverything is at cross-purposes in this poor world! People are saddened\nby things at which they ought to rejoice, and _vice vers\u00e2_. Mothers, who\nhave had experience of the cares and pains of marriage and the\nworld\u2014mothers, who know too well the sum of happiness that may be\nexpected from even the best-assorted unions\u2014make themselves miserable at\nthe mere thought of their daughters\u2019 union with God, as if he were not\nthe Supreme Good, the Spouse _par excellence_, the faithful Friend, the\nplenitude of every virtue and of love! Ah! it is because everything in\nthis world has its shades and its defects, and because few souls know\ntruly how to love.\n\nThus is it that there is a mixture and alloy in my affection for you\nwhen I weep for you so bitterly, dear sister of my life!\n\nNothing can separate our souls. I am yours in life and death!\n\n\nMARCH 18.\n\nBerthe\u2019s brother has just sunk under a malignant fever. The poor widow\nis ill of grief. Three such beautiful children, whom he loved so much\u2014so\nmany powerful bonds which bound him to this world so suddenly broken\u2014all\nthis makes the grief immense. Gertrude said to me: \u201cWhy, then, are those\nmourned for who enter the port\u2014those who go hence to rest in God? They\nonly who remain behind are really to be pitied.\u201d Ah! what deadly\naffliction must not our friend feel, widowed of her happiness, which\nnothing can restore to her\u2014nothing, until that hour when, delivered in\nher turn from this life sown with crosses, she too shall see God, and,\nwith God, him whom she weeps!\n\nKate, would that I could see you and embrace you again as in that last\nhour! Everywhere death, everywhere mourning!\n\n\nMARCH 21.\n\nCount de Montalembert died on the 13th of March. It is a great funereal\ndate. May God receive him into his glory! I was just now hearing some\nbeautiful pages by Alfred Nettement, dead also the 14th of November\u2014dead\nin the breach, in those combats of pen and thought so worthy of\nadmiration and of enthusiasm when their object is the defence of the\nchurch. Our dear M. de Riancey is also dead, faithful, to his last\nmoment, to this proscribed monarchy, which sees its best defenders\nfalling one by one. O my God! what losses. Kate, if I could forget you\nfor a single instant, would not these deaths lead me back to the thought\nof you?\n\nAdrien has given me _The Book of All who Suffer_, by M. Gautier. How\nwell this good brother was inspired!\n\nMarcella, Margaret, Lizzy, Isa, and so many other kind hearts write to\nme frequently, but nothing can replace my Kate!\n\n\nAPRIL 1.\n\nDear sister, I have suffered fearful pains for ten days past. My good\nRen\u00e9 has been to me like a Sister of Charity. I am like Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, I\ncannot live without my other _self_. Oh! to see you, to hear you, to\nkneel by you, and kiss your beloved hands.\n\nUntil now I did not know what separation meant. I remember with a sort\nof remorse how joyous my first letters were after that first farewell\nwhich was to be so soon followed by a farewell that seems eternal. I saw\nyou as having attained the object of your dreams. I entered with glad\nheart into this new life where all was golden. Kate, I am ungrateful!\nGod has permitted me to know no other troubles than those which should\nnot be such to the Christian\u2014death, the beginning of true life for those\nwho love God. Help me, that I may be strong; my sadness clouds so many\nbrows!\n\n\nAPRIL 8.\n\nNelly, who flattered herself that she would recover, has bid adieu to\nthis poor world, in which she suffered so terribly, although possessing\nnumerous certainties of happiness, if it be true that anything can be\ncertain here below, even when one is only twenty years old.\n\nMy new young friend visits me often; her fervent piety and the ardor of\nher desires find an echo in my heart. You were thus, O sister of my\nsoul! at her age, in that spring-time of life thrice happy and thrice\nblessed when one belongs to God.\n\n\nAPRIL 15.\n\nThe Duchess de Berry died on the 10th, at her castle in Upper Styria,\nfar from Naples, far from France, far from her son. Yet another grand\nfigure disappeared! Kate, do you remember our presentation to this\nheroine? But she is now with you, in the true fatherland of souls, far\nfrom agitations and sufferings. Call us, call us, all together\u2014all our\n_corner of Brittany_; I, too, am athirst for heaven.\n\nWhat a day was this Good Friday! Made four times the _Way of the Cross_\nfor the souls in purgatory. Is there any possibility that you are in\nthat place of expiation, dear Kate? Oh! tell me, or rather assure me,\nthat you are in heaven. Gaston yesterday asked his mother to show him\nMme. Kate up in the sky; he believes that you have become a star.\nCharming belief!\n\n\nAPRIL 16.\n\nA year ago, and I was full of joy and hope. O my happy days with my\nsister! you have for ever fled away.\n\n\nAPRIL 17.\n\nGod be praised! I saw you this morning.... Oh! do not let me be told\nthat it is a dream. I _saw_ you, dear Kate; your beautiful hair falling\nover your shoulders, and you were smiling. Happiness enough for one\nwhole day!\n\nChrist is risen! The weather is splendid; we are in the full bloom of\nspring; bright sunshine, songs of birds, verdure everywhere; joy in our\nsouls. Kate, I weep no more; you are in heaven!\n\n\nAPRIL 19.\n\nWalk with Am\u00e9lie, the future _religieuse_ of whom I spoke to you. She\nrelieves herself a little to me of some of the desolation that fills her\nheart. She is not allowed to depart, and yet the delay requested is\nexpired. Her grief makes my heart ache, and I would that it were given\nme to smooth for her the way to the cloister. For that I should be\nobliged to go out, to visit the mother; and as soon as I see any one I\nburst into tears. Do you blame me for the fidelity of my regrets? In\nlistening to Am\u00e9lie I understand what you must have undergone when once\nthe Lord\u2019s choice was clearly manifested. Pardon me for having wished\nstill to hold you back!\n\nGertrude, our saint _par excellence_, speaks admirably of heaven. Lucy\nweeps with me, and makes her pretty Anne wipe away my tears. Kate, will\nyou read this?\n\n\nAPRIL 26.\n\nMinds are much occupied respecting the _pl\u00e9biscite_. My politics are not\nof this world; I hear what others say, and that is all. Sister, what is\nearth? I fear and pity it.\n\nBerthe is at Paris, somewhat preoccupied by present agitations. My poor\nsoul passes through the most varying states: nameless anguish,\nindescribable discouragement, sweet and pure joys; one thing comes as a\nrepose to the other, and life slips away.... Am\u00e9lie came to me\nyesterday; she talked long of _her crosses_, glad to be understood,\ncompassionated, and loved; she would willingly have remained with us for\nthe night. Her home, where she was formerly so happy, appears to her now\nan insupportable place of abode, and her life, with all its struggles\nand contradictions, is a real martyrdom.\n\nI read her, from the _Pilgrimages of Switzerland_, a beautiful page on\nChristian resignation. Oh! how I would wish to console others\u2014I, who\ncannot be consoled, alas!\n\n\nAPRIL 30.\n\nKate, I have been dreaming of you. Why did you go away so soon, sweet\nsister, so beloved?\n\nA cousin of Am\u00e9lie\u2019s died the day before yesterday, after two years of\nmarriage. See how short a time human felicity lasts! Every terrestrial\nhappiness reunited on this charming head for so short a time! Her poor\nmother had buried all her other treasures one by one, and concentrated\nher affections and her hopes on this idolized daughter, the only one\nspared to her, and who was to be stricken down after two years of so\nhappy a union! Were these two souls truly religious? I know not. Ah! who\nwill comfort the mother, if God is not her comforter? Alas! these rapid\ndestinies, these human fragilities, these futures broken, these deaths,\nthis mourning\u2014will they not open the eyes of those who persist in not\nseeing? Am\u00e9lie is always breathlessly eager to attain her object, and\ndistressed at the hindrances which hold her back. How pitiful that\ndifficulties so contemptible and vulgar should be raised in order to\nturn aside the flight of this poor soul from the heavenly Bridegroom! I\ncan only conceive a mother with an absolute devotion, a complete\nself-forgetfulness, a perpetual _sursum corda_. But these miserable\nobstacles, these calculated delays, to enchain this dear Am\u00e9lie in spite\nof her tears and ardent longings\u2014how they make me suffer! It appears\nthat for three years she has been soliciting her mother\u2019s consent. My\nGod, where are the hearts which see but thee in all things? Mme. de\nVals[35] is overwhelmed by this catastrophe. All the family is in a\nstate that breaks one\u2019s heart. Oh! if these distressing scenes had only\nshown Mme. de Vals the vanity of earthly illusions; if she had only\nunderstood that we must cling to God above all!\n\nFootnote 35:\n\n  The mother of the young wife who died.\n\nKate, my sister in heaven, pray for this friend of your Georgina, and\npray also for me, who cannot live without my sister!\n\n\nMAY 5.\n\nThe month of flowers, the month of songs, the month of the ever-blessed\nVirgin, comes to me with bright memories. My own Ireland, mother,\nsister, where are you? What cowardice is mine!\n\nBrittany is smiling, rosy under a beautiful sun; the sea is calm and\nmagnificent. I have just been leaning over my balcony and looking long\nat this grand spectacle: the blue sky, the green sea, in the grand and\nmajestic silence of immensity. Was there not a Christian meaning in the\nwords of the philosopher of antiquity who said: \u201cGod does all in\nsilence\u201d? How fine is this expression!\n\nDear Kate, bless me! I go out, move about, wish to be useful; I work\nwith Gertrude, with my mother, with Ren\u00e9. But I drag heavily the cross\nof your absence. I complain to God without ceasing. Love makes\neverything sweet and light: I have, then, no love?\n\nFrom this month of May will date for your Georgina the adoption of a\nprayer, sweet among all others\u2014the Office of the Blessed Virgin. Oh!\nthese psalms, these hymns, these harmonious supplications\u2014how sweet they\nare to my poor soul! I love especially the _L\u00e6tatus_. Lucy and Ren\u00e9 sing\nit with an expression which charms me. You, dearest Kate, have entered\nthere, into the house of the Lord!\n\n\nMAY 12.\n\nI am reading the _Interior of Jesus and Mary_, by the P\u00e8re Grou, the\n_Conferences_ of P\u00e8re de Ravignan, and our dear _Review_. The letters on\nthe Council interest me particularly. I try to imagine that I am reading\nthem with you; that your dear head is resting on my shoulder.... Oh! the\nfair and happy times which return to my memory. We so loved the\n_Chansons de Gestes_, those pretty French ballads which my mother\ntranslated with so peculiar a charm! M. L\u00e9on Gautier has published a\nthoughtful and exquisite study on France under Philip Augustus; he\nbrings on the scene the fair Aude, the _fianc\u00e9e_ of Roland, who died on\nhearing of the death of her Paladin\u2014I can understand love like this!\u2014and\nthe charming little Aelis, and Sibylle de Lusignan, and the Duchess\nParise, and Aye d\u2019Avignon, and the courageous Ameline, and Berthe, the\nwife of Duke Girart, and Guiboure, that magnificent type of the\nChristian woman! Do you remember, sister, Count Robert of Flanders\nrefusing a crown because he was in haste to see his son again? the\nlittle Garnier nursing his father, stricken with leprosy? the mother of\nthe sons of Aimon\u2014Belissende and Heustace? How we had learnt to love\nthose middle ages!\n\nPray for Am\u00e9lie, dear Kate; she is so unhappy! O inestimable favor,\npriceless benefit, incomparable fidelity of the religious vocation! how\nlittle are you understood in this world.\n\nIt seems as if I heard you saying to me: _Speranza! Pazienza! Coraggio!_\n\n\nMAY 16.\n\nMy soul is fallen again into an abyss of desolation. It is strange, and\nat the same time painful, these struggles between myself and myself;\nbetween nature which revolts and grace which submits. On this day four\nyears ago where were we? Kate, help me!\n\n\nMAY 28.\n\nI have been travelling a little, and my moments have all been employed.\nRen\u00e9 wants to give me change and distraction; but I cannot drag my\nthoughts away from these images of death. H\u00e9l\u00e8ne has written me a\nletter, saintly and sweet. Alas! who does not suffer here below?\n\n\nJUNE 5.\n\nI have just quitted Am\u00e9lie, who is keeping her room from indisposition.\nHer mother is kind, I believe, but how severe in aspect! Berthe and\nRaoul arrived yesterday. Kate, I dreaded this meeting again, our hearts\nwere all so sad! Berthe is more tranquil than I had expected; she has\nseen Mary and Ellen, the dear exiles! who showed her that they greatly\ndesire to see us. Inspire me, dear Kate. Lucy is going away again; the\nhouse without children is like a heaven without angels. Johanna will not\nreturn for two months.\n\n\nJUNE 12.\n\nRen\u00e9 would like to bring the two orphans himself. My mother approves.\nThey will occupy the apartments of the twins. Kate, who will replace\nyou?\n\nMore funereal letters: two friends of our dear ones who have flown away\nhave also been summoned to their Father\u2019s house. Happy souls! if they\nwere prepared; but poor mothers whose joy they were!\n\n\nJUNE 17.\n\nDear Kate, I thought I saw you yesterday evening.... A young and amiable\nreligious, collecting for her poor, caused me a thrill. I calmed myself\nand conversed with her. Her life is admirable. But what emotion\nafterwards, and poignant grief!\n\nSister dearest, let me hope that you read these lines; that there exists\na means of communication between heaven and earth; that you have not\nwholly quitted me! It was so sweet to write to you, to confide\neverything to you. I should like to write your life; to relate to myself\nthe story of our childhood\u2014that golden morn when so many smiles and joys\nsurrounded us; but these souvenirs are so distressing!\n\n\nJUNE 24.\n\nMary and Ellen are sleeping beneath those curtains of gauze which I have\nso often parted.\n\nThey are grown, and prettier than ever. With what grace they presented\nthemselves yesterday! And already I am anxious; have they not been taken\nsufficient care of? I know not, but their almost constant cough\noppresses me like a remorse; and to replace their mother....\n\n\nJUNE 29.\n\nBerthe loves our orphans, who rarely quit her. Gertrude draws me with\nher in her walks, in her life of devotedness and labor, and I let it be\nso. I am no more _myself_; my better part is wanting. Oh! you were my\nstrength, my counsel, my happiness.\n\nFeast of SS. Peter and Paul\u2014a glad festival for the Christian. Louis\nVeuillot, who has the happiness of being at Rome, writes there charming,\nsublime incomparable pages; he counted on the _desired dogma_ being\nproclaimed to-day, but all is not so easy, even in the things of God.\nAnniversary of the death of _Albert_.\n\n\nJULY 1.\n\nMary and Ellen are very attractive. Decidedly we shall keep them with\nus. Berthe sees in them a resemblance to her doves; my mother likes\ntheir smiles for the poor, for flowers, for every living thing, their\nprecocious reason, and their already remarkable piety. Lucy is gone.\nWhat voids! and how different to '67, the happy year, at least during\nits first months! Trial, you used to tell me, is a grace; that those\nfavored with the good things of this world ought to expiate their\nenjoyments. Kate, I submit!\n\n\nJULY 4.\n\nThe letters of Marcella and Margaret are frequent. My friend beyond seas\nspeaks of returning soon; she knows what a balm the sight, the beloved\nsight, of her brings. Marcella quits Naples and its blue sky no more;\nAnna writes to me of her joys, without suspecting what a price the\nhealth of which she is so proud cost us.\n\nThe _abb\u00e9_ takes in the _Univers_, rendered so attractive by the truly\nmagic pen of the author of the _Parfum de Rome_. Finished _La Marquise\nde Montagu_, an interesting book, the style of a great lady of the\nseventeenth century. Reading is worth less than prayer, but both\nameliorate exile.\n\nRen\u00e9 is carving an altar for the parish church. He and Adrien are making\ncurious studies in the precious MSS. of the _Saint of the Sea-shore_.\nWhat splendid gifts God has bestowed upon this friend of my soul!\n\n\nJULY 8.\n\nThe pious and learned editor of _Eug\u00e9nie de Gu\u00e9rin_, who also revealed\nto the world the treasures of Cayla\u2014M. Trebutien\u2014is just dead. Ren\u00e9\nassures us that _Eug\u00e9nie_ must have opened to him the gate of Eden. Oh!\nI love to believe this. Am\u00e9lie is at the height of her wishes: her\nmother has suffered herself to be vanquished by our united entreaties,\nand her entry into Carmel is fixed for the 6th of August. Another\nseparation. God wills it thus.\n\n\nJULY 14.\n\nMarie Jenna, the sweet poetess, has written some noble pages on the\nregretted M. Trebutien. \u201cIt is the hand of a friend still trembling with\nemotion that has written this\u201d; it is the first cry of affection and of\ngrief, but of pure and holy affection, and of grief resigned and\nChristian in the highest acceptation of the word. \u201cIf this were a\nlearned man, an antiquary, an artist, above all he was a soul\u2014a soul,\nthat masterpiece of God, that thing so fair that he himself delights in\nit, that he has profoundly loved, even when, having lost the attraction\nof innocence, she had no other attraction than misfortune. He was an\nardent Catholic, he prayed, he loved God. He, who so hungered after\njustice, love, and beauty, could not but love God! The gifts of the\nunderstanding exercised over him an irresistible magic; but if he lived\nby intelligence, he lived still more by the heart. His friendship was\nfull of strength and tenderness; he gave himself without measure.\u201d\n\nAh! dearest Kate, I forget that you are no longer here. Ellen is\nextremely sympathetic towards me; she listens to me, speaking of you,\nfor hours together. This morning, after a long account, in which her\nmother\u2019s name and yours recurred a hundred times, she said to me with\nfeeling: \u201cI am going to pray God to put me soon where they are.\u201d\n\nO Blessed Virgin! may she stay with us.\n\n\nJULY 18.\n\nArthur is ill. Johanna writes agitated and sorrowful pages. My saintly\nKate, pray for us!\n\nThe rumors of war which have for some days been circulating are taking\nconsistency. What is about to become of this poor country? Will the hour\nof vengeance strike, or will mercy again carry the day? Epidemic\nmaladies and drought have already spread desolation everywhere.\n\nKate, I would fain penetrate into the future. O folly! What would it be,\nwhen I cannot even support my present grief?\n\nRen\u00e9 has had three attacks of fever. O this dear invalid, this son of\nliberty and space, restless as a lion! in repose. Dear, good friend!\nCome, then, and see him, dear Kate, when three times a day he attends to\nan unfortunate child whose wounds horrify everybody. \u201cThe hand of M.\nRen\u00e9 passes over my sores like the wing of an angel!\u201d What charming\npraise, and especially in Breton, in the mouth of this frightful little\nlad, who is distressed at his own ugliness! Gertrude is teaching him the\ncatechism; Mary and Ellen prepare his meals with their little white\nhands. Ellen has lovely eyes of sea-blue, very dark.\n\n\nJULY 24.\n\nThe _Univers_ of Wednesday, the 20th, is splendid: \u201cThe Infallibility is\nproclaimed! _Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia!_ The times are hard; war,\npestilence, famine; but the year 1870 will be none the less immortal.\nThis will be called the Century of Pius IX., the Pope of the Immaculate\nConception and of the Infallibility.\u201d Great joy in the Catholic world.\n\nHere is war with Prussia\u2014that power which, whatever may be said, is\ntruly redoubtable. Happy the people whose history is wearisome!\nMisfortune to those who depart from the path traced for them by\nProvidence! What a magnificent page might France have added to her\nhistory had she so willed! \u201cArchimedes asked but a lever and a fulcrum\nto move the world,\u201d said the P\u00e8re Lacordaire at Notre Dame; \u201cbut in his\ntime this lever and this fulcrum were unknown. They are known now: faith\nis the lever; and the point of support, the Breast of the Lord Jesus.\u201d\n\nWho, then, will lift this lever? My God! may they who seek thee find\ngladness and joy in thee. _Tristis es, anima mea!_\n\nArthur is better; our dear Parisians are returning to us; the horizon is\nso dark to those who see things rightly! Berthe is gone to the town for\nthe funeral of a friend of her childhood who passed through the greatest\ntrials in the world. She made a most edifying death, preserving the\nfulness of her faculties to the last, blessing her children, and putting\nall her soul into her last directions. And when she had said all, and\nwas asked if she desired nothing, she answered with her failing voice:\n\u201cI desire nothing but God!\u201d The long agony of her heart, the suffering\nwhich has killed her, this painful martyrdom\u2014all is over, and the\nBlessed Virgin, whom she so loved, must have welcomed her into glory.\n_Amen!_ The two little children, alarmingly pale, followed the coffin.\nHow one would pity them, if God were not the Father of orphans!\n\nSpain in a state of revolution. Queen Isabella has abdicated in favor of\nPrince Alphonso. Poor Spain! Where is Isabella the Great, the Catholic?\n\nAdrien is reading to us the tenth volume of the _Histoire du Monde_, by\nDe Riancey. The illustrious and lamented author wrote from Rome, after\nreceiving from the Pope and the Comte de Chambord precious tokens of\naffection: \u201cNow I am almost ready to sing my _Nunc Dimittis_, and there\nremain only the joys of heaven to be added.\u201c Dearest Kate, I said\nsomething like this when I still possessed you....\n\n[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]\n\n\n\n\n                              UP THE NILE.\n                              CONCLUSION.\n\n\nThe dignity of some of these half-clad Nubians is almost beyond\nconception. As we walked through the town of Korosko we saw numbers of\nelephants\u2019 tusks, ostrich feathers and eggs, and great piles of\ngum-arabic. We told Ali to pick up a handful of the gum, and then\ndemanded the price. With a shrug of the shoulders, the owner answered in\nthe most indifferent manner: \u201cWhatever you please.\u201d Ali offered him one\npiastre. The merchant took out his purse and coolly handed a piece of\nthe same value, saying: \u201cIf you cannot pay more than that for the gum,\nyou must be very poor; take this for backsheesh.\u201d \u201cWell,\u201d broke in Mr.\nS\u2014\u2014, unable to restrain his indignation, \u201cwould you like us to give you\ntwo pounds for that handful of gum?\u201d \u201cOh! no,\u201d he replied quietly;\n\u201cwhatever you please.\u201d He was finally satisfied with the amount first\noffered.\n\nThis Korosko is an important town; for from here the direct road lies\nacross the desert to Aboo-Hamed, Shendy, Sennaar, and Khartoom. The bend\nin the river between this place and Derr is so great that the river\nflows south-southeast. Going up, we were detained some time. The north\nwind, which carried us up thus far, was now almost dead ahead, and we\nwere obliged to wait till it died out. The temple at Wady Sabooah a few\nmiles below is of the time of Rameses II. His favorite amusement, to\njudge from the figures on the temple walls, was to catch hold of a few\nscore of his enemies by the hair of the head, all at once, and in one\nhand too, while with the other he knocked them about with a club. The\nold temple was afterwards used as a Christian church. In the time of the\ngreat temple-builder a figure of some god stood in the adytum; the\nChristians covered it with plaster (it was a bas-relief), and then\npainted on it a picture of St. Peter. The other figures are not altered,\nand the result is that the great Rameses is now making offerings to a\nChristian saint.\n\nI was anxious to obtain a dress\u2014a full dress\u2014of a Nubian young lady. I\ndid not propose to introduce this style at home\u2014it would scarcely be\nsuited to our winters, although it might answer in summer\u2014but it would\nbe a pleasant thing to show it, and, when some fair one should ask what\nit was, to reply: \u201cOh! that is a dress that belonged to a lady friend of\nmine in Nubia; she gave it to me to remember her by.\u201d Just think how\njealous all the men would be! Frank carefully treasures up a ribbon, and\nCharley considers priceless a lock of hair which his fair one has\nworn\u2014small trinkets compared with mine, even if I cannot put mine in a\nlocket. So I am bound to have one by fair means or foul.\n\nThe reader will probably be anxious to know what this dress is. Well, he\nmust not be shocked; he must remember the climate is warm, and the\nimmediate descendants of Eve set the fashion here. The full costume\nconsists of a leather girdle, from which hangs fringe of the same\nmaterial, about six inches long, ornamented with shells. I have one. It\nbelonged to a very pretty, dark-eyed young lady of thirteen, from whom I\npurchased it as a curiosity. The girl\u2019s wardrobe being unusually well\nstocked, she sold me her best for the small sum of six piastres.\n\nThe people are very much afraid of the evil eye, more dangerous on this\naccount: that no one can tell who possesses it. Even some of the\ninnocent howadjii may have it; if they look at any one who is near, he\nor she is instantly possessed by some spirit and becomes sick. But they\nhave medicine; for they immediately send to some priest and inform him\nin what way the sufferer is afflicted. For a small fee he writes out a\nportion of the Koran which will cure the disease. This is enclosed in a\nleather bag and worn on the arm or around the neck. The disease is not\nonly cured, if the extract be the right one, but all future danger from\nthe evil eye is averted.\n\nWe have been visiting temples and tombs almost every day for the past\nweek, and have been very much annoyed by the crowds that followed us and\nin many cases prevented us from properly inspecting. On Feb. 6 we\nvisited the little temple of Baybel Welly. I put into operation a plan I\nhad thought out last night. I wanted to try the effect of sarcasm on\nthese half-civilized Nubians. The temple was very small and the crowd\npushed in after us. We withdrew, and I then spoke in a quiet, dignified\nmanner to the one who appeared to be the leader. \u201cThis temple is not\nlarge enough for both of us to visit at the same time. We will wait\noutside until you and your friends finish your examination, and then we\nwill look at it. If you find anything particularly interesting, you will\nbe kind enough to inform us.\u201d At first he did not take the point; after\na time a light broke upon him, and he replied: \u201cYou go in; I will keep\nthese walluds out.\u201d And he did so.\n\nI have told of the presents we gave the crew. They made a common pool, a\nsort of joint-stock company on the mutual-benefit plan. Reis Mohammed\nwas treasurer. They held a meeting and resolved to declare a dividend,\nafter the manner of many modern railway dividends\u2014for it was paid out of\nthe capital. A very noisy confab prevailed for an hour or more; then\nvotes were cast, and it was resolved \u201cthat the treasurer be instructed\nand empowered to purchase a calf at a price not exceeding seven dollars,\nsaid calf to be served up immediately for the use of the stockholders.\u201d\nThis should furnish a hint to antiquarians; perhaps they may be able to\ntrace back the origin of our modern corporations to the old Egyptians.\nThe similarity of management should afford some clue.\n\nOn the 10th of February we reached Phil\u00e6. On the mainland opposite is\nthe small town of Belal. Here is an old mosque; from its minaret the\nfirst Moslem call to prayer in Nubia was made. It is February 12, and we\nare still lying at Mahatta, waiting for the Shellallee, to take us down\nthe cataract. They will not come to-day, so we go to visit the quarries\nof syenite granite from which the obelisks were taken. Two of the party\nmount the diminutive donkeys; I want to oversee them, so I climb on a\ncamel. He kneels for me to mount, and then rises at command. The camel\nrises with three distinct motions. I have said that he kneels for one to\nmount; this will hardly convey the proper idea. His legs are doubled\nunderneath and his belly touches the ground. With the first motion he\nraises himself on his fore-knees, then straightens up his hind-legs, and\nthen his fore-legs. The effect of this motion upon the rider is very\ncurious. He is first pitched violently backwards, but before he has time\nto fall off is thrown forwards again; and just as he feels certain that\nhe is about to dive into the sand, he regains his equilibrium, and off\ngoes the camel. When he walks, the rider sways back and forth; his run\nis not unlike the trot of a horse.\n\nAn unfinished obelisk\u2014one that has never been entirely detached from the\nrock\u2014shows us the means employed by the Pharaos for cutting out these\nimmense masses. Holes were cut along the whole line of the block a few\nfeet apart. Into these wooden wedges, saturated with water, were firmly\ndriven. The swelling of the wood, causing an equal pressure, split the\nrock in a straight line. Just above where we are moored is the body of a\nman lying in the water. His hands are tied behind his back\u2014probably a\nslave from away up country, beaten to insensibility and then thrown into\nthe river. Perhaps he stole a few piastres, or was not sufficiently\nquick in obeying his master\u2019s commands. It is a sickening sight, this\nputrid, bloated corpse, so we ask Ahmud to have it taken out and buried.\nIt was carried by the current into this little cove some four days ago;\nhundreds of people pass it daily, yet no one will remove it. Ahmud says\nit is the duty of the governor to bury it, and, unless he does so, the\nnatives will let it remain until the fish and vultures eat it up. \u201cIf I\nsee the governor,\u201d continues Ahmud in the most unconcerned way, \u201cI will\nspeak to him about it.\u201d\n\nEarly next morning the Shellallee assembled and preparations were begun.\nTo make the descent it is requisite that the water should be smooth and\nnot a breath of wind stir the air. The day was all that could be\ndesired; so at six A.M. began the charge of the black brigade. On they\ncome from every quarter; every rock sends forth two or three. We have\nsixty or seventy on board. Ali says that most of them come to get a\nplace to sit down and smoke their chibouks. There is the usual amount of\ntalking, and at a quarter to seven we cast loose from our moorings and\nstood out into the stream. God\u2019s flag was tied to a post on the port\nside of the quarter-deck\u2014a red flag with two yellow stars and a diamond,\nthe latter representing the sword of Mohammed, and over all the sacred\nname \u201cAllah.\u201d This was placing the dahabee\u00e1h under the divine protection\nto ensure a prosperous descent. Our old friend Nogood was with us,\nseated by the flag, smoking a long pipe and reading the Koran. Another\nsheik was seated on the opposite side telling his beads. Four men stood\nat the helm, and two at each oar. To judge from the noise and\nexcitement, you would be led to think that no boat had ever descended\nthe cataracts before. Ahmud was so nervous that tears came into his\neyes. The balance of the Shellallee squatted on the deck, lit their\nchibouks, and never moved until we hustled them off at Assouan. The\ncurrent carried us swiftly on to the west bank, and we neared the great\ngate. A piece of wood was thrown overboard; it was a guide to the\nsteersmen. Now all was quiet; not a word was uttered on board. The\nrowers stopped, the howadjii held their breath; a moment more we rounded\nthe corner almost at a right angle, and shot into the great rapid. The\nboat grazed the rocks on the port side. The waves dashed over the bow.\nDirectly ahead the rocks rise perpendicularly to the height of twenty\nfeet. The howadjii shudder; surely we will be dashed to pieces. Before\nwe have scarce time to think, before we are at the bottom of the rapid,\nthe rudder is jammed hard to starboard, the boat swings round at a right\nangle; we are in smooth water\u2014we have descended the cataract in safety.\nThis rapid is two hundred feet long between the rocks, about seventy\nfeet broad, and falls from six to seven feet. Old Nogood springs up now\nwith astonishing activity, and snatches the turban from Reis Mohammed\u2019s\nhead. This is his perquisite. It is the custom for the head sheik to\ntake both tarbosh and turban from the captain\u2019s head when the descent is\nsafely accomplished. This was all very well when these descents were\nfirst made, there being then some doubt as to their safe accomplishment.\nNow numbers of boats are taken down every year and an accident rarely\nhappens. This custom should be done away with\u2014at least, so thought Reis\nMohammed; for he put on the oldest tarbosh he had, and it was so bad\nthat Nogood would not take it. Every one shook hands all around. One of\nthe Shellallee cut his foot very badly; I put court-plaster upon it, and\nthen bound it up with my own handkerchief. He smiled and asked for\nbacksheesh.\n\nAbout nine we reached Assouan. Every one wanted backsheesh, even those I\ntold about who sat on the decks smoking chibouks, and had never raised a\nfinger to help us. Finally we got rid of them all. What a relief it was\nto be alone again with our little family!\u2014for we are coming to love our\nsailors; they have been with us so long, and, in spite of their few\nfaults, they are a good set and we have had no serious trouble with\nthem. There is a modern temple at Kom Ombos, about thirty miles below\nAssouan, built by one of the Ptolemies about one hundred and fifty years\nbefore Christ. It is interesting, and, notwithstanding its recent\nconstruction, we examined it with care. There is another of these\nPtolemaic temples at Edfoo, one of the most interesting temples on the\nNile. True, it is far younger than Karnak, but then it is the\nbest-preserved temple in Egypt. As a perfect specimen of an Egyptian\ntemple, complete in all its parts, it stands unrivalled. Let me go into\ndetails here and describe this temple. It will give an idea of all the\nothers; for the temples of ancient Egypt were all constructed on the\nsame plan, except rock-hewn Ipsamboul, which has been described before.\nThe Egyptian temple was not a place of public worship, like a Greek or\nRoman temple, or a Christian church. It was an edifice erected by a king\nin honor of some triad of divinities to whom he wished to pay special\nhomage in return for benefits conferred or in hope of future favors. A\nrude brick wall surrounded the whole enclosure and shut out from the\nvulgar gaze all that took place inside. This wall is almost entire at\nEdfoo, but a small portion of it having been destroyed. A gateway admits\nus into the enclosure, and we pass through an avenue of sphinxes to a\nsecond gateway with its propyla, or immense pyramidal tower, on either\nside. Over the gateway is a winged scarab\u00e6us in high relief. The\npyramidal towers are covered with intaglio sculptures representing the\nking holding a brace of his enemies by the hair, and about to knock off\ntheir heads with a club. Flag-staffs were attached to the outside of\nthese towers, rising many feet above their summit. Entering a large\nhyp\u00e6thral hall through this second gateway, we see before us the portico\nof the temple itself. We enter this between two columns; from these to\nthe side walls are screens reaching about half-way to the roof. A little\nfurther on we reach the sanctum sanctorum\u2014a magnificent monolithic\nchamber of polished gray granite, in which was kept the hawk, the emblem\nof the god Horhat, who was the principal divinity of this temple. The\nrest of the naos, or portion of the temple behind the portico, and in\nwhich this sanctuary was placed, was cut up into a number of small\nchambers used for religious purposes. Within the enclosure was the\ntemenos, or grove, thickly planted with trees, and near at hand was a\nlake. The whole length of this temple, including the gateway and wall of\ncircuit, is four hundred and fifty feet. The breadth of the propylon\u2014the\ninner gateway with its pyramidal towers\u2014is two hundred and fifty feet\nand its height one hundred and fifteen feet. The sculptures all over the\nwalls are extremely interesting. Some give the names of the several\nchambers of the temple, and their dimensions in cubits and parts of\ncubits, so that the modern measurements can be compared with the ancient\nones. Others give valuable information respecting the ancient geography\nof Egypt.\n\nDuring the reign of Psammenitus, son of Amasis, a most remarkable\nprodigy befell the Egyptians, says Herodotus; for rain fell at Egyptian\nThebes, which had never happened before nor since, to my time, as the\nThebans themselves affirm. For no rain ever falls in the upper regions\nof Egypt, but at that time rain fell in drops at Thebes. In the year of\ngrace one thousand eight hundred and seventy-four the same remarkable\nprodigy befell the Egyptians, say I; for rain fell at Egyptian Thebes.\nIf we did not know the dignity and sober character of that ancient\ntraveller, we might suppose a sarcastic witticism lay hid in the closing\npart of the above story. See how cautious he is: the rain fell in drops.\nWell, that is precisely the way it fell when we were there. And the\ndrops could be counted. There was no shower. The dust was not even laid.\nBut it rained. I saw it\u2014perhaps the first time in three thousand years.\nIt is no small affair for a man to be able to say to his grandchildren\nin years to come: \u201cIt rained when I was at Egyptian Thebes\u2014in drops, you\nknow.\u201d\n\nTen days tied up at Luxor, measuring the columns of Karnak, looking at\nthe endless procession of gods and warriors, and going far into the\nmountain-side to search for the sarcophagi of Egypt\u2019s long-departed\nrulers. The ruins of Thebes are familiar\u2014at least to every one who has\nread any of the numerous works on Egypt; so I will not describe them.\nThere is one place, however, not mentioned in the guide-books about\nwhich I will say something. Behind the temple of Dayr el Medeeneh, on\nthe western shore, there are several mummy-pits. Mr. S\u2014\u2014 and I\ndetermined to visit them. We descended a well about ten feet deep, at\nthe bottom of which we found a narrow passage, so low that we were\nobliged to crawl. This led into a large chamber filled with bodies. Ali\nbegged to accompany us, but, when he caught sight of the first body, he\nbeat a hasty retreat to the upper air. Truly, it was a solemn, ghastly\nsight. The mummies were piled up to what depth no one knows; as they\nthen were they had filled up the room to a level with the narrow\npassage, forming a floor over which we walked. The Arabs had been there\nhunting for scarab\u00e6i and other antiques to sell to travellers, and in so\ndoing had handled the corpses without care or ceremony. Here was a man\nstanding on his head with his feet resting against the wall; there a\nwoman broken in two, the legs placed astride the neck; corpses all\naround in every conceivable position\u2014grinning, staring corpses, enough\nto give one the nightmare for weeks to come. Beneath this top row they\nwere placed in layers. I found the body of a young woman well preserved,\nand with hair banged across the forehead, like the French style of a few\nyears ago. I carried the body out to show it to the rest of the party,\nthinking somewhat of bringing it home. \u201cDesecrating graves,\u201d \u201crobbing\nsepulchres,\u201d and words of like import met my ears, and, feeling somewhat\nabashed, I took the body back, but detached the hair and brought it with\nme. In this pit we found numbers of the small clay figures of Osiris.\nThey were rudely made\u2014for these were the fellaheen, or lower class, who\nwere thrown into a common pit. They were embalmed in the cheapest way,\nwhich was done, according to Herodotus, by thoroughly rinsing the\nabdomen in syrm\u00e6a, and then steeping it with natron for seventy days.\n\nThe boy who owned my donkey was sick, so Fatma, his little black-eyed\nsister, attended for him. She was a pretty, bewitching little creature,\nyet of a marriageable age\u2014thirteen, I think. Day after day she ran\nbehind my donkey, urging it on, and occasionally coming up alongside to\nmake some pleasant remark and disclose teeth like Oriental pearls. When\nwe were parting I gave her a small present and asked her if she would go\nwith me to America. \u201cCertainly.\u201d And the little one jumped and clapped\nher hands with joy. \u201cDo you know where America is situated?\u201d I asked.\n\u201cNot exactly, but down the river, somewhere near Alexandria, is it not?\u201d\n\nHere we are at Keneh, and when we see a fine large house, in appearance\nnot unlike a provincial theatre, we naturally ask who inhabits it. The\nconsuls of France and Prussia\u2014the lion and the lamb lying down together.\nHere they live together in the same house on the best of terms, just as\nif King William had never marched into Paris or Napoleon III. had not\nsurrendered at Sedan. We did not meet them, but very probably they were\nlike Ali Murad\u2014natives, with a faint idea that there had been some\nmisunderstanding between France and Prussia; but then they were not\nconcerned with that, so they smoke their pipes together and let the\noutside world take care of itself. Passing Sheik Selim\u2019s place on March\n9, we stopped and sent some of the sailors with presents. We arrived at\nBellianeh, whence we proposed to visit the interesting temple of Abydos.\nWe rode for six miles through rich fields of grain, principally wheat,\nand reached the modern village of Arabat, called by the Arabs Madfun\u00e9\n(the buried), from the ancient buildings that until recently lay all\naround covered with desert sand. On entering the town we saw a gang of\nmen working at excavations under the charge of an overseer, who\nquickened their movements with a bamboo. We saw pictures of this on the\ntombs four thousand years old. A fine-looking man, with an immense red\nturban on his head, broke from the gang, rushed up to us, threw himself\non the ground, embraced our feet, and piteously implored us to take him\naway. He was a sheik of a neighboring village, he said, and had been\ntorn from his family and pressed into service. In proof of this he\nproduced a long document, about as intelligible to us as the\nhieroglyphics on the temple wall. It was done by order of the viceroy,\nso we could not interfere, and he went reluctantly back to his work. His\nappeal to us angered the overseer, who struck him a fearful blow with\nthe bamboo that felled him to the ground. Said\u2014good-hearted Said\u2014took\nthe man\u2019s part, and for a time it looked as though we were going to have\na lively row. But it all evaporated in talk; the overseer promised not\nto beat him any more, and then he and Said became the best of friends.\n\nThese workmen are not paid very much\u2014five cents a day; but their work is\nnot very heavy\u2014at least, as they do it. One man fills a small basket\nwith earth, then sits down and smokes a cigarette. The basket is dragged\nabout twenty feet, emptied out, then he has a little talk with some of\nhis friends. We were looking for the celebrated tablet of Abydos, but\nthe passage-way was so filled up with sand that we could not approach\nit. This tablet is called the new one, although M. Mariette supposes it\nto be the original of the fragmentary one found in the temple of Rameses\nII. at this place and now in the British Museum. It contains figures of\nSethi and Rameses offering homage to seventy-six kings, their\npredecessors, beginning with Menes and ending with Sethi I., and has\nbeen of incalculable benefit to the historian. But we are going farther\nback than Menes, for there is the K\u00f3m es Sultan, the Holy Sepulchre of\nthe ancient Egyptians\u2014the tomb of Osiris. It is not a natural tumulus,\nbut is formed by the heaping up of tombs during many ages one upon\nanother. Are they not the tombs of those rich Egyptians that Plutarch\ntells of who came from all parts of the country to Abydos to be buried\nnear Osiris?\n\nA few days after we were strolling along the east bank when we came upon\na Coptic church. Entering, we saw a novel rendering of the legend of St.\nGeorge and the dragon. I have said before that St. George is the patron\nsaint of the Copts, and here they turn the dragon into a Turk,\nsubstituting a real enemy for a mythical one. St. George, on a spirited\nsteed, is frantically endeavoring to pin a Turk to the earth. He has his\nlance run through the neck, but the Turk is a tough fellow and is\nfighting so hard, while the horse is balancing himself in the most\nincredible manner on one leg, that it is a question which will get the\nupper hand.\n\nAs we run close to the bank scores of urchins salute us with that now\nfamiliar cry, \u201cBacksheesh, howadji\u201d\u2014\u201cAlms, O shopkeeper\u201d\u2014not that they\ntook us for shopkeepers, but then these were the first to travel for\npurposes of trade; and when others, travelling for pleasure alone,\ncame after them, no distinction was made by the natives, but all were\nclassed in the same category. Everywhere in the East, from the poorest\nbeggar to the sultan himself, is heard the same demand, \u201cBacksheesh,\nhowadji\u201d\u2014from the great ones couched in hidden terms and well-set\nphrases, but as well understood as the outspoken clamor of the rabble.\nAfter careful study and deliberation I have classified the different\nuses of this phrase. I have divided them into eleven different\ndemands, expressing the following ideas: First, the distant or dubious\ndemand. This is made by small urchins from the bank as we sail by. The\ntone of voice indicates that they doubt very much whether they will\nreceive anything, but deem it worth while to make the attempt,\nalthough sometimes a quarter of a mile of water separates us from\nthem. Second, the salutative demand from older ones. As we ride or\nwalk through the country we meet an Arab. \u201cNaharak Saiid\u201d (May the day\nbe good to you), say we. \u201cBacksheesh, howadji,\u201d he replies in the same\nsalutative tone, and moves on. Surely he cannot expect anything; he\ndoes not even stop. Third, the imperative demand, growled out in a\nfierce tone by half-grown boys\u2014your-money-or-your-life demand of\nhighwaymen. This is always unsuccessful. Fourth, the curtailed demand\nfrom over-lazy ones, as this: \u201cBackshee, howadj\u201d\u2014a very indifferent\none. Fifth, the plaintive demand\u2014the fourteen-children and\nseven-year-widow story listened to by tender-hearted people. Sixth,\nthe non-expective demand, a mere matter of form, and surprise\nexhibited if complied with. Seventh, the interrogative demand\u2014to wit:\n\u201cDid it ever occur to you, O howadji! that a small present would be\nacceptable to your petitioner?\u201d An idea similar to this frequently\ncrossed the howadji\u2019s mind. Eighth, the confidential demand from the\ndonkey-boy when near the end of a trip. In a low whisper, and with a\nknowing look: \u201cHowadji and I understand one another; it is all right;\nabout two piastres will do.\u201d Ninth, the future demand: the praises of\nthe donkey are sounded when starting out; professions of fidelity and\nattachment on the part of the attendant are loud and constant; he will\nshow you everything, and\u2014\u201cBacksheesh kabe\u00e9r dahabee\u00e1h\u201d (Much\nbacksheesh on the return to boat), in a matter-of-course tone. Tenth,\nthe infantile demand, from imps scarce able to talk: \u201cBacktheeth,\nhowath\u201d\u2014most successful of any. Eleventh, the fraudulent demand,\npractised principally in Nubia. A mother holding an infant in her\narms: \u201cBacksheesh for the baby, O howadji!\u201d and when the kind-hearted\ntraveller places a coin in the little dimpled hand held out to receive\nit, the mother takes possession of it for her own use. When the\ntraveller approaches a town, every child is snatched up into some\none\u2019s arms\u2014it is immaterial whether the mother gets her own child or\nsome one belonging to another\u2014and presented to him.\n\nLittle Saida, our gazelle, broke her leg at Thebes; we sent for the\nbarber, who is doctor also, to bind it up. He performed the operation in\na bungling way, and mortification set in a few days after. She had\nbecome a great pet, and was beginning to know us and eat from our hands.\nSo we concluded it was best to kill her, as she was suffering very much.\nWishing to preserve the skin, she was hit on the head with an axe, so as\nnot to injure it. After the skin had been removed we offered the body to\nthe crew for a meal. Reis Mohammed threw it overboard, saying that it\nwas not killed in the proper way for them to eat: it should have been\nshot, or else the throat cut, after repeating certain passages from the\nKoran. It is strange to see how obedient these Arabs are to the sacred\nwrit. They are fond of meat, but do not have it very often. On one\noccasion we were lunching in a temple. When we had finished, some fine\nslices of ham were left. I gave them to Ali for himself and the two\nsailors who were with us, and whose lunch had consisted of dry bread.\nWithout a moment\u2019s hesitation he threw them to a dog who was near us,\nsaying that it was good food for dogs and Christians, but not for Arabs.\n\nOn the summit of the rocks of Gebel Aboofayda, near their southern end,\nare the caverns of Moabdeh, commonly called the crocodile mummy pits. We\nstopped and procured some fine specimens\u2014small crocodiles which had been\ntreated as gods five thousand years ago. Every one in this country seems\nto know every one else. It seemed to me that, when our crew wanted to\nsee any one, they simply called out the name\u2014Ali, Mohammed, or whatever\nit was\u2014and he soon appeared. When purchasing goods it makes no\ndifference whom you pay, whether owner or not, provided you pay some\none. Many people marvel how the old Egyptians transported their obelisks\nand colossi from the quarries at Syene to their destination several\nhundred miles down the river. Back of the Christian village called Ed\nDayr en Nakhl, on the east bank nearly opposite Rhoda, are a number of\ngrottoes cut into the mountain-side. In one of them is one of the most\ninteresting paintings found in any of the Egyptian tombs, which will\nenable us to understand how these immense masses of stone were conveyed\nfrom one place to another. We had great difficulty in finding this\ngrotto; for, although it is mentioned in the guide-book, the natives\nseemed unaware of its existence. At last we found it, away up on the\nmountain-top, the entrance so filled up with d\u00e9bris that we were obliged\nto crawl in. But we were well paid; for we saw the famous painting of \u201cA\nColossus on a Sledge,\u201d which, as far as I am informed, is the only one\nof the kind in Egypt. The person represented by the colossus was called\nThoth-\u00f4tp, and was of high distinction in the military caste. He is\nstyled the king\u2019s friend, and one of his children was named Ositarsens,\nafter the king. This grotto was his tomb. The figure is seated and\nplaced upon a sledge, being firmly secured to it by ropes. One hundred\nand seventy-two men, in four rows of forty-three each, pull the ropes,\nattached to a ring in front of the sledge, and a liquid\u2014most probably\noil\u2014is poured from a vase by a person standing on the pedestal of the\nstatue, in order to facilitate its progress as it slides on the\nground\u2014or more probably on a tramway made for the occasion, though that\nis not indicated in the picture. Some of the persons engaged in this\nlaborious duty appear to be Egyptians; others are foreign slaves who are\nclad in the costume of their country. Behind the statue are four rows of\nmen, three in a row, representing either the architects and masons or\nthose who had employment about the place where the statue was to be\nconveyed. Below are others carrying vases filled with water, and some\nrude machinery connected with the transportation of the colossi,\nfollowed by taskmasters with their wands of office. On the knee of the\nfigure stands a man, who claps his hands to the measured cadence of a\nsong to mark the time, and to ensure a long pull, a strong pull, and a\npull all together. Before the statue a priest is presenting incense in\nhonor of the person it represents. At the top are seven companies of\nmen\u2014a guard of honor, or perhaps reliefs for dragging the sledge. Beyond\nare men slaying an ox and bringing the joints of meat to the door of the\nbuilding to which the statue was to be transported. From this we may\njudge with tolerable certainty how the great obelisks were conveyed to\nthe temples before which they were set up, and how the great stones of\nthe Pyramids were transported from their mountain-beds.\n\nWe are now rapidly sailing down stream and nearing civilization. In a\nfew days we reached the lofty cliffs of Gebel et Tayr, which rise\nabruptly from the river to a height of several hundred feet. On its\nsummit stands the Coptic convent of Sitta Mariam el Adra (Our Lady Mary\nthe Virgin). As we approached several of the monks jumped into the\nstream\u2014not from the top of the cliff, however\u2014and swam out towards us.\nThey seized hold, jumped aboard, entirely naked, and saluted us with\n\u201cAna Christian, ya howadjii\u201d (I am a Christian, O howadjii!) Of course\nwe could not resist this appeal, but a few paras satisfied them, and,\nputting the coins in their mouths, they swam back to shore, to sit like\nbirds of prey waiting for their next victims\u2014for they never miss a\ndahabee\u00e1h that passes. This Gebel et Tayr\u2014\u201cThe Mountain of the Bird\u201d\u2014has\na strange legend attached to it. It is said that all the birds of the\ncountry assemble annually on this mountain, and, having selected one of\ntheir number to remain there till the following year, they fly away into\nAfrica, and only return the next year to release their comrade and\nsubstitute another in his place.\n\nA funny accident happened to Reis Ahmud. We had grounded on a sand-bank,\nwhere we remained sixteen hours, and the usual means were being employed\nto pull the boat off. An anchor was thrown out some seventy feet ahead\nin the direction of the channel. A rope was attached to this, and the\nother end carried through a pulley on the deck. The entire crew pulled\nupon this rope, when it became entangled in a block on the starboard\nside. Reis Ahmud went forward to release it, and, without slackening the\nrope, he began to pry it with a long pole. The strain on the rope was of\ncourse very severe. He succeeded in raising it over the block, but it\nacted like the string of a bow, and Ahmud, being in the place where the\narrow usually is, was struck by it. He was shot directly over the top of\nthe kitchen, and plunged headlong into the water on the other side of\nthe boat as though he had been shot out of a catapult. The expression of\nfear, terror, and uncertainty as to what struck him, shown plainly in\nhis face as he went flying over the boat, pole in hand, was most\nludicrous. Fortunately, he was not hurt. A bad fright and thorough\nducking will teach him to avoid strained ropes in future. Some statues,\na few fragments of granite, and some substructions are all that can be\nseen of the ruins of a city which, if there is any truth in the\ndescriptions given of it, must have exceeded any modern city as much as\nthe Pyramids exceed any mausoleum which has been erected since those\ndays (Curzon). So one day was enough at Memphis, and still on to the\nsouth we sailed. Now the great Pyramids loom up in the distance, and at\nten of the morning of March 30 we reach the iron bridge at Cairo, our\nlong Nile journey over. That night we left our dahabee\u00e1h, and bade\nfarewell to our crew. I have travelled far and wide throughout this\nworld of ours, but I know of no trip that has afforded me more real\nsatisfaction and pleasure than these four months on the Nile. The\nexpense is not very great; a party of four can contract with a good\ndragoman to supply boat, crew, provisions, and everything necessary for\nthe voyage for from five to six pounds sterling a day. The winter of\n1873-'74 was cold for Egypt. The superintendent of the viceroy\u2019s\nsugar-works at Rhoda informed us that it was the coldest winter known in\nEgypt for seventeen years. See what a cold winter is in the Orient\u2014for\nthese observations I took myself: Average thermometer from December 20,\n1873, to March 28, 1874, sixty-nine degrees. Highest thermometer during\nsame period, eighty-two degrees on February 21, 1874; lowest, February\n8, 1874, sixty degrees. The observations were taken in the cabin\u2014in the\nshade, of course\u2014at noon of each day.\n\n\n\n\n                                  MAY.\n\n\n    The month of Maia\u2014Cybele\u2019s Roman name[36]\u2014\n      Ere Rome was Christ\u2019s. And \u2019twas for Vulcan\u2019s priest\n    To kindle at her shrine the rosy flame\n      On sweet May-day. Womb\u2019d in the fruitful East,\n      Not vainly Westward, as the myths increased,\n    This purer rite, nor unprophetic, came:\n      A flower that should be gather\u2019d for the feast\n    Of Truth\u2014with more that erst deck\u2019d Pagan shame.\n    Not now the mother of vain gods[37] we pray,\n      But Her, the God-Man\u2019s Mother, ever a maid:\n    And still to her this fairest month of May\n      Assign\u2014our hearts upon her altar laid,\n    That her chaste love, descending with its fire,\n    May purge them from the dross of base desire\n\nB. D. H.\n\nFootnote 36:\n\n  Maia, or Majesta: not to be confounded with Maia, the mother of\n  Hercules.\n\nFootnote 37:\n\n  Cybele was the \u201cMater De\u00fbm\u201d of the Greeks and Romans.\n\n\n\n\n            THE FRENCH CLERGY DURING THE LATE WAR IN FRANCE.\n\n\nThe war of 1870 between France and Germany has taken the place, in the\nminds of the French, of those other, not more glorious, but more\nsuccessful, wars with which the very word \u201cwar\u201d was formerly associated.\nThey were used to think of nothing but triumphs; individual losses were\nswallowed up in national exultation; and they connected with the\nmemories of the two Napoleons the peculiarly French axiom that there\nexisted no such word in their language as \u201cimpossible.\u201d _That_ is still\ntrue to-day, notwithstanding the reverses through which they have\npassed; for moral heroism stands upright on a lost battle-field as well\nas on a triumphant one, and the nation can say with its chivalrous\nmonarch of old: \u201cAll is lost, save honor.\u201d If the discipline was faulty,\nif the management was indiscreet, if the government was weak, if\ncircumstances were contrary, there was still individual courage, and not\nonly among the soldiers, but among all classes. The very misfortunes of\nthe country roused the spirit of women, priests, students, exiles, of\nthe weak and the poor, the secluded and the helpless; never was there\nsuch spontaneous truce to all differences, such generous sacrifice of\npersonal comforts and, what is more, of personal antipathies; all good\nmen and true shook hands across the barriers of politics, religion, and\ncaste, and, with one mind and heart, did each his best in his own way\nfor his suffering country. Of course there were cowards, time-servers,\nand place-seekers, making profit out of their fatherland\u2019s necessities,\ngetting into safe, so-called official, berths, and generally skulking;\nbut they were not the majority, and it is superfluous to ask here if\nevery nation has not its scum.\n\nThe part which the French clergy took in the war of 1870 exceeds that\ntaken by them in any previous war, when some few members of their body\nacted as salaried chaplains to the troops. Even during the \u201cwars of\nreligion\u201d under Henry IV. of France few priests accompanied the troops;\nthe _abb\u00e9s_ of Turenne and Cond\u00e9\u2019s times were officers and gentlemen\nrather than pastors and nurses; during the wars of the great Napoleon\npublic opinion would have frowned down their services; and the\nsuccessful wars of the Crimea and of Italy under the late emperor,\nthough they stirred the clergy more, were yet _too_ successful to vie as\na field of action with the ever-present needs of city and country\nparishes. But the last disastrous conflict was emphatically a _home_\nwar; each family in the quiet hamlet where his cure of souls lay came to\nthe parish priest, asking blessings for its departing members and\nprayers for its dead ones; each wife and mother claimed his comforting\nwords and poured her sorrows and fears into his ears; soldiers on the\nmarch made his presbytery their natural home, slept and ate there, asked\nhim for common little necessaries, and made sure of getting no denial\nhad they asked for anything he possessed; boys whom he had christened\ncame home to die, and it was he who gave them the last sacraments and\nread the burial service over their graves; in a word, he lived on the\nbattle-field even while still cooped up in his village. It was not\nstrange, then, that he should easily take one step further, and go\nhimself to share abroad the same danger whose face was so familiar to\nhim at home. A German historian, writing of the late war, says that\nthere was more patriotism found among the French clergy as a class than\nin any other class in the whole nation. General Ambert, a soldier and a\ncivil servant, has gathered together[38] many interesting episodes of\nthe war relating to the heroic behavior of the priests, who from the\nbeginning came eagerly to ask leave to act as chaplains for the love of\nGod and their neighbor only; for when war was declared there were but\nforty-six accredited chaplains in the whole army. Not only parish\npriests presented themselves, but also hundreds of monks, brothers, and\nconfraternity-men; every order was represented\u2014Jesuits, Capuchins,\nDominicans, Benedictines, Carmelites (the most distinguished of whom was\nP\u00e8re Hermann, who died at Spandau), Trappists (of whom one convent alone\nfurnished thirty-five), Cistercians, Oratorians, Lazarists,\nRedemptorists, Christian Brothers (of whom nineteen died during the war,\nbesides those who were the victims of the Commune), and other\nbrotherhoods, old orders and new, their members drawn from all classes,\nfrom the Legitimist nobleman to the peasant and the artisan, from the\ndoctor of laws or of theology to the brother-scullerer or porter. One\nday in mid-winter, during the armistice, the Christian Brothers had been\nfor more than twelve hours unceasingly at work digging in the snow for\nthe bodies of the French dead of Petit-Bry, Champigny, and Croisy. Two\nPrussian officers, at the head of a detachment of their men, were doing\nthe same for the bodies of the Germans. It was a bitterly cold night,\nthe wind blew the flames of the torches about, and nothing was heard but\nshort, business-like sentences, the sound of pickaxes breaking the ice,\nand that of the carriers\u2019 feet as they bore the dead away on rough\nlitters. The Prussian officers looked admiringly at the silent brothers,\nand one said to the other: \u201cWe have seen nothing so fine as this in\nFrance.\u201d \u201cExcept the Sisters of Charity,\u201d answered the other.\n\nFootnote 38:\n\n  _L\u2019H\u00e9ro\u00efsme en Soutane._ By General Ambert. Paris: E. Dentu, Palais\n  Royal. 1876.\n\nOne day Brother Nethelmus, of St. Nicholas\u2019 School, Paris, was wounded\nby a ball, which proved his death-blow two days later, and hardly was he\nburied before a young man asked to see the superior, and said to him\nvery simply: \u201cI am the younger brother of Nethelmus, and have come to\ntake his place.\u201d \u201cHave you your parents\u2019 consent?\u201d asked the superior.\n\u201cMy father and mother blessed me before I left, and bade me come,\u201d said\nthe youth, as if nothing was more commonplace.\n\nThe service of the wounded was the priests\u2019 favorite field of work, and\nit was in this that they most frequently met death themselves. The Abb\u00e9\nG\u00e9raud, after the defeat of Mans, being chaplain of the Vendean\n_francs-tireurs_, was seeking out the most dangerously placed among the\nwounded. The latter had in many cases been abandoned by the drivers of\ntheir ambulances, who, in the general rout and panic, had unharnessed\nthe horses and run away. On one of these carts were two soldiers and two\nofficers of \u201cMobiles\u201d\u2014one of whom tells the story\u2014all badly wounded and\ntrembling with cold and ague. Many a man ran past them, intent on his\nown safety and heedless of their piteous appeals, and the men despaired\nof help, when they saw a priest running quickly towards them with cheery\nlooks and words, telling them he was looking for them. The first thing\nhe did was to take off all his available clothing to cover the men and\nwarm them a little; then, stopping some of the runaways, he begged,\npromised, and reproached so effectually as to induce several to help\nhim. \u201cPush the wheels, my fine fellows,\u201d he cried, as he harnessed\nhimself to the shafts, and from the battle-field he drew the cart to a\nvillage, where he never rested till he had begged for his charges food,\ncoverings, and straw, and at last a horse, with which he drove them to\nthe nearest hospital. He continued his labors throughout the war. The\nAbb\u00e9 de Beuvron, who has lived with the soldiers for fifteen years in\nvarious times and climates, tells us of the priests at Fr\u00f6schwiller,\nwho, after confessing and anointing the dying placed in the village\nchurch, saved the wounded while the building was in flames, and\npersuaded the Prussians who guarded the wells to let them have a few\ndrops of water for the sick; this blockade lasted for four days, after\nwhich fifteen Alsatian peasants were condemned to be shot for having\nmutilated the bodies of some Prussian soldiers. This system of shooting\nthe first-comer for a crime committed by an unknown person was one of\nthe most cruel features of the late war. These poor wretches, taken at\nrandom\u2014some mere boys, some old, infirm men\u2014were tied with their hands\nbehind their backs to one thick rope which kept them all on a level. The\nProtestant clergyman, who had himself gone to the general and asked the\nlives of these men, came to beg M. de Beuvron to intercede for them; he\nwas equally unsuccessful, and, when he begged as a Catholic priest to be\nallowed to see the condemned, the general smiled and said: \u201cYou are\nwelcome; I will give you an escort.\u201d But on addressing the poor men the\npriest found that they understood no French, and he could not speak\nGerman. He pointed to heaven, and spread his hands while he gave them\nabsolution, and they, with one accord, fell on their knees, sobbed and\nprayed, and bowed their heads. This solemn, silent service seems to us\nas noble as the most magnificent of triumphant processions, with chants\nand rejoicings, and imperial _cort\u00e9ge_ following\u2014this, the last moment\nbetween time and eternity, between faith and vision.\n\nIt is M. de Beuvron who has said with truth: \u201cIt is the country parish\npriest who makes Catholic France.\u201d And Prince Frederick Charles of\nPrussia echoed this sentiment when he said at an official dinner in\n1872, at the table of the Bavarian ambassador: \u201cThere is in France but\none class that is noble and patriotic, earnest, courageous, worthy of\nrespect, and really influential, and that is the clergy. Impossible not\nto admire it as it appeared on the recent battle-fields.\u201d Some of these\nheroic men preserved their incognito; one is mentioned by the London\n_Times\u2019_ correspondent who followed the Saxon regiments. \u201cThere is a\nman,\u201d he writes, \u201cwhom I have noticed, since Sedan until the struggles\nbefore the walls of Paris, constantly following the wounded. He has\nneither horse nor conveyance, but, stick in hand, he follows the track\nof the army, and, with the consummate finish of the man of the world and\nthe tenderness of a woman, he attends and comforts the dying. He is a\nFrench priest, a Benedictine.... The other day I met him suddenly on a\nfield of battle, and he asked me to direct him to where the wounded\nwere. He had walked twenty miles that day. No government pays him; he is\na volunteer in the best sense of the word.... He is in the prime of\nmanhood, of handsome build, distinguished-looking, and with no less than\ncourtly manners.\u201d Another unknown volunteer, but a layman, was found\ndead at Forbach. No one had seen him till the day of the battle, and he\nwore a dark dress and cap and a fancy rifle. At the moment when the\nbattle began he suddenly joined a brigade and fought like a hero. His\npurse held a large sum of money in gold, and his linen, unmarked, was\nremarkably fine, while round his neck was a medal hanging by a silken\nribbon. There was nothing to identify him.\n\nBut to return to our parish priests, of whom many refused rich rewards\nand promotion after the war, as M. du Marhallach, who, though he\naccepted the Legion of Honor, declined the bishopric of Quimper, and,\nwhen his townsmen forced him to represent them in the National Assembly,\nmanaged to resign before long and return to humbler scenes of usefulness\nin his country parish. If a book were to be filled with incidents of the\ndevotedness of the country priests, there would yet be ten times as many\nunknown and unrecorded. As the Prussians entered the village of Verrey,\nslaying all in their way\u2014men, women, and children\u2014the _cur\u00e9_, M. Fr\u00e9rot,\nwas almost ubiquitous among the dying. He was wounded twice with\nbayonets, and, as he retreated into his garden, the soldiers fired and\nwounded him twice more. He dragged himself to the doctor\u2019s, where some\nwounded were being attended to, and got his wounds dressed, when the\ndoctor, taking the flag of the Geneva Association with him, undertook to\nget him safe into his own (the doctor\u2019s) house, where some of the\nwounded had been carried for safety. The enemy, heedless of the flag,\nfell upon him again with ball, bayonet, and gun-stocks till he fell down\ninsensible. He died a few days after, glad, as he said, if his death\ncould be in any way useful to his country. Useful! Yes, as an example;\nbut how many precious lives are lost thus, while vile, worthless ones\npreserve themselves! One can only compare the pouring out of such blood\nto the \u201cwaste\u201d of the precious ointment which our Lord so highly\ncommended.\n\nThe Abb\u00e9 Miroy, of Cuchery, near Rheims, died another kind of death: he\nwas judicially murdered for having allowed arms to be hidden in the barn\nof his house. When asked for this permission, he was in the first agony\nof grief at the news of the death of his parents at a hamlet burnt by\nthe Prussians. However, whether responsible or not\u2014and probably as a\nFrenchman he saw no harm in passively helping in the defence of his\ncountry\u2014he was shot at Rheims, at daybreak, on a bleak February morning\nand a Sunday. It was during the armistice. His people put this\ninscription on his tomb-cross: \u201cHere lies the Abb\u00e9 Charles Miroy, who\ndied a victim to his love of country.\u201d\n\nM. Muller, parish priest of Sarreguemines, when asked for the keys of\nhis church, flatly refused to give them up, and, on being threatened,\nanswered:\n\n\u201cHow many shots do you fire on a condemned man?\u201d\n\n\u201cEight and the '_coup-de-gr\u00e2ce_.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, then, before you cross the threshold of my church to\ndesecrate it fire these eight shots and the _coup-de-gr\u00e2ce_ at me; for\nyou shall only step in over my dead body.\u201d There were many like\ninstances; for the priests knew well that the enemy delighted in\nwantonly outraging the most sacred feelings of the people by profaning\nand robbing their churches. A barbarous story is told (General Ambert\nvouches for it) of the treatment undergone by the aged Abb\u00e9 Cor, of\nNeuville in the Ardennes, who had considerably delayed the march of the\nPrussians by certain information given to the French, and who,\nnotwithstanding his age (he was more than eighty), was tied to a horse\u2019s\ntail and dragged along for a good distance, with another rope tied to\nhis leg, with which a soldier pulled him up whenever he fell. At last\nthe soldiers got tired, and threw him into a ditch, and, marvellous to\nrelate, he recovered. One of his parishioners cried out in pity: \u201cO\nfather! what a state you are in.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d he answered cheerfully, with a twinkle in his eye, \u201cit is only my\n_old_ cassock!\u201d\n\nThe parish priest of Gunstatt was brought before an improvised council\nof war just after the battle of Forbach; what was requested of him the\nbook does not say, but his answer just before he was shot points to\nsomething evidently against his country\u2019s interests: \u201cI prefer death to\nthe crime of betraying France.\u201d\n\nIf these facts, which speak for themselves, allow us to make any\ncommentary, we can think of none so appropriate as this: how does this\nFrance contrast with the feverish, theatrical, rationalistic, immoral\nFrance presented to us by a certain wide-spread form of French\nliterature? No country is so libelled by its own writers as France.\nGranted that many novels represent \u201clife as it is,\u201d yet it is not the\nundercurrent of life, not the life of the majority. It is the\nartificial, sensational, exceptional life of large cities and of\nreckless cliques; and, besides this, novels have a trick of magnifying\nthis diseased life into illusive dimensions. It fills the eye of the\nforeigner, it shapes his judgment, it draws his curiosity, till the\nsober, prosaic, quiet, respectable, and vital life of the country fades\nout of his memory. He forgets the _vie de province_, the impoverished\ngentlemen living in dignified retirement, like Lamartine and his mother\nat Milly, like the family in one part of a _Sister\u2019s Story_, like\nEug\u00e9nie de Gu\u00e9rin with her homely, housekeeping cares; the cosey homes\nof the middle classes, their precise, thrifty, cheerful ways; the family\nbond that enables different families to live patriarchally in a\nfellowship which few Anglo-Saxons would or could imitate; the\npeasant-proprietors with their gardens and little farms; the healthy\nrural, natural life that is everywhere, and even _in_ cities; the\nkindliness, the simplicity, and the innate refinement which ought to\nmake many a traveller of the Anglo-Saxon race blush for his surliness\nand brutal, superficial, haughty way of setting down every foreigner as\na monkey or a barbarian.\n\nAmong the country priests there were not only heroes, but strategists.\nTowards the beginning of the war a French column was on its way to join\nthe main body, and had to retreat through a hilly, wooded, and unknown\ntract to avoid being surprised by the enemy. No one knew just what to do\nor advise, and the little maps were very unsatisfactory. The general\nstopped at a Lorraine village and sent for the authorities. The mayor\nand most of the inhabitants had fled in anticipation of danger; only the\n_cur\u00e9_ was left, with a few sick and old people. He was over seventy\nhimself, tall and large, his hands and face swollen and his feet\nprotected by huge wooden shoes. The general did not hope for much advice\nfrom him, but the old man sat down and explained that he was gouty and\nunable to get about, but knew the country. When the general had joked\nabout this impromptu council of war, and the priest in return had\nreminded him how often the church had had occasion to help the army\nbefore, they examined the map together, and the _cur\u00e9_ took a pencil and\nquickly drew certain lines in a most business-like manner, calculating\nhow long such a road would take to traverse, how much headway would be\ngained over the enemy, what points would be a safe resting-place for a\nfew hours for the tired troops, the route which, believing the bridge to\nbe destroyed, the Prussians would probably follow, the houses where the\ngeneral would find willing and able contributors to the necessities of\nhis men\u2014in a word, every chance and every detail that an accomplished\ncommander would have thought of. Then he asked for four soldiers, two to\nbe placed in the steeple to look out for the Prussians and toll the bell\nthe moment they came in sight, and thus give the understood signal to\nthe column at its masked resting-place; and two to watch with him at the\nentrance of the village.\n\n\u201c_Monsieur le cur\u00e9_,\u201d cried the general, \u201cyou are a hero!\u201d\n\nThe old man sneezed violently\u2014he took snuff\u2014and laughed as well, as he\nsaid: \u201c_Mon g\u00e9n\u00e9ral_, the seminaries are full of such heroes as _I_ am.\nIt is no heroism to love one\u2019s country. Now, when you have given your\norders, I shall carry you off to the presbytery and give you a roast\nchicken and some good omelet; and I think Turenne would have been glad\nsometimes to barter a few of his laurel branches for an omelet.\u201d\n\nThe priest and the two soldiers had a long and cold watch through the\nnight. At three o\u2019clock in the morning the latter were getting tired,\nbut the old man said: \u201cHist! do you see something over there?\u201d The men\npeered through the dark and saw nothing; there was a wide circle of old\ntrees and a road across\u2014a well-known spot, the Fontaine wood. But the\npriest both saw and heard, or else he guessed by instinct. \u201cSee, they\nare creeping nearly on all fours behind the trees; now they stop to\nlisten, they are gathering together. There is an officer speaking to\nthem in whispers. It is time to ring the bell. Go now, children.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut how can we leave you alone?\u201d said the soldiers.\n\n\u201cNever mind me; God will take care of me. Your general\u2019s orders were to\nleave the moment the bell rang.\u201d And as his companions withdrew he rang\nhis little bell and the church tocsin immediately answered. Its sound\nwas nearly drowned by the discharge of the Prussian rifles. The old man\nknelt down and began the Lord\u2019s Prayer; he had not said the second line\nbefore a ball hit him and he fell. The French column escaped without the\nloss of one man; and when the general reported to his superior in\ncommand, the latter, lighting a cigar, said: \u201cThat priest was a brave\nfellow.\u201d But the general was to meet him once more. The _cur\u00e9_ was not\nkilled, but was afterwards condemned to be shot, which sentence was\ncommuted to exile on account of his great age; and when he met his old\nfriend, who believed him dead, he greeted him with the cheerful\nquestion: \u201cWell, how did you like my omelet?\u201d The other caught him in\nhis arms and repeated with as much tenderness as admiration: \u201cYou are a\nhero!\u201d\n\nThe next story we choose from the many related by Ambert is one of pure\nChristian self-sacrifice, and one that has its daily counterpart in\nhospitals and plague-stricken cities, even in peaceful times. Small-pox\nin an aggravated form had broken out among the French troops, and, on\nthe approach of an infected battalion of Mobiles to a village not far\nfrom Beaune, a _gendarme_ was sent on to bid the inhabitants lock their\ndoors and keep out of the way, while the sick were taken through to an\nisolated camp-hospital at some distance. There were hardly any\nable-bodied men left in the village, as they were off harassing the\nPrussians and watching their movements, and the women, in their\nloneliness, felt a double fear. The patients came. A death-like silence\nprevailed; no face was seen at door or window. The sick men dragged\nthemselves slowly and painfully along, asking for nothing, touchingly\nresigned to their lot of lepers and outcasts, though many of them were\nraw recruits of a few weeks only, whose homes were in just such villages\nas the familiar-looking one they were crossing now. They had passed the\nlast houses, but at the door of one a little apart from the rest one\nsoldier fell, and, seeing how hopeless it was to urge him further, a\nsergeant placed him on the doorstep and knocked at the door for help. No\nanswer; and the battalion resumed its march, while the sergeant went\nback to tell the mayor. When he was out of sight a man and two women\ncame hastily and furtively out of the house, carried the unconscious\nsoldier some distance to the foot of a tree, and there left him. The\nsergeant had found the parish priest on his way back from a sick-call,\nand asked him to tell the mayor, as he was in a hurry to join his\nregiment. They came to the house, and, not finding the sick man, asked\nthe owner where he was; the man half opened the shutter and pointed in\nsilence to the tree. Without even seeking help, the priest, finding the\nsoldier still alive, carried him home in his arms and laid him on his\nown bed. The hubbub was great in the parish; the old housekeeper\nindignantly remonstrated, but the priest gave her a few clear and severe\norders as to her own liberty of staying away, and the substitute whom he\nhad the means of sending for to replace him in church, also the manner\nof bringing him his food once a day, and then went out to speak to his\nexcited parishioners. \u201cThere,\u201d he said, pointing to a placard on the\nwall of the mayoralty, \u201cyou read 'Liberty, fraternity, equality.\u2019 Am _I_\nto be deprived of the _liberty_ of helping my neighbor? Is he not our\n_equal_, and does not _fraternity_ require that we should give him every\nchance for his life? I cannot forget that the good shepherd lays down\nhis life for his sheep.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut he does not even belong to the parish!\u201d murmured the crowd.\n\n\u201cIn such times as these,\u201d said M. Cloti with enthusiasm, \u201call France is\nmy parish, and every brave fellow who dies for you is my parishioner.\u201d\n\nAnd for sixty-five days and nights he watched the stranger, Jean\nDauphin, made his bed every night, cooked his food, mixed his medicines,\nswept the rooms, and scarcely slept or ate himself. The doctor had\ninsisted on the utmost cleanliness, but said that, with all precautions\npossible, only a miracle could save the soldier\u2019s life. Charity wrought\nthe miracle, and by the fortieth day the patient was sitting up\nlistening to the priest reading to him. Only one person in the village\ncaught the disease\u2014the daughter of the man who had spurned the soldier\nfrom his door; and, though she did not die of it, she lost her beauty\nfor ever. Some months after the doctor asked the priest if he knew at\nthe time that he was risking his life, and that there was but the barest\nchance of escape for him. \u201cYes,\u201d said M. Cloti simply, \u201cI knew it.\u201d\n\nA terrible barbarity was the occasional punishment of the _bastonnade_\u2014a\nkind of \u201crunning the gauntlet.\u201d This occurred once at the village of\nSaint-Calais, where the enemy found some guns hidden in the belfry, and\none hundred and forty-five male inhabitants, including the mayor, Baron\nJaubert, and the priest, were seized. They were compelled to walk slowly\nbetween a double row of Prussian soldiers armed with clubs and sticks,\nand received merciless blows on their bare heads, their shoulders, back,\narms, and legs. The number being odd, the priest was placed last and\nalone, so that both rows were able to reach and torture him. He fainted,\nand was given a glass of water, after which the torture began again; and\nwhen he fell the second time, his head was found to be split in five\nplaces, and his body was thrown aside for dead. He recovered, however,\nafter a long and severe illness, but the baron died of his wounds. One\npriest, at Ardenay, was maltreated and imprisoned and finally carried\naway to Germany for having kept on his steeple a tricolor flag which had\nbeen there since 1830. Some priests whom one can forgive for their\npatriotism, but who were perhaps too forward, as ministers of peace, to\nfoment war, used to go on the battle-fields and search the bodies of the\ndead for cartridges for the living; but these instances of enthusiasm\nwere exceptional, and it should be remembered that some among the clergy\nwere old soldiers.\n\nAmong the prisoners of war the priests found ample room for their\nministry. Some of the clergy were themselves prisoners, while some left\ntheir country and volunteered for this special service. There was much\nto do. Besides saying Mass and administering the sacraments, there were\nthe ignorant to instruct, the scoffers to convert, the young to protect,\nand the intemperate to reclaim. In that forced idleness many gave\nthemselves up to drunkenness and grew reckless and desperate. This sin,\nwhich in our time seems to have sprung into new life and strength,\nshowed itself lamentably strong among the captives, and the priests, to\ncounteract it, had to attend not only to the spiritual needs of their\ncharges, but to invent amusements and occupations to wean the soldiers\nfrom gross self-indulgence. Father Joseph, a missionary and military\nchaplain, published an interesting work on the prisoners, their\nbehavior, pastimes, etc., the statistics of their captivity, their\ntreatment, and such little things. During the war, more than 400,000\nwere taken prisoners. Letters with contributions came constantly through\nand from the country _cur\u00e9s_. Father Joseph, who was stationed at Ulm,\nquotes many of these letters, of which the following is a specimen: \u201cI\nventure to recommend to your care one of my parishioners, made prisoner\nat Strasbourg. I recommend his soul to you\u2014for it is his most precious\npossession\u2014but also his bodily wants; I am afraid he is in need of\nclothes. If your circumstances allow it, be kind enough to give him what\nis needful; if not, set the whole to my account, and I will reimburse\nyou. Our country will bless you for your charity.... May our soldiers,\nwhom so many have labored to demoralize, be led to understand these\ntruths; for then only will they be worthy of victory.\u201d This dignified\nattitude of resignation to the hard lesson God allowed the unsuccessful\nwar to teach France specially characterized the clergy of all ranks, but\nit did not take one jot from their eager and hot patriotism. Another\ncountry priest, over eighty years of age and nearly blind, begins by\nexcusing himself on that score for his bad handwriting, and, mentioning\none of his flock among the prisoners, says: \u201cThe poor boy must suffer\nterribly. Help him and comfort him; I shall look upon all that you do to\nhim as done to me. It is long ago since it has been dinned into the\npeople\u2019s ears that we are their foes, while in truth they have no better\nfriends; we are accused of not loving our country, while, on the\ncontrary, we are her most devoted sons.... I fear that my age will\nprevent me seeing the end of her troubles, but it will be a comfort to\nme in death that to my latest breath I shall have labored in her\nservice.\u201d Charitable committees abroad and at home, mostly under church\nsuperintendence, sent food, money, and clothing, books, papers, games,\netc., to the prisoners. Mgr. Mermillod\u2019s committee at Geneva, and those\nof Lausanne and Bordeaux, chiefly distinguished themselves; but in this\nwork religious fellowship overcame national prejudice, and the clergy\nand sisters of the Catholic Rhineland cordially helped their so-called\nenemies. They vied with the French in ministering to the prisoners in\nthe several cities where the latter were confined; but not only they,\nfor there were numberless Germans, both civil and military, who behaved\ngenerously, kindly, and delicately towards the prisoners.\n\nWe have already mentioned the terrible custom of choosing at random\nhostages or victims in reprisal for the acts of some unknown men. This\ntook place once at Les Horties, a village where, despite the Prussian\nsentries, two hot-headed youths succeeded in picking off three German\nsoldiers. The shots were returned, but the agile youths got away\nunscathed. A detachment was sent forthwith into the village, with orders\nto seize the first six men they happened to meet. This was done, the\nhostages guarded by the Prussians, and the mayor given till eleven\no\u2019clock the next morning to give up the real offenders, under penalty,\nif it proved impossible, of seeing the six men shot. Those who had fired\non the Prussians were strangers, who hovered constantly on the outskirts\nof the enemy, accomplishing, most likely, some vow of vengeance for a\nwrong done by soldiers to some near and dear to them. There were many\nsuch. Heaven forgive them! for they brought untold sorrow on the heads\nof families like their own, whose death they were so blindly trying to\nrevenge. It was out of the mayor\u2019s power to give up the culprits, and no\nprayers or tears made any impression on the Prussian officer in command.\nThe women\u2019s lamentations were terrible; the men\u2019s despair appalling. One\nof them, a widower of forty with five children, was all but out of his\nmind, blaspheming horribly and crying out: \u201cYes, yes, it was my\nthree-year-old Bernard who fired on the wretches. Let them take me and\nmy five boys, and let the rest go!\u201d The priest, M. Gerd, was unable to\ncomfort him, and slowly left the school-room where the poor victims\nwaited their fate. Going to the headquarters of the German captain, he\nsaid: \u201cI believe you only wish to shoot these men as an example;\ntherefore the more prominent the victim, the greater the lesson. It\ncannot matter to you individually _who_ is shot; therefore I have come\nto beg of you as a favor to be allowed to take the place of one of these\nmen, whose death will leave five young children fatherless and homeless.\nBoth he and I are innocent, but my death will be more profitable to you\nthan even his.\u201d \u201cVery well,\u201d said the officer, and the _cur\u00e9_ was bound\nwith the rest of the men, and the man he had saved left him in tears.\nThe night passed, and, like the martyrs of S\u00e9baste, whose fortitude was\nstrengthened by the young heathen who joined them in the stead of one of\nthemselves who had faltered, these unhappy men were transformed by the\npriest\u2019s words and examples into unflinching heroes. The hour came, and\nhe walked at their head, saying aloud the Office of the Dead, the people\nkneeling and sobbing as he passed, when the condemned met a Prussian\nmajor who was passing by chance with some orders from the general. He\nwas struck by the sight of the priest\u2014an unusual one, even during this\n\u201cfeast of horrors\u201d\u2014and inquired into the matter, which seemed less a\nthing of course to him than it had to the captain. He countermanded the\norder and referred the whole thing to the general, who called the _cur\u00e9_\nbefore him. It ended in the former saying that he was unable to make an\nexception in any one\u2019s favor, but that for _his_ sake he would pardon\nevery one of the hostages, and, when the priest had left, he turned to\nhis officers and said energetically: \u201cIf all Frenchmen were like that\nplain parish priest, we should not have long to stay on this side of the\nRhine.\u201d\n\nBut here is another story, very like this one and more tragic, which has\nnot come within Ambert\u2019s knowledge, and to which we are indebted to an\nEnglish novelist, who, vouching for its truth, has worked it into a\nrecent tale. Neither name nor place is given, but it runs thus: The same\nthing happened as at Les Horties, and a certain number\u2014I forget how\nmany\u2014male inhabitants were condemned, all fathers of families. After\nvain appeals for mercy from the priest, the mayor, the old men, and the\nwomen, the former called all his people into the church, which had been\npillaged and half burnt some time before. He went into the pulpit and\nheld up a common black cross; it was the only ornament or symbol left of\nthe simple village church treasury.\n\n\u201cMy children,\u201d he said in a voice trembling with sobs, \u201cyou know what\nhas happened, and how many hearths are going to be left desolate. Here,\nin God, in Christ, is our only comfort and our only strength. I have no\nties but such as bind me to each one of you equally. I have but one life\nto give, but I will gladly take the place of one of these fathers of\nfamilies, and trust to God to protect you when I am gone. Now, if any of\nyou feel that God will give you grace to die in the stead of any other\nof your brethren, say so, and God bless you!\u201d He knelt and bent his head\non his clasped hands in prayer; silence, only broken by suppressed\nsobbing, filled the church. The women were in agonies of weeping; the\nmen\u2019s faces worked as if in some mighty struggle. Presently one young\nman rose up and said: \u201cFather, I will follow you; I have neither wife\nnor children. I will take such a one\u2019s place.\u201d And then rose another\nyouth, giving up all his hopes of the future for the sake of another of\nthe victims; and the women crowded round them, blessing them, crying\nover them, pressing their hands, and calling them heroes and deliverers.\nThose for whom no substitutes had appeared caught the high spirit of the\noccasion, and bore their fate like Christians and men. No Providence\ninterposed in this case, and the priest was allowed to consummate his\nsacrifice. Such courage was more than human.\n\nThe part taken by the sisters of various orders in the scenes of the war\nand the Commune was one which neither France nor Germany will ever\nforget. They shared every danger to which the soldiers themselves were\nliable, even that of being shot in cold blood, which was the fate of\nfour sisters at Soultz, near Colmar, on the Rhine. They were found\nnursing the wounded, and the Prussians accused them of advising and\nencouraging the inhabitants to resist. There was no inquiry, no form,\nbut a few of the scum of the invading army dragged the women away at\nonce, set them against a wall, and shot them. During the retreat after\nthe battle of Reischoffen a Sister of Charity made her way among the\ndisorganized troops, seeking some one to help. Balls and shells were\nwhizzing past, and frightened horses wildly galloping by. A cry was\nheard as a man fell mortally wounded, and the sister stopped, knelt\ndown, and began her work; but hardly a minute after a ball struck her\nand carried off both her legs. She fell in a swoon by the soldier\u2019s\nside. M. Blandeau, who tells the story, did not know her name; he only\nsays pointedly: \u201cShe was a Sister of Charity.\u201d An officer of the French\nArmy of the Rhine gives an account of a Trinitarian nun, Sister Clara,\nwho the night of the 16th of August, 1870, after a bloody battle, was\ntending the wounded in a barn; they were in such pain as not to be able\nto bear being carried to a safer place, and all they cried for was\n\u201cWater, water!\u201d Every five minutes the nun went quietly in and out,\nunder the fire of the enemy, to fetch as much water as her scanty number\nof vessels would hold; you would have thought she was armor-plated, to\njudge by her calm and smiling demeanor. The next day began the dreary\nretreat towards Metz; the wounded were heaped on carts and wagons, and\nthere again was Sister Clara, comforting, helping, encouraging the men,\ngiving water to one, changing the position of another. She left on the\nlast cart, holding against her breast the head of the nearest wounded\nman; but not half a mile further the column was made prisoner by a\ndetachment of Uhlans, the ambulances cut off, and in the _m\u00eal\u00e9e_ a shot\nstruck and killed the sister, who was probably buried by and among\nstrangers. At Forbach the superior of the Sisters of Providence, whose\nhouse was a hospital and asylum at all times, was killed by a shell, and\nat Metz no less than twenty-two Sisters of Charity died either from\nwounds, disease, or exhaustion in the service of the soldiers. At\nBic\u00eatre, during the siege of Paris, eleven died of small-pox in one day,\nand a request having been made for the same number to supply their\nplace, thirty-two presented themselves at once. At Pau, at Orleans, at\nMans, at Nevers, and in numberless other cities, as well as in impromptu\nhospitals, canvas towns, villages, and battle-fields, the Little Sisters\nof the Poor, the Sisters of Charity, the Visitation Nuns, and other\norders too many to mention distinguished themselves. Many sisters were\nforced later on to accept the Legion of Honor, but a far greater number\nof those who deserved it did not live to have it offered. At the siege\nof Paris their courage seemed absolutely superhuman. An officer once met\nnear Ch\u00e2lons, on the road to Paris, a blind and wounded soldier led by a\nSister of Charity. He was an old veteran from Africa, without relations,\nof a terrible temper, and with not much religion. The Prussians had left\nhim on the road, finding him an encumbrance among the prisoners. The\nsister found him and undertook to lead him to the _Invalides_, where,\nshe said, he had every right to claim a home. In all weathers this\nstrange couple plodded along. She begged food and shelter for him, and\nalways gave him the best; but he was fractious and not very grateful.\nOne day the weather was a little finer, and he heard a lark sing; he\nseemed quite touched and happy. The sister asked him to kneel down and\nrepeat the \u201cOur Father\u201d after her, and he did not refuse. This was the\nbeginning of his conversion. But the Sister now grew ambitious, and\nwanted to restore his physical sight to him as well as his spiritual; so\nshe said: \u201cWe will not go to the _Invalides_ after all, but I will take\nyou to the best surgeons and the most famous oculists in Paris, and beg\nthem, for the love of God and their country, to do their utmost to cure\nyou; and if God sees fit to let them succeed, you will promise me to be\na good Christian as long as you live, will you not?\u201d Three months later\nthe soldier was as hearty as ever and had recovered his sight, while the\nsister had long been at work in a country school; but at Notre Dame des\nVictoires may be often seen a veteran praying on his knees before the\ngrated door of the shrine\u2014praying for his deliverer.\n\nThe Pontifical Zouaves formed a volunteer regiment of their own during\nthe war, and fought like lions; most of their members were the\ndescendants of old French families whose sympathies are with the last of\nthe exiled Bourbons, and who, while they reject the empire and the\nrepublic equally, and keep out of the way of office or active employment\nof any kind, even to the prejudice of their career and to the point that\nmany of their young men are forced to make a life for themselves in\nforeign service or by emigration, yet are full of real love of their\ncountry. The virtues of such enthusiasts always come out in adversity,\nwhile in prosperity their attitude of aloofness may seem rather\nchildish. In the last war they fought nobly. Plenty of Breton peasants\njoined them; they have nearly the same traditions and fully the same\nfaith; in fact, they have long been natural allies.\n\nThe incidents of the Commune\u2014a period so much more terrible and shameful\nthan that of the war\u2014have been so often and fully described that we will\nnot add much to this sketch by going over the fearfully familiar\nsubject. Every one knows the phase of rabid feeling which came uppermost\namong the Communists: the hatred of God, religion, and priests\u2014even a\nmore rabid feeling than that entertained towards owners of property. The\nclergy were thus forced to be prominent in that national delirium: the\nchief victims were ecclesiastics. In Paris and other places it has been\nnoticed that a certain class of lazy, good-for-nothing men live from\nhand to mouth around the barracks and the churches, living on the alms\nof soldiers and priests, inventing excuses to account for their\nindolence, cheating and lying and taking ravenously all they can get.\nWhen a revolution comes, these men become denunciators, assassins, and\nleaders. It is they who cry the loudest against the army and the\npriesthood\u2014the \u201cbutchers\u201d of Versailles and the \u201chypocrites\u201d in\ncassocks. Raoul Rigault spoke their sentiments when he said to the\nporter of M. Duguerry\u2019s house (the famous parish priest of La Madeleine,\nshot with Archbishop Darboy at La Roquette): \u201cGod! you fool!\u201d (the man\nhad exclaimed, as is the custom, innocently meant, in France, '_O mon\nDieu!_') \u201cHold your tongue; how dare you speak of God! Our revolution is\nagainst your God, your religion, and your priests. We will sweep all\nthat rubbish away!\u201d And, by way of contrast to this plain confession of\nfaith, here are the words of M. Duguerry in prison to his biographer,\nthe Baron de Saint-Amand: \u201cMy dear friend, if I knew that my death would\nbe of any use to the cause of religion, I should kneel down and beg them\nto shoot me.\u201d But it is not necessary to multiply quotations to show the\nintense hatred of the Commune towards religion and its ministers. Holy\nWeek in 1871 was indeed the _Passion_ Week of many of the latter. The\ndevilish conduct of many women recalled the worst excesses of the Reign\nof Terror. A woman with a military cap on rode at the head of the escort\nof the hostages, three of them Jesuit Fathers, who were taken from La\nRoquette to Belleville to be shot. She swore and yelled and gave orders,\ninsulting the priests especially. On the Boulevards, as the condemned\npassed, riots took place, and disorderly crowds nearly killed the\nprisoners in their impatience. Women again were prominent, brandishing\nguns, knives, and pistols, throwing bloody mud on the priests, and\nblaspheming as badly as any man; it would have been safer to run the\ngauntlet of a crowd of maniacs let loose from the asylum. Mgr. Surat was\nkilled in the streets on another occasion by a young girl of sixteen,\nwho deliberately put a pistol to his forehead. \u201cMercy, mademoiselle!\u201d\ncried the priest quickly; but with an untranslatable slang play on his\nwords[39]\u2014equivalent, say, to \u201cYou shall have it hot and peppery,\u201d or\nsome such phrase\u2014she drew the trigger and stretched him dead at her\nfeet. The Abb\u00e9 Perny, in his evidence before the council of war, says:\n\u201cI have lived among the savages for twenty-five years, but I never saw\namong them anything to equal the hatred on those faces of men and women\nas we passed them on our way from Mazas to La Roquette.\u201d[40] Father\nAnatole de Bengy, a Jesuit, was a remarkable man who had been military\nchaplain in the Crimea, and was volunteer chaplain of the troops during\nthe last war till the siege, when he attached himself to the Eighth\nAmbulance. He had a singular power of commanding the love, obedience,\nand confidence of others; he was brave and good-tempered, and such a\nthorough soldier that Marshal Bosquet said of him: \u201cUpon my word, if\nthere are many Jesuits of that kind, _I_ say hurrah for the Jesuits!\u201d\nHis letters are full of pleasantry and life. He tells his friends how he\nhelps \u201cour poor soldiers,\u201d and jokes about his tramps with \u201chis bundle\non his back,\u201d which phrase, he says, \u201calways rouses a certain pity in\nthe listener; but indeed, my dear Aymard, the bundle (_le sac_) does not\ndeserve its bad name: it urges the body forward, and its inconveniences\nare fully made up for by the advantages it gives rise to. Some thinker\nshould undertake the Praise of the Bundle, and rehabilitate it in the\neyes of pilgrims.\u201d The words of this manly and brave priest at the\nfuneral of Commander de Dampierre would serve as his own eulogy: \u201cThe\nfountain-head of duty is in the three world-famous words, _God wills\nit_.\u201d When his name was called at La Roquette, on the list of condemned,\nthe Communist official stumbled over it, and P\u00e8re de Bengy stepped\nbriskly forward, saying: \u201cI know my name is on the list\u2014Bengy; here I\nam.\u201d M. Cr\u00e9pin, a shoe-maker, who was condemned, but saved by the\nentrance of the troops, saw the butchery of Belleville, and in his\nevidence said: \u201cLet no one speak ill of the clergy before me again! I\nhave seen them at home now; I know them by experience; I have witnessed\ntheir courage and been comforted by their words.\u201d\n\nFootnote 39:\n\n  _Tu l\u2019auras maigre et non pas gras_ (_grasse\u2014gr\u00e2ce_).\n\nFootnote 40:\n\n  At M\u00e9nilmontant a woman named Lef\u00eavre proposed, amid cheers and\n  bravos, to undermine the Cathedral of Notre Dame, fill it as full as\n  it would hold with priests and nuns, and blow it up. At a club-meeting\n  another woman\u2014Leblanc\u2014cried: \u201cWe must flay the priests alive and make\n  barricades with their carcasses\u201d; and at Trinity Church a woman argued\n  thus on the existence of God: \u201cReligion is a farce got up by men, and\n  there is no God; ... if there were, he would not let me speak so.\n  Therefore he is a coward, and no God....\u201d And there were other and\n  even more revolting things said and done.\n\nThe Dominicans of Arcueil transformed their school into an ambulance\nduring the siege, and P\u00e8re Bengy happened to be chosen chaplain. But the\nCommune was to elicit greater sacrifices. The monks might have left, but\ndid not, and reopened their hospital for the wounded wild beasts, whose\ncurses sounded upon their watchers even from their sick-beds. The Geneva\nflag was hoisted, and the Sisters of St. Martha acted as domestic\nservants, besides many other women and girls. There were twenty wounded\nin the hospital on the 19th of May, 1871, when the Commune arrested the\ninmates of the house, thirty-eight persons\u2014priests, lay brothers,\ntradesmen and servants in their employment, some of them foreigners,\nnuns, married women and widows, two young girls, and a child of eight\nyears old, daughter of the tailor, who was afterwards shot with the\npriests. The latter were, with a devilish show of mercy, offered their\nliberty if they would take arms against the Versailles troops, and, when\nthey refused, they were condemned. Their death took place a few days\nlater, and the shooting was not done with military precision, but\nbunglingly, so that the victims were rather butchered than shot. After\nthe bodies had ceased to breathe they were savagely mutilated, the heads\nand larger bones hacked with axes, and the flesh pierced with bayonets.\nSome of the priests managed to escape in the crowd and smoke, all of\nthem wounded, however; and one was saved by a woman who hurriedly threw\nher husband\u2019s clothes to him. According to the saying of a National\nGuard who escorted the Belleville victims to their death, and who, on\nbeing asked by a passer-by, \u201cWhere are they taking those men to?\u201d\nanswered gravely, \u201cTo heaven,\u201d the road these priests walked was truly\nthe \u201cnarrow road that leadeth to salvation.\u201d\n\nSurely, if any class of French citizens did their duty in troublous\ntimes and deserve well of their country, it is the clergy.\n\n\n\n\n                        DE VERE\u2019S \u201cMARY TUDOR.\u201d\n                                PART II.\n\n\nWe said, in our last article,[41] that the Catholic reader would find\nthis second play much more painful than the first. We are sure, too,\nthat the non-Catholic reader will deem it inferior in point of interest.\nYet we do not agree with the London _Spectator_ that there is an\n\u201cartistic chasm\u201d between the two plays. At any rate, whatever\nconstructive defects are to be found in the present performance, there\nis no falling off in dramatic power.\n\nFootnote 41:\n\n  THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1877, p. 777. We regret to be informed by\n  the publisher that this really great drama is now out of print.\n\nThe play is preluded by an \u201cIntroductory Scene,\u201d in which Mary is\ndiscovered prostrate on the tomb of Jane Grey. This does not at all\nsurprise us after the remorse we have witnessed in the last scene of the\npreceding play. Holding herself criminally responsible for the execution\nof her cousin, it was natural for her to perform \u201cpenances severer than\nthe Church prescribes.\u201d The gentle Fakenham\u2014now Abbot of Westminster\u2014may\nwell express anxiety for his penitent.\n\n                            \u201cPray God\n    Her mind give way not: sorely is it shaken.\n    These tearful macerations of the spirit,\n    These fasts that chain all natural appetites,\n    Nor mortify the sinful flesh alone,\n    Must be restrained: or death will close the scene.\u201d\n\nWhile he is soliloquizing Gardiner enters with Elizabeth. Fakenham has\nrequested the latter\u2019s presence.\n\n                      \u201cWhate\u2019er hath passed,\n    Be sure her Grace hath ever truly loved you.\n    Therefore we trust your coming may dispel\n    The baleful visions that enthrall her spirit;\n    Dispersed, as fiends before rebuking Saints.\u201d\n\nElizabeth answers:\n\n    \u201cYou hope too much. Awakened jealousy\n    Preys on her, like the Egyptian\u2019s asp.\u201d\n\nBut she is mistaken; for presently the queen, on recognizing the \u201cveiled\nmourner,\u201d says tenderly:\n\n                                   \u201cI part\n    The tresses on thy brow; and gaze upon thee\n    _With the strong yearning of a blighted love_.\n    I know thee, sister! Take me to thine arms\u2014\n    And let me weep.\u201d\n\nThe weeping revives Mary\u2019s energy, but that energy takes a shape in\nwhich we see the old despair combined with a new fanaticism.\n\n    \u201cELIZABETH.     These mingling tears wash out\n    All venom from past sorrow\u2014\u201d\n\n    QUEEN.               \u201cNot from mine!\n    Immedicable evil hath infected\n    The fount of life within me. I shall die\n    In premature decay; and fall aside\n    As withered fruit falls from a blasted branch.\n    I, like a mother by her dying babe,\n    Have closed the eyes of hope; and o\u2019er my heart\n    Torpid despair fans with his vampire wings.\u201d\n\nThen, suddenly apostrophizing the \u201cEternal Majesty,\u201d she appeals, as one\n\u201chemmed in by dark conspiracies\u201d and \u201cbaited by schismatics,\u201d for\n\u201cprescience to detect\u201d and \u201cstrength to control them\u201d; deeming herself,\nonce more, \u201cthe Lord\u2019s Vicegerent,\u201d to execute his judgments.\n\n    \u201cFly, brood of darkness! for my prayer hath risen:\n    And God will hear, and smite, as once he smote\n    The sin of Korah: and the earth shall ope\n    And swallow blasphemy; and plagues leap forth\n    Consuming impious men: even _till the Church,\n    Swinging her holy censer in the midst,\n    Shall stay the pestilence_, God\u2019s wrath appeased!\u201d\n\nThis is a fine allusion to the destruction of the three schismatical\nupstarts in the wilderness; and it is surprising to see a Protestant\nauthor attribute to Catholics so much knowledge of the Bible.\nNevertheless, poor sinful mortals never make a greater mistake than when\nthey fancy themselves ministers of what they call the \u201cjustice\u201d of Him\n\u201cwhose thoughts are not as our thoughts.\u201d\n\nPerhaps Fakenham was about to make some such reply; for this\npoet-created Mary Tudor\u2014after pausing, we suppose, to take\nbreath\u2014continues:\n\n    \u201cAnswer me not. I rise from this cold grave,\n    My penitential couch, with heart as frozen\n    As the dead limbs beneath, and will unbending\n    As this hard stone that shuts her from the world.\u201d\n\nThus we are fully prepared for anything she may do; yet, in fact, she\nproves singularly innocuous.\n\nThe play opens with a discussion between Gardiner and Fakenham on the\nsubject of the queen\u2019s marriage. Both are agreed that she ought to\nmarry, for the good of State and Church; but either has his eye on a\nvery different candidate for her hand. The abbot\u2019s candidate is Reginald\nCardinal Pole\u2014a character to whom our author does full justice as among\nthe loftiest of his time. Fakenham thus describes him as a \u201cstudent at\nPadua\u201d:\n\n                  \u201cA nobler presence\n    Never embodied a more gracious soul:\n    Ardent, yet thoughtful; in the search of knowledge\n    Unwearied, yet most temperate in its use.\n    _Whate\u2019er he learned he wore with such an ease,\n    It seemed incorporated with his substance;\n    And beamed forth, like the light that emanates\n    From a saint\u2019s brow._\u201d\n\nAnd again:\n\n                \u201cOft have I watched him sitting\n    For hours, on some rude promontory\u2019s edge,\n    Wrapt in his mantle, his broad brow, sustained\n    With outspread palm, o\u2019ershadowing his eyes.\n    And there, as one of Titan birth, he lingered\n    In strange community with nature; mingling\n    With all around\u2014the boundless sky, the ocean,\n    The rock, the forest\u2014looking back defiance\n    Unto the elements: _as some lone column\n    Beneath the shadow of a thunder-cloud_.\u201d\n\nFor the thought in these last six lines Sir Aubrey seems indebted to\nLord Byron, that poet \u201cof Titan birth\u201d\u2014who, indeed, would have sat for\nthe picture far better, we imagine, than Pole; except that, instead of\n\u201clooking defiance at the elements\u201d (an attitude for which we see no\nreason in Pole\u2019s case either), his face would have shown ecstatic joy at\n\u201cmingling with all around.\u201d\n\n    \u201cYe elements, in whose ennobling stir\n    I feel myself exalted!\u201d\n\n    (_Childe Harold_, canto iv.)\n\nThe way Gardiner sneers at Fakenham\u2019s candidate, and then introduces his\nown, affords us an opportunity of correcting the author\u2019s misconceptions\nof this prelate. First, then, there is no proof whatever that Gardiner\nwas blood-thirsty, or even severe. Had he been the relentless persecutor\nhe is popularly represented, his own diocese of Winchester would have\nbecome the scene of numerous executions for heresy; whereas, in fact,\nnot one such execution can be shown to have taken place there. Neither,\nagain, is there any more evidence that he egged on Mary to acts of\ncruelty. If he did make the attempt, he failed signally; for the real\nMary Tudor was personally guiltless of a single act of intolerance even.\nThe only authentic instance in which Gardiner played the part of evil\ngenius to the queen was when he urged her to retain the Royal Supremacy\nestablished by her father\u2014her title and authority as head of the English\nChurch\u2014a counsel which elicited the witty reply: \u201cWomen, I have read in\nScripture, are forbidden to speak in the church. Is it, then, fitting\nthat _your_ church should have a dumb head?\u201d At the time of giving this\nbad advice Gardiner belonged to the anti-papal party\u2014which, of course,\nwas therefore schismatical, though nominally Catholic. And this\ntime-serving adhesion was the one great sin of his life. He repented of\nit some time before his death, and publicly lamented it in a sermon at\nSt. Paul\u2019s Cross, preached on occasion of the reconciliation of the\nkingdom with the Holy See; nevertheless, the memory of it so weighed\nupon his conscience when he lay on his death-bed that he asked to have\nthe Passion of Our Saviour read to him, and, when the reader came to the\ndenial of Peter, said: \u201cStop! I, too, have denied my Lord with Peter;\nbut I have not learned to weep bitterly with Peter.\u201d\n\nWe may here remark that, had our author been acquainted with the above\nfacts of Gardiner\u2019s history, he would not have sacrificed truth to\npoetic effect by making him die suddenly after the burning of Cranmer;\nnor, again, have put into his mouth such an un-English argument as this\nagainst Pole\u2019s fitness to share the throne with Mary:\n\n                  \u201cHe is _but an Englishman_:\n    And \u2019tis an adage older than the hills\n    That prophets are not honored in their land.\u201d\n\nOne so anxious, as Gardiner must have been at that time, to keep\n_foreign domination_ out of England could never have advocated the\nmarriage of his sovereign with \u201cSpanish Philip,\u201d nor, indeed, have been\nlikely to call the latter\u2019s father\n\n    \u201cThat wisest monarch, most devout of Christians,\n    Potent of captains, fortunate of men.\u201d\n\nBut, of course, the poet stands to his colors. Having selected Gardiner\nfor the villain _par excellence_, he makes him welcome even foreign\ndomination in the person of a bigoted prince, who, he knows, will imbrue\nhis hands in the blood of heretics.\n\nPhilip does not come upon the scene till the third Act; but the\nintervening scenes form a prelude to his advent.\n\nFirst we have the queen in council on the question of her marriage, and\nparticularly of the Spanish prince\u2019s suit. While asking Gardiner\u2019s\nadvice she betrays her love for Reginald, and is quickly crushed into\nabandoning that hope by the chancellor\u2019s daring assurance that her\ncousin is certainly Pope. Accordingly, she yields reluctant assent to\nthe prayer of Philip\u2019s ambassador. Then, in the same scene, follows a\n\u201cpatient hearing\u201d of Ridley and Latimer, whose contumacious spirit is\nwell shown by the dramatist. Mary treats them with great forbearance,\nand leaves them to ponder what she has said. The closing passage of this\nscene is noteworthy. Latimer boasts:\n\n                     \u201cO queen! that day is past\n    When spiritual knowledge was confined to priests.\n    Our very babes drink knowledge as they suck.\n    Each stripling, as he runs, plucks from each bough\n    The fruit of knowledge.\u201d\n\nMary\u2019s reply is of surprising force and beauty:\n\n                            \u201cAh, sirs, have a care!\n    The tree of knowledge was an evil thing,\n    _With root in hell, and fruitage unto death_.\n    But in the self-same garden likewise grew\n    Another mystery, the tree of life.\n    This too bore fruit, unseen till after-time:\n    And this was Christ. Children of Adam, we,\n    _Condemned to cultivate what first we stole,\n    Must tend the second tree with watchful love,\n    Or perish by the poison of the first_.\u201d\n\nThe remaining scene of this Act and the opening scene of the next are\ntaken up chiefly with the disturbance occasioned by the approaching\nnuptials. Underhill, the \u201cHot-Gospeller,\u201d is introduced, together with\nriotous citizens and the antagonists Sandys and Weston. Underhill is an\nhonest fellow, and loyal to his queen, whose panegyrist he becomes at\nthe play\u2019s close. Though the rioters are in the minority, the rebellion\nbecomes strong enough to attack Whitehall Palace, where Mary is seen at\nthe opening of the second Act. Her masculine valor is here displayed.\nFirst she leans from the window to encourage her soldiers, then actually\nsallies forth to head them in person, and wins the day by thus risking\nher life. In the second scene Underhill excites the indignation of\nSandys by his chivalrous defence of the queen not only as the one\n\n    \u201cWhom the Lord gives to rule o\u2019er Israel,\u201d\n\nbut for her clemency.\n\n    \u201cUNDERHILL. _The queen is not well served_.\n        You heard yourself\n    How, leaning from the Holbein gallery,\n    Where she so long stood target to your shafts,\n    She bade her furious knights to spare, and spake\n    Peace to the suppliant throng.\u201d\n\n    \u201cSANDYS.                    Yet your fierce captains\n    Do ramp along the streets with bloody staves,\n    Hunting the white-faced citizens like rats;\n    Or at their own doors summarily hang them.\u201d\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \u201cUNDERHILL. Not fifty thus have died: a sorrowful sum\n    If measured by domestic pangs, yet _small\n    If balanced by the evil of their plots_:\n    Small if contrasted with the precedents\n    Of former feuds. In Henry\u2019s time, they say,\n    Full seventy thousand their viaticum\n    Had from the hangman.\u201d\n\nBut our author does more than make Underhill her apologist. He seems\nanxious, every now and then, to remind us that he privately thinks much\nbetter of his heroine than the history he has read allows him to\nrepresent. He sets off the gentler side of her nature in strong contrast\nto the vindictive, and, indeed, attributes the latter to inherited\nqualities for which she is not responsible. Accordingly, in the third\nand fourth scenes of the second Act Mary\u2019s generous forgivingness, and\nespecially to Elizabeth, shines out gloriously.\n\nCount Egmont, Philip\u2019s envoy, has placed upon her finger his master\u2019s\nbetrothal ring, when Renaud, the Spanish ambassador, strikes in with:\n\n                                \u201cPermit me\n    To be so bold as to suggest \u2019twere prudent\n    His Grace delayed till treason be put down.\n    _Too many prisoners your Grace releases_.\n\n    QUEEN. It was the custom of my forefathers\n    To pardon criminals upon Good Friday.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    RENAUD.                Pardon me: there may be\n    Some guiltier. Our prince must be kept back\n    Should your Grace yield to mistimed clemency.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Forgive my plainness. Can King Philip come\n    While criminals remain unjustified?\n    _Your sister waits her trial._\n\n    GARDINER.                      Let me speak.\n    While she, the princess, lives, there is no safety\n    For England, for the Church.\u201d\n\nHere Bridges, Lieutenant of the Tower, enters with a sealed warrant.\n\n    \u201cBRIDGES. Your Grace will pardon, if, in a case like this,\n    Your servant feels misgiving. This sealed warrant\n    Commands me yield the princess\u2014to be dealt with\n    As sentence shall direct.\n\n    QUEEN.                    O thou good servant!\n    Thy queen, on her heart\u2019s knees, thanks and rewards thee.\n    Whose is this deed? By God\u2019s death, answer me!\n    Ay, Gardiner, thou shalt answer for this thing,\n    If thou hast done it.\n\n    GARDINER.             Let me see the paper.\n    A sorry trick to fright the princess! Trust me,\n    I had no hand in it.      [_He tears the warrant._\n\n    QUEEN.                  _Inhuman hounds!\n    That worry your poor victim ere you slay it._\n    But I shall balk your malice. Silence, Gardiner!\n    Too much already hath been said: your tongues\n    Are deadlier than poison. Bridges, through you,\n    Who pitied poor Jane Grey, I shall henceforth\n    Secure my sister. You have known and loved her.\n    You are my servant now. Receive your knighthood.\u201d\n\nThus foiled in their design, Renaud and Gardiner pretend, of course,\nthat they did not for a moment mean the death of the princess, but only\nher removal; and the Spaniard goes on to explain that this \u201cremoval\u201d was\nto be effected \u201cby a bridegroom\u2019s sweet compulsion\u201d\u2014mentioning Philibert\nof Savoy as a suitor\u2014and then, finding that offer contemptuously\nrejected, suggests \u201cthe kind keeping of the Hungarian queen.\u201d\n\n    \u201cQUEEN.            Be content, sir.\n    _My sister hath but one friend in this council\u2014\n    Myself_, companion of her youth. _It may be\n    She hath compassed ill against me: yet will not I,\n    Who fostered her lone childhood, now destroy her\n    By death or exile._ You are malcontent.\n    Conform ye to my will: I shall not swerve.\u201d\n\nIn the following scene, where Mary and Elizabeth have it all to\nthemselves, the generosity of the former is the more touching by reason\nof her reproaches, which Elizabeth can only answer by acting a part\nwhich such a dissembler could very easily feign. Mary shows strong\ngrounds for suspecting her loyalty, but nobly acquits her and replaces\non her finger the ring which was the pledge of love between them,\nsaying:\n\n    \u201cOr innocent or guilty, I forgive you.\u201d\n\nWe regret that space does not allow us to transcribe this scene in full.\n\nWe pass to the third Act, which introduces the two best-drawn characters\nof the play\u2014Philip and Reginald Pole.\n\nIn these two men the author has illustrated\u2014perhaps unconsciously\u2014the\nantipodal extremes of the moral results of the Catholic religion. In\nPole we see a character perfectly Christlike in its mixture of majesty\nwith gentleness; in Philip one who has degraded faith into superstition,\nand made doctrines and means of grace the instruments of selfishness and\npassion. The greater the good in a system, the greater the evil into\nwhich it may be perverted. The amiable Fakenham tells Gardiner, in the\nprevious scene, his mind about the Spaniard\u2019s portrait:\n\n                       \u201cA moody man,\n    Whose countenance is ghastly, bearing dismal:\n    For ever wrangling, rude. His glance is sinister,\n    Stealthy: his laughter a sardonic sneer.\n    _I would rather face a vulture o\u2019er a corpse,\n    Than such a man, whose hell is in himself._\n    He is a tree of death.\u201d\n\nGardiner may well wince as he replies:\n\n              \u201cYou have a caustic brush:\n    The canvas burns beneath it.\u201d\n\nYet poor Queen Mary fondly looks forward to the coming of her affianced\nas (to borrow Byron\u2019s exquisite metaphor)\n\n             \u201cthe rainbow of her future years\u2014\n    Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.\u201d\n\nNeither does she betray any foreboding in consequence of the storm that\nushers in her wedding-day. The bridegroom, on the contrary, peevishly\nexclaims:\n\n    \u201cA sorry day for our solemnities!\n    I kiss this crucifix. Avert the omen,\n    Most holy James of Compostella!\u201d\n\n_He_ does not see in this conjugal union\n\n    \u201cThe cloud-compelling harbinger of love.\u201d\n\nThe \u201comen\u201d is not unfelt, though, by some of the spectators,\nparticularly when Doctor Sandys gives tongue about it. The wedding-scene\nis simple enough. The queen says, very prettily, when Philip offers a\ndiamond ring:\n\n                    \u201cNay, my lord:\n    I would be wed, like any other maiden,\n    With the plain hoop of gold.\u201d\n\nIt is the remaining half of the play which makes the whole so inferior\nto the first play. Not that, as we have said, there is any deficiency of\ndramatic power. Philip and the cardinal are masterfully handled. Full\njustice, too, is done\u2014from the author\u2019s stand-point\u2014to the characters of\nGardiner, Cranmer, and the rest. But a thick gloom overhangs the entire\npicture; and the glaring historical untruth of much of it is no relief\nto Catholic eyes.\n\nPhilip and Pole clash instantly. The Spaniard has a presentiment of this\nat the moment when Sir John Gage announces\n\n    \u201cThe cardinal legate\u2019s boat hath touched the beach.\n\n    QUEEN. The cardinal arrived! My dear, dear cousin!\n    Go, my lord chamberlain\u2014go, Sir John Gage,\n    And bear our greetings to his Eminence.\n    Let his legantine cross be borne before him;\n    And all appliances of holy state\n    Attend his blessed footsteps. This our king,\n    And we, shall welcome him on Whitehall stairs.\n\n    PHILIP. You are right gracious to the cardinal.\n    In Spain we condescend less.\n\n    QUEEN.                        Ah! you\u2019ll love him,\n    As I do, when familiarly you know him.\n\n    PHILIP.   I somewhat doubt it.\u201d\n\nIn the next scene, when the cardinal has congratulated the queen on the\nreturn of England to the faith\u2014telling the nation:\n\n                              \u201cBe sure\n    The light devolving from great Gregory\n    Still shines from Peter\u2019s chair. Who turns from it\n    Renounces hope. Peace ripens in its beams\u201d\u2014\n\nand Mary has joyfully responded:\n\n    \u201cHere stand we without question, king and queen;\n    And, with our Parliament, implore the pope\n    For reconciliation. Take this missive:\n    It is sincere. Kneeling we crave your blessing!\u201d\u2014\n\nPhilip interjects:\n\n    \u201cYour Eminence shall pardon my stiff knees\u2014\n    Stiff, Spanish manners. Ha! I cannot kneel.\u201d\n\nNo wonder the queen faints as the cardinal blesses her.\n\nPhilip, having thus early begun with insolence, loses no time in showing\nthe mixture of brute and devil that he is. He threatens to leave England\nbecause his sanguinary counsels are not taken; whereupon we are rejoiced\nto see the author make Mary as well as Pole defend the policy of \u201cfree\ndiscussion.\u201d Of course Gardiner supports Philip eagerly. Presently\u2014so\noutrageous is Philip\u2019s conduct to his wife\u2014the cardinal\u2019s indignation\ncan contain itself no longer, and his dignified remonstrance stings the\nking into exclaiming:\n\n    \u201cWere I a basilisk, I\u2019d look thee dead!\u201d\n\nGardiner urges Pole to retire; but the hero answers:\n\n                  \u201cNot so. My heart is strong:\n    And like some stalwart wrestler, who hath need\n    Of exercise, and doubts nor heart nor limb,\n    I shrink not from the combat. _He who carries\n    His cross, a daily burden, well may stand\n    In front of any giant of the ring\n    Who boasts he can move spheres._\u201d\n\nAnd again he warns the monster:\n\n                        \u201cAy: you are great\n    Above us by your station, as the vulture\n    Upon his mountain pinnacle. What then?\n    The arrow makes a pathway in the air:\n    _The peasant\u2019s hands can reach the feathered tyrant_,\n    _And from the vale quench his despotic eye_.\u201d\n\n\u2014\u201cVulture,\u201d mark: not eagle.\n\nWe find a profound study in Mary\u2019s love for Philip, and particularly in\nits persistence. How she could feel toward such a man anything beyond\nwife-like duty\u2014she, too, who had loved Reginald Pole from her\nchildhood\u2014is mysterious indeed. It will doubtless be said that the poet\nintends this new love for a part of her madness\u2014like her passion for the\nworthless Courtenaye: her craving for love being such as to invest any\nspouse with \u201cCytherea\u2019s zone.\u201d Then, again, the treatment Pole receives\nat Philip\u2019s hands, and his sublime bearing under it, ought to have the\nresult of alienating her affections from the Spaniard even more than the\nlatter\u2019s behavior to herself. Hear her cry, one moment:\n\n                          \u201cPoor heart!\n    Thou wilt not break! Insult unmitigated!\n    Witnessed\u2014by him!\u2014by Pole! O Reginald!\n    Avenged!\u201d\n\nAnd the next, see her so overjoyed by an usher announcing \u201cthe king\u201d\nthat she springs up from the suppliant posture in which she has just\nbeen praying\n\n                          \u201cthat even as the thief\n    On the third cross I may have peace in heaven\u201d\u2014\n\nsprings up, and exclaims wildly:\n\n                  \u201cThe king! King Philip!\n    O speed him hither! Stay: here\u2019s for thy news\u2014\n    A jewel from my finger. Haste thee, friend.\u201d\n\nAnd again, though his Majesty enters \u201cmoodily,\u201d she can actually greet\nhim thus:\n\n    \u201cO Philip. Philip! art thou come to me?\n    _And shall there not now be an end of weeping?_\n    I was thinking of thee\u2014whom else think I of?\n    I talked of thee\u2014of whom is all my talking?\n    But thou art here again: _and my poor heart,\n    Like a caged bird, is beating at its bars,\n    To fly forth to the comfort of thy bosom_.\n    Speak\u2014speak\u2014_my soul_! and give me peace.\u201d\n\nVerily, this _is_ madness! Who has ever seen so extraordinary a picture\nof woman before? Has not the poet drawn something impossible? Not at\nall. He simply displays, we think, an unusual knowledge of the feminine\nheart. A much less acquaintance with that organ should prevent surprise\nat any phenomena it may exhibit\u2014particularly in the shape of undeserved\nlove or unreasoning constancy.\n\nOf course the poor woman\u2019s fondness only irritates her lord, instead of\nappeasing him; so he tells her bluntly what he has come for\u2014to deliver\nhis ultimatum; which is, first, the removal of the legate; and,\nsecondly, the death of the heretical prelates. Of his feeling towards\nthe cardinal he says:\n\n    \u201cCall it not hatred, but antipathy:\n    Such as the callow chicken feels for hawks,\n    Or wild horse for the wolf. Aversion call it:\n    That wraps me in a cold and clammy horror\n    When we approach. I know he cannot harm me;\n    _And have small doubt he would not if he could_.\n    But still, my flesh creeps if I do but touch him,\n    As when one strokes a cat\u2019s hair \u2019gainst the grain.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n                              Odious is his garb\n    Of ostentatious purple; jewelled hands;\n    _That beard down-streaming like the chisel\u2019d locks\n    Of Moses from the hand of Angelo_.\u201d\n\nLike a gleam of sunshine, for a moment, comes a happy description of a\nvisit from Elizabeth to the queen. Underhill is the narrator. It is in\nthe ninth scene of this too long third Act.\n\n                          \u201cHer royal barge\n    Was garlanded with flowers, festooned around\n    An awning of green satin, richly broidered\n    With eglantine and buds of gold. The bright one\n    Beneath this canopy reclined in state,\n    Fairer than Cleopatra with her Roman.\n    Her royal sister on the bowery shore\n    Of Richmond met her, kissing her 'tween whiles;\n    Her wan cheek flushing to a healthier glow.\n    With hospitable care, and love, she led\n    Elizabeth to where, shrined in green leaves\n    And flowers, a tent, curtained with cloth of gold\n    And purple samite, stood; whose folds were wrought\n    With silver fleur-de-lys and gold pomegranates.\n    The music they so love breathed in their ears\n    Like amorous blandishment: and when the morn\n    Rippled along the wave with soberer ray,\n    The princess stept once more into her barge,\n    And floated down the current like a swan.\u201d\n\nYet one more quotation from this Act; for we shall have but little to\ncite from Acts fourth and fifth. The cardinal, after arguing with\nGardiner against the severe measures that are being taken under his and\nBonner\u2019s supervision, and defending the queen from the charge of\napproval\u2014her consent having been forced, and things of which she was\nignorant done in her name\u2014finds relief in conversing with Fakenham,\nwhose virtues he thoroughly appreciates. The latter speaks of his\nfriend\u2019s failing strength; and Pole, at a loss to account for it, says\nhe has \u201cheard of vampire poisons,\u201d but instantly suppresses the\nsuspicion. They have been up all night, apparently.\n\n    \u201cCARDINAL.             A sudden sunburst!\u2014Lo!\n    God\u2019s Image in our heart is as yon orb\n    Unto the universe; _the eye of nature,\n    Dispersing rays more eloquent than tongues_;\n    Beams that give life as well as light; whose absence\n    Wraps in cold shadow all that moves and breathes.\n    At times that Image walks through spheres remote;\n    Unobvious to the largely wandering eye:\n    Then nightmare darkness sits upon the soul:\n    Then, by its own shade mantled, waits the soul,\n    Like some dark mourner, lonely in his house.\n    _But the harmonious hours fulfil themselves;\n    And sunrise comes unlooked for, peak to peak\n    Answering in spiritual radiance. This is indeed\n    So palpably to meet Divinity,\n    That hence the Pagan erred, not knowing God._\u201d\n\nIn the fourth Act we have, first, the recall of Pole to Rome, contrived\nby Philip and Gardiner. The queen refuses to let him go; but while, in\nobedience to her, he remains in England, he resigns his legateship in\nsubmission to the interdict. Then comes the picture-scene, which is\nadmirably contrived. The poor queen stops before Philip\u2019s picture and\ntalks to it as if it were a shrine. The original enters and brutally\ndisenchants his worshipper. After a bitter interview, in which Mary\naccuses him of conjugal infidelity, the Spaniard takes his departure,\nanswering her \u201cBegone!\u201d with a sudden \u201cFor ever!\u201d\n\n    \u201cQUEEN (_alone_).       I submit to God\u2019s decree.\n    Was it for this my maiden liberty\n    Was yielded?\u2014to be spurned, despised, and still\n    Bear on without redress? O grief! O shame!\n          [_She approaches the picture of Philip._\n    Back, silken folds, that hide what was my joy,\n    And is my torture! Back!\u2014See, I have rent you,\n    False, senseless idol, from thy tinselled frame!\n    I wrench thee forth\u2014I look on thee no more!\n    And thus\u2014and thus\u2014      [_she tears up the picture_]\n    I scatter thee from out\n    The desecrated temple of my heart!      [_A pause._\n    My brain is hot\u2014this swoln heart chokes my throat\n    Yet I am better thus than self-deceived.\n    Die, wretched queen! O die, dishonored wife!\n    _I pant for the cold blessing of the grave!_\u201d\n\nNext follows the trial of Ridley and Latimer. Cranmer, too, is present,\nand disputes, but is not on trial. The contrast between Gardiner and\nPole is admirable. Mary, too, is represented as sedulously just. Ridley\nand Latimer speak, of course, as if perfectly conscientious and worthy\nof martyrdom, but make no attempt to disprove the principle of\nsubmission to authority, insisting solely on their own infallibility.\nThe cardinal is at last compelled to say of them:\n\n                    \u201cThis is very grievous!\n    Madam, so please you, these be heated men,\n    Who may not be convinced, and will not bend.\u201d\n\nHe has better hopes of Cranmer; but his gentle earnestness is lost upon\nhim no less.\n\nHere be it remembered that it was the secular, and not the\necclesiastical, arm which inflicted the death-penalty for obdurate\nheresy. This penalty was the law in those days\u2014days when every kind of\nfelony was more severely punished than now. Whatever we moderns may\nthink of this law, we must not forget that heresy is the greatest and\nmost pernicious of crimes; and, again, that it was only formal and\naggressive heresy that got itself arraigned and condemned. Moreover,\nwhat made the civil power so severe upon it was the fact that it was\nalways coupled with sedition and treason.\n\nBut before we close our remarks upon the executions in Mary\u2019s reign, let\nus look for a moment on the beautiful scene which intervenes between the\none we have been examining and the prison-scene at Oxford\u2014the last of\nthe fourth Act.\n\nMary and Reginald are closeted together. The holy priest seeks to\ncomfort his cousin.\n\n                        \u201cPoor soul!\n    Be to yourself more charitable. Think\n    That One there is who answers for your faults\n    And multiplies your merits.\n\n    QUEEN.           Hope rests there:\n    Or I were mad.\n\n    CARDINAL.     All men are born to suffer.\n    What are the consolations of the Scripture,\n    The fruit of exhortation and of prayer,\n    If now you quail? No, you shall quail no more.\n\n    QUEEN. _My web of life was woven with the nettle._\n    My very triumphs were bedewed with tears.\n    What now is left?\n\n    CARDINAL.     Religion. _As the sunbow\n    Shines in the showery gloom and makes the cloud\n    A shape of glory_, in thy path she stands\n    A herald of high promise. Blessed emblem!\n    Religion bids thee hope. This gloomy life\n    Must be amended. We must draw thee hence.\n\n    QUEEN. Thanks be to God! time works while\n    we grieve on.\n    _Deprive not sorrow of the shade she needs,\n    The sad quiescence of desponding thought_.\n    Job also raised his voice, and wailed aloud,\n    And so was comforted. Remember, also,\n    In weeping I can pray. Should I not?\n\n    CARDINAL.                               Yea.\n    Pray with thanksgiving: \u2019tis the sum of duty.\u201d\n\nThe sublimity of this passage needs no comment. The rest of the scene is\nequally touching. Mary speaks for an instant of Philip. She is still\nobliged to say:\n\n    \u201cWhene\u2019er I turn my thoughts to God, one image\n    Stands between me and heaven. Instead of prayer\n    A sigh for Philip trembles on my lips.\n\n    CARDINAL. To pine thus for the absent, as men mourn\n    The dead, is sinful.\n\n    QUEEN.       Speak no more of him.\n    Thoughts holier be my guide.\u201d\n\nThen Reginald teaches her what it is\n\n    \u201cTo stablish thrones on bounty; reign through love.\u201d\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    _The chief of greatness is surpassing goodness_:\n    And that outsoars the ken of mortal eyes\u2014\n    Hidden with God.\u201d\n\nShe offers him the archbishopric of Canterbury. He answers musingly:\n\n                    \u201cHe who hath stood\n    Upon the first step of the papal throne,\n    And vacant left the Vatican, may look\n    With eye undazzled on the chair of Lambeth.\u201d\n\nThen he accepts, and presently the queen observes:\n\n    \u201cI have long thought it strange that you refused\n    The greater honor though the heavier burden:\n    The proffered crown of Rome.\n\n    CARDINAL [_after much agitation_]. Look not alarmed. [_A pause._\n    You touch the mind\u2019s immedicable wound.\n    O God! that I had died before I knew thee!\n    Pardon me\u2014pardon me!\n\n    QUEEN.                   We both need pardon.\n    Let us forget the past. God strengthen us!\n\n    CARDINAL. Fear not. _Henceforth we gaze upon each other,\n    As the two Cherubim upon the Ark\u2014\n    The living God between._\n\n    QUEEN.                   Then take my hand.\n    It will be colder soon. May God be with you!\u201d\n\nThis \u201cimmedicable wound\u201d is the poet\u2019s Protestant fancy, yet the pathos\nof the scene is exquisite.\n\nThe prison-scene at Oxford gives us, first, Masters Ridley and Latimer\ntaking leave of Cranmer; then Cranmer watching their execution from the\nwindow, and Gardiner, unobserved, watching him. The famous recantation\nnumber one takes place; and the subsequent despair of the wretch closes\nthe fourth Act.\n\nThe fifth Act we do not care to analyze minutely, so much of it is\nsickeningly untrue. Mary has become fanatical again. Pole tells her that\n\u201cthe poor, by thousands, perish in the flames.\u201d This is utterly false.\nAll the executions under Mary\u2019s government did not amount to more than\ntwo hundred and seventy-seven, and \u201cfrom this list of 'martyrs for the\nGospel\u2019 must be excluded,\u201d says a learned writer, \u201cthe names of those\nwho suffered for political offences or other crimes.\u201d Dr. Maitland, the\ncelebrated librarian of Lambeth, in his _Essays on Subjects connected\nwith the Reformation in England_, speaks of \u201cthe bitter and provoking\nspirit of some of those who were very active and forward in promoting\nthe progress of the Reformation; the political opinions which they held,\nand the language in which they disseminated them; the fierce personal\nattacks which they made on those whom they considered as enemies; and,\nto say the least, the little care which was taken by those who were\nreally actuated by religious motives, and seeking a true reformation of\nthe Church, to shake off _a lewd, ungodly, profane rabble_, who joined\nin the cause of Protestantism, thinking it, in their depraved\nimaginations, or hoping to make it by their wicked devices, the cause of\nliberty against law, of the poor against the rich, of the laity against\nthe clergy, of the people against their rulers.\u201d From this rabble, then,\ncame the \u201cpoor\u201d who \u201cperished in the flames.\u201d\n\nAs to Oxford\u2019s pretended \u201cmartyrs,\u201d Ridley and Latimer were inciters of\nsedition and brought upon themselves the vengeance of the law; while\nThomas Cranmer was, without exception, the most unmitigated miscreant in\nthe whole disgraceful business of what is called the Reformation. Who\nwill question that he richly deserved the stake after bringing to it so\nmany victims, in Henry\u2019s reign, for denying doctrines which he himself\nwas secretly denying at the time? There are living Anglican writers who\nrejoice in calling all these boasted reformers a set of \u201cunredeemed\nvillains.\u201d\n\nOf course, as we said in our review of the first play, we acquit the\nauthor of all conscious prejudice. The last words he puts into his\nheroine\u2019s mouth\u2014\u201cTime unveils Truth\u201d\u2014are an appeal to \u201cthe avenger,\u201d who\nwill not fail to do her justice yet. It was a noble thought to make\nUnderhill, the Hot-Gospeller, her panegyrist. Oxford vaticinates:\n\n                              \u201cAwful queen!\n    Hardly of thee Posterity shall judge:\n    For they shall measure thee\u2014\n\n    UNDERHILL.             Let me speak, sir:\n    For I have known, and been protected by her,\n    When fierce men thirsted for my blood. I say not\n    That she was innocent of grave offence;\n    Nor aught done in her name extenuate.\n    But I insist upon her maiden mercies,\n    _In proof that cruelty was not her nature_.\n    She abrogated the tyrannic laws\n    Made by her father. She restored her subjects\n    To personal liberty; to judge and jury;\n    Inculcating impartiality.\n    Good laws, made or revived, attest her fitness\n    Like Deborah to judge. She loved the poor:\n    And fed the destitute: and they loved her.\n    _A worthy queen she had been if as little\n    Of cruelty had been done under her\n    As by her._ To equivocate she hated:\n    And was just what she seemed. In fine, she was\n    _In all things excellent while she pursued\n    Her own free inclination without fear_.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                                NANETTE.\n                  _A LEGEND OF THE DAYS OF LOUIS XV._\n\n\n                                   I.\n\n\nA police report is scarcely the place where one would look to find an\nidyl\u2014least of all a French police report. But just as one comes at times\nupon a shy violet nestling in the dusty city ways, even in such an\nunpromising quarter, and in the records of a still more unpromising\ntime, did the present writer stumble upon a veritable romance\u2014\n\n                          \u201cSilly sooth\n    That dallies with the innocence of love\n    Like the old age.\u201d\n\nLet the reader judge if it be not a genuine violet.\n\nOf the many strange functions of the Parisian police in the days of the\nwell-beloved Louis XV.\u2014and altogether most worthless of his name\u2014one of\nthe strangest appears to have been that of furnishing for the amusement\nof the royal circle regular reports, or rather novelettes, of all\nepisodes, striking or romantic, that came under their notice. The French\nhave always had a taste for the dramatic aspect of the law, and to this\nday a _proc\u00e8s-verbal_ reads often like a _feuilleton_ of Ponson du\nTerrail. It may be supposed that, in the narratives which thus tickled\nthe languid leisure of Louis, a rigid adherence to truth was not deemed\nessential where a slight embellishment enhanced the interest. But all\nhad probably a basis in fact, which one is fain to hope was more than\nusually broad in so innocent and touching a history as that of Nanette\nLollier, the Flower-Girl of the Palais Royal.\n\nIn the year 1740 there dwelt in the parish of St. Leu, at Paris, an\nhonest, hard-working couple named Andr\u00e9 Lollier and Marie Jeanne Ladure,\nhis wife; the former of whom held a subordinate position in the Bureau\nof Markets, while the latter attended to their fish-stand. Between them\nthey earned ample to keep the pot boiling comfortably, had it not been\nfor the prodigious number of small mouths that daily watered around that\nsavory and capacious vessel; and when there came a sixteenth, it is to\nbe feared that honest Andr\u00e9 received it rather ruefully and altogether\nas a discord in the harmony of existence\u2014a blessing very much in\ndisguise. So despite the new-comer\u2019s beauty and precocity and countless\npretty baby ways, her aggrieved parents were only too glad to accept her\ngodmother\u2019s offer to take her off their hands and to bring her up. By\nthat good lady\u2014who seems to have been really a most kind-hearted person,\nalthough she _was_ a beadle\u2019s widow\u2014the little Nanette (so the child had\nbeen named) was carefully instructed in such branches of learning as a\nyoung person of her station was at that time expected to know, and\nwhich, in truth, were not very many. There is little doubt that one\nyoung lady of Vassar would have put the entire faculty of St. Cyr to\nrout.\n\nBut Nanette was soon found to possess a fine voice, and pains were taken\nto cultivate it\u2014so successfully that when, at the mature age of twelve,\nthe youthful chorister made her _d\u00e9but_ in a Christmas anthem at the\nparish church, everybody was delighted. And when during the following\nHoly Week she sang a _Stabat_ better than many persons four times her\nage, everybody said at once she was a prodigy.\n\nNow, we all know what comes to prodigies. The praises, pettings, and\npresents this prodigy received turned her small and not very wise head.\nGood M\u00e8re Lollier wished to make a fish-mongress of her; mademoiselle\nspurned the proposal. What! she, a genius, a beauty, a divine voice,\nwaste her life on horrid, ill-smelling fish? (She made no objection, you\nwill observe, to dining on them when her mother cooked them for her, but\nthat was quite a different matter.) She soil her pretty fingers with\nscales, haggle over herrings, or dicker about dace? Perish the thought!\nHer mother did it, to be sure, but then\u2014her mother was not a genius. (Do\nyoung ladies nowadays ever reason thus?) No; she would be a flower-girl\nand sing her nosegays into every buttonhole\u2014or wherever else they then\nwore their nosegays\u2014in Paris. The manners of the fish-market even then\nlacked something of the repose of Vere de Vere, and M\u00e8re Lollier\u2019s only\nanswer to this astounding proposal was a slap and\u2014we regret to say\u2014a\nkick. She was not aware that genius is not to be kicked with impunity.\nShe soon discovered it to her sorrow; for in her way she loved Nanette,\nand kicked her, we may be sure, only in kindness.\n\nShortly after this affront Nanette disappeared, and from that moment all\ntrace of her was lost. Word came to her parents from time to time that\nshe was well, but of her whereabouts their most persistent efforts could\ngain no tidings. Her absence lasted three years; how or where passed no\none\u2014we sniff the touch of the embellisher here\u2014could ever discover, nor\nwould she herself divulge. At last one fine morning comes a message to\nM\u00e8re Lollier that her daughter is at the convent of the Carmelites, and\nwill be handed over to them in person, or to any priest who comes with\nan order from them.\n\nBeside herself with joy, M\u00e8re Lollier, with just a hasty touch to her\ncap\u2014even a _Dame de la Halle_ is, outside of business, a woman\u2014rushes\noff to M. le Cur\u00e9 with the great news. In those days M. le Cur\u00e9 was the\nfirst applied to in every emergency of joy or grief: perhaps it would\nhave been better for Paris if the custom had not been survived by others\nless wholesome. The good priest lent a sympathetic ear; for the piety\nand industry of the Lolliers had made them prime favorites with him, and\nhe had, besides, taken a lively interest in the fate of his little\nchorister. A _fiacre_ is called at once, and the _cur\u00e9_ and M\u00e8re\nLollier, with her eldest son, a strapping sergeant in the French\nguards\u2014not then such pigmies as absinthe has left them now\u2014fly to the\nconvent at such a pace as only the promise of a fabulous _pourboire_ can\nextract from a Parisian cab-horse. The lady-superior greets them in the\nconvent parlor and presently ushers in a lovely young girl\u2014what! a\ngirl?\u2014a princess, to whom M\u00e8re Lollier with difficulty represses an\ninclination to courtesy, while M. le Cur\u00e9 wipes his spectacles and the\ngaping sergeant at once comes to a salute. But the princess speedily\nputs an end to their doubts by embracing them all in turn with the\nliveliest emotion. It is indeed Nanette, but Nanette developed into such\nbeauty and grace and sprightliness as many a princess might envy. Nor is\nher moral nature less improved. She is now as modest and docile as\nbefore she was vain and headstrong; only\u2014she will still be a\nflower-girl. And yet women are sometimes called weak!\n\nBefore the young lady\u2019s appearance in the parlor the superior had\nexplained to her wondering auditors how a strange lady the evening\nbefore had brought Nanette to the convent\u2014\u201cHum!\u201d says M. le Cur\u00e9\ndubiously, taking snuff\u2014and on leaving her had left at the same time\n20,000 francs for her dowry, if she wished to become a religious\u2014\u201cHa!\u201d\nsays M. le Cur\u00e9 thoughtfully, brushing away the snuff that has fallen on\nhis band. Then he beams upon Nanette, rubbing his hands encouragingly,\nwhile M\u00e8re Lollier nods acquiescence and the sergeant shifts to the\nother leg and gapes. But Nanette, in spite of these diverse\nblandishments, respectfully but firmly declined to be a religious. Her\nvocation was to be a flower-girl, and a flower-girl she would be.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis the devil\u2019s trade,\u201d cries the _cur\u00e9_, quite out of patience.\n\n\u201cAll roads lead to heaven, my father,\u201d answers Nanette mildly.\n\nSo a flower-girl she becomes; and it must be confessed that, in spite of\nUndine, beauty seems more at home with the flowers than with the fishes.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\n\nOne bright morning in the summer of 1756 the loungers under the\nchestnuts which then adorned the garden of the Palais Royal\u2014that\nforehanded and long-headed (though, long as his head was, he could not\nkeep it long) personage, Philippe \u00c9galit\u00e9, thought shops would be more\nornamental as well as more useful, so he put the chestnuts in his pocket\nand built that splendid colonnade which is the wonder and delight of the\nwandering American\u2014the loungers in the shade of the Palais Royal\nchestnuts were conscious of a new sensation. Not that sensations were\njust then going begging. By no means. One or two royal gentlemen, by\nlaying their crowned heads together, had already contrived that famous\nmisunderstanding which was to turn a large part of three continents into\na shambles for the next seven years; to cost the \u201cwell-beloved,\u201d in\nCanada and India, the brightest jewels of his crown, and to make of\nMontcalm, for losing one and his life with it, a hero, and of\nLally-Tollendal, for having the bad taste to survive the loss of the\nother, a traitor or a martyr as you were for him or against him. So\noften is it that for precisely the same services a grateful and\ndiscriminating country decrees to one of her sons a monument, to another\na halter. Perhaps there is not so much difference between the two\u2014to the\ndead men, at least\u2014as some folks imagine.\n\nBut the heroes we are to deal with are by no means of the stuff of\nmartyrs, and fighting, beyond an ornamental pass or two in the Bois de\nBoulogne, they vote vulgar and _bourgeois_. Here under the chestnut\nblossoms is a sensation much more to their taste. It is a new\nflower-girl. But what a flower-girl! Figure to yourself, then, Mme. la\nDuchesse, a flower-girl arrayed in silks and laces and jewels a\nmarchioness would give her head for (marchionesses\u2019 heads were rated\nhigher then than they came to be before the century was over), with a\ngolden shell for her flower-basket, lined with blue satin and suspended\nby an embroidered scarf from the daintiest waist in the world\u2014a\nflower-girl with the face of a seraph and the figure of a sylph, with\neyes of liquid light and hair of woven sunshine, with the foot of\nCinderella and a hand\u2014a hand only less perfect than that of Madame,\nwhich your humble servant most respectfully salutes.\n\nNews so important must be sent post-haste to Versailles. A score of\nnoblemen sprang to the saddle and rushed to lay their hearts and their\ndiamonds at the feet of this strange paragon. But Nanette, young as she\nwas, could tell base metal from good. The jewels she took from her\nadorers with smiling impartiality; the other sort of trinkets\u2014sadly\nbattered by use, it must be confessed, and not worth much at any\ntime\u2014she rejected with equally smiling disdain. Always gracious, gay,\nand self-possessed, sparkling with raillery and wit, she yet maintained\na maidenly reserve that abashed the boldest license, and her reputation\ngrew even faster than her fortune.\n\nAnd the latter grew apace. She became the rage. Her appearance on the\nPalais Royal, followed at a little distance by footmen in livery and her\nmaid, gathered about her straightway all the gallants and wits in Paris.\nHer basket was emptied in a trice, and emptied again as often as\nrefilled by her servants. It was deemed an honor to receive a nosegay\nfrom her pretty fingers, and more louis than half-franc pieces repaid\nthem.\n\nGreat ladies came to her _lev\u00e9es_\u2014for such they really were\u2014and even\ndeigned to accept from the beautiful flower-girl the gift of a rose or a\nviolet\u2014gifts always sure to be recompensed in noble fashion with jewels\nor costly laces, rich silks or pieces of plate. Within two years Nanette\nhad thus accumulated in houses, lands, and rents an annual income of\nforty thousand francs, besides loading her kindred with presents.\n\nNaturally, this circumstance did not cool the ardor of the followers\nwhom her beauty had attracted. One of these was particularly noticeable\nfor his assiduity. He was a young man about twenty-two years old, of\ndistinguished air and handsome features, tinged with that shadow of\nmelancholy thought to be so irresistible to the feminine imagination.\nHis clothes, too, were in his favor; for though irreproachably neat and\nfaultlessly cut, they had plainly seen their best days. We all know what\na sly rogue Pity is, and how untiringly he panders for a certain\nnameless kinsman. Every afternoon found the melancholy young man at the\ngarden awaiting the flower-girl\u2019s coming. On her arrival he would\nadvance, select a flower, pay a dozen sous, exchange a word, perhaps,\nand disappear till the following day. Once he was absent, and the fair\nflorist\u2019s brow was clouded. In other words, Nanette was extremely cross,\nand many an unlucky _petit-ma\u00eetre_ was that day unmercifully snubbed for\npresuming on previous condescension. The garden trembled and was\nimmersed in gloom. But presently the laggard made his appearance,\nNanette\u2019s lovely face was again wreathed in smiles, the garden breathed\nfreely once more, and the _petit-ma\u00eetres_ were astonished to find their\nvapid pleasantries received more graciously than ever. From this\nremarkable circumstance the sagacious reader will doubtless form his own\nconclusion; and we do not say that the sagacious reader will be wrong.\n\nIn point of fact, we may as well admit at once that Nanette, without\nknowing it, was already in love with this handsome, melancholy stranger,\nof whom she knew nothing, except that he was noble, since he wore a\nsword. She would have given half she was worth to know even his name,\nbut she dared not ask it. As often as the question trembled on her\ntongue she felt herself blushing violently and unable, for the life of\nher, to open her lips. Her modesty had not been educated away by a\nseason in the civilizing atmosphere of the court.\n\nChance at last befriended her. One evening the brilliant Marquis de\nLouvois, after talking awhile with the unknown, came up to the Count de\nla Ch\u00e2tre, who was seated beside her, and said to him:\n\n\u201cThis ass of a De Courtenaye puts me out of all patience. The king has\nasked why he does not come to Versailles. I repeat to him his majesty\u2019s\nflattering question. Well! it goes in one ear and out the other. Can one\nso bury one\u2019s self in Paris?\u201d\n\nThink of that, good Americans, before you die! In the year of grace 1756\nParis was only a burying place for Versailles! So that 1870 had a\nprecedent.\n\n\u201cWhat else is he to do?\u201d asks the count. \u201cIt takes money to live as we\ndo, and his father, poor fellow, left him nothing but a name, which,\nalthough one of the first in France, is rather a drawback than\notherwise, since it won\u2019t permit him even to marry for money anything\nless than a princess; and rich princesses like to get as well as to\ngive.\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue, true,\u201d murmurs the compassionate marquis. \u201cI had forgotten.\nMore\u2019s the pity; such a good-looking fellow as he is\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd a connection of the royal family.\u201d\n\n\u201cFaith, the king is not over and above kind to his cousins.\u201d And the\ngentlemen dismiss the royal poor relation from their noble minds as they\nwould brush a grain of snuff from their ruffles, and stroll off, humming\nan aria from the latest opera of the famous Favart, the little Offenbach\nof his little day. Forgotten art thou now, O famous Favart! and thy\nimmortal airs are as dead as Julius C\u00e6sar.\n\nBut not so easily did M. de Courtenaye\u2019s tribulations pass from the mind\nof Nanette, who had lost not a word of this conversation. She thought of\nhim all through a wakeful night; she was still thinking of him the next\nmorning\u2014having arisen for that fond purpose long before the household\nwas stirring\u2014when she was startled by feeling a kiss upon her arm. She\nsprang up with a little cry of anger and alarm; but her frown changed to\na smile when she recognized the offender. It was Marcel, the handsome\nMarcel, her favorite brother, a year her senior, but so like her they\nwere often mistaken for twins.\n\n\u201cO Marcel!\u201d she cried, \u201chow you frightened me. How was one to look for\nsuch gallantry from one\u2019s brother?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut if one is the brother of Nanette?\u201d says Marcel still more\ngallantly.\n\nMarcel has been in good company and flatters himself he has quite the\n_bel air_. As an apprentice to M. Panckoucke to learn the bookseller\u2019s\ntrade, wherein his sister, when he got old enough, was to set him up for\nhimself, he had many opportunities of seeing and hearing the wits of the\ncapital, not without profit to mind and manners. Indeed, he fairly\nconsidered himself one of them already.\n\n\u201cYes, my dear little sister,\u201d he added with a patronizing air, \u201cyou are\npositively the talk of the town. Go where I will\u2014and you know I go into\nthe best circles,\u201d he says pompously, adjusting his ruffles as he has\nseen the dandies do\u2014\u201cI hear of nothing but the beautiful, the witty\nNanette. Why, it was only the other day I was at M. de Marmontel\u2019s\u201d\u2014the\ningenuous youth did not deem it essential to state that he had been sent\nin the honorable though humble capacity of \u201cprinter\u2019s devil\u201d with a\nbundle of proofs for correction (the proofs, indeed, of the _Contes\nMoraux_: the dullest, surely\u2014always excepting the delightful,\ninterminable romances of the incomparable Mlle. de Scud\u00e9ry\u2014ever penned\nin the tongue of Montaigne and Moli\u00e8re,) but his sister understood his\nharmless vanity and did not so much as smile\u2014\u201cat M. de Marmontel\u2019s with\nthe Duke de Nivernais, the Count de Lauraguais, M. de Voltaire, and the\nPrince de Courtenaye.\u201d\n\nNanette started slightly, but her brother did not perceive it. It is the\nway of brothers, and this brother, besides, was for the moment rapt in\ncontemplation of the greatness reflected upon him by association with\nthese great names. He fairly grew an inch in stature as he rolled them\nout, dwelling fondly on the titles. It is something to have a king speak\nto you, if only to ask you to get out of the way. Marcel continued:\n\n\u201cThe talk was all of you. M. de Lauraguais, not knowing me to be your\nnear relation, presumed to deny your wit and to question your virtue.\u201d\n\nNanette\u2019s beautiful eyes flashed in a way that would have made the\nslanderer uncomfortable had he seen it.\n\n\u201cInsolent!\u201d she murmured, clenching her little fists.\n\n\u201cYou may imagine how my blood boiled,\u201d went on Marcel. \u201cI was on the\npoint of doing something rash when M. de Courtenaye took up the cudgels\nin your behalf. 'M. de Lauraguais,\u2019 he said with grave severity, 'is it\npossible that you, a gentleman, can give currency to the lies set afloat\nby baffled libertines or malicious fools against the reputation of a\ndefenceless girl? My life upon it, Nanette is as pure as she is lovely;\nand were proof of her innocence needed, I should ask none better than\nthese stories of lovers whom no one has seen, or can even name. Why, had\nNanette a lover, all Paris would ring with it in an hour.\u2019 The\nimpassioned earnestness of the prince made the company smile; but M.\nDiderot, siding with him, said he was sure you were better than the best\nthat was said of you.\u201d\n\nNanette\u2019s eyes filled with tears. Had the youthful pedant been less\nintent on showing his familiarity with fashionable life, he must have\nhad his suspicions aroused by her agitation. As it was, he was not even\nenlightened when Nanette, suddenly flinging her arms about his neck in a\ntender fury, kissed him twice or thrice passionately. He took the kisses\ncomplacently as a guerdon for his story. Fraternal obtuseness in such\ncases is simply limitless. \u201cBy the way, Nanette,\u201d he added, \u201cwhy\nwouldn\u2019t it be a good idea to thank the prince by sending him some of\nyour prettiest flowers? I can take them to-morrow with some books I am\nto convey to him.\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense!\u201d says Nanette incredulously. \u201cI don\u2019t believe you even know\nwhere he lives.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t know where he lives?\u201d cries Marcel indignantly. \u201cPerhaps you will\ntell me next I don\u2019t know where the H\u00f4tel Carnavalet is, or how to find\nthe Rue Culture Ste. Catherine? Don\u2019t know where he lives, indeed!\u201d And\nMarcel flings out of the room in a state of high dudgeon that his\nacquaintance with a great man should be doubted, and, worst of all, by\nNanette. We are sorry to say he slammed the door after him. The best of\nbrothers will do such things under strong provocation. But Nanette only\nsmiled\u2014the wily Nanette!\n\n\n                                  III.\n\n\nThe next morning, at his frugal breakfast in a rather lofty apartment of\nthe H\u00f4tel Carnavalet, the Prince de Courtenaye read with much amazement\nthe following letter:\n\n    \u201cMY DEAR COUSIN: I am an old woman and your near relation. I have\n    long observed with pain the poverty which keeps you from assuming\n    your proper station. I have wealth, and not many years to keep it.\n    What is a burden to me will be a help to you. Suffer me, then, from\n    my superfluity to relieve your necessity\u2014I claim it as the twofold\n    privilege of age and love\u2014and accept as frankly as I tender it the\n    25,000 francs which I enclose to procure you an establishment suited\n    to your rank. On the first of every month 4,000 francs will be\n    forwarded to you in addition.\u201d\n\nSome commonplaces of civility ended this remarkable but not unpleasant\nepistle\u2014would that such a one some celestial postman might leave at the\ndoor of the present writer, to whom documents of a far different\nnature\u2014but this is a painful and unnecessary digression. Let us\ncontinue. The prince read the queer communication with conflicting\nemotions, in which wonder predominated. He was not aware of any wealthy\naunt or female relative particularly prone to this sort of furtive\nbenevolence; but his connections were legion, and women were odd fish.\nStill, his honor seemed to him to forbid his accepting a fortune so\nacquired. But older and wiser heads stifled, or at least silenced, his\nscruples; and secretly resolving to leave no stone unturned to discover\nhis mysterious benefactress, and to return to her or to her heirs every\nsou of the money, which in his heart he accepted only as a loan, he\nresigned himself to his good-luck with tolerable cheerfulness.\nHenceforth no more elegant equipage was to be seen than the Prince de\nCourtenaye\u2019s. He became the fashion; he was the life and talk of every\n_salon_\u2014as we should say, the success of the season. Nevertheless, he\nfailed not to go every afternoon to the garden of the Palais Royal for\nhis nosegay, with this difference only: that he now paid francs instead\nof sous.\n\nA year sped away, spent by the prince in buying nosegays and in sharing\nthe gayeties, though not the dissipations, of the court; by Nanette in\ncontinuing to perfect herself secretly in all the feminine\naccomplishments of her time, so that now, at the age of nineteen, she\nwas not only peerless in beauty, but as cultivated as Mme. de S\u00e9vign\u00e9\nand as learned as Mme. Dacier\u2014no, not as Mme. Dacier\u2014no mere mortal was\never so learned as Mme. Dacier; but let us say as Mme. de La Fayette,\nwho could set Father Rapin right in his Latin and silence M\u00e9nage. Was it\nfor herself she underwent these prodigious labors? It is not known that\nshe ever mentioned. But she still sold nosegays and still reaped a\ngolden harvest.\n\nOne evening the Count de la Ch\u00e2tre was again sitting beside her when the\nMarquis de Louvois once more accosted him.\n\n\u201cMy dear fellow,\u201d said he, \u201cwhat the mischief ails Pierre?\u201d (he spoke of\nDe Courtenaye). \u201cHe must be going mad. Have you heard his latest freak?\nMlle. de Craon, one of our wealthiest heiresses, with a royal dowry and\na princely income, is proposed to him, and what do you think? He refuses\nher\u2014positively refuses. What bee is in his bonnet?\u201d\n\n\u201cLove.\u201d\n\n\u201cLove! Is it one of the Royal Princesses, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cI imagine not.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho then? Some divinity of the _coulisses_, I\u2019ll wager.\u201d\n\n\u201cLouvois,\u201d said the count gravely, \u201cyou wrong our friend. De Courtenaye,\nas you know, abhors vice, and I am much mistaken if she whom he loves is\nnot a virtuous woman.\u201d\n\nLouvois shrugged his shoulders as only a certain kind of Frenchman can.\nVirtue was a word not in his dictionary.\n\nThe next day the prince received this note, the second from his unknown\nrelative:\n\n    \u201cMY NEPHEW: Why do you decline to marry Mlle. de Craon, who unites\n    all that is illustrious in birth and splendid in fortune? I will\n    provide you with the capital of the income I now allow you. Accept\n    also as a wedding-gift for your intended the jewels I send herewith.\n\n    \u201cIf you consent, wear for eight days in your buttonhole a carnation;\n    if you refuse, a rose.\u201d\n\nWith the letter came a handsome jewel-case containing a million of\nfrancs in bills\u2014it is well for the romancer to be liberal in these\nmatters\u2014and a magnificent parure of diamonds of the purest water, valued\nby the Tiffany of the time at 100,000 more.\n\nThat afternoon it was noticed in the garden that Nanette was unusually\npale and silent. The Prince de Courtenaye entered at his usual hour; the\nnosegay in his buttonhole bore neither pink nor rose. He drew near the\nflower-girl, who offered him a posy with a hand she vainly tried to make\nsteady. Like his own, it had neither pink nor rose.\n\nThe prince examined Nanette\u2019s offering attentively, smiled sadly, stood\nfor an instant in a musing attitude twirling the bouquet in his fingers,\nand then suddenly, as one whose mind is made up:\n\n\u201cMy child,\u201d he said, \u201cwill you make me the present of a rose?\u201d\n\nNanette fainted.\n\n\n                                  IV.\n\n\nWhen the flower-girl recovered she found herself in her own room, her\nfamily around her. But her eyes sought in vain the one face she most\nwished to see. Her mother and sisters told her with prodigious clamor\nand excitement, all talking at once at the tops of their voices, how she\nhad fainted\u2014\u201cfrom the heat,\u201d the gentleman said. \u201cYes, from the heat,\u201d\nmurmured Nanette softly, closing her eyes\u2014how a great nobleman, the\nPrince de Courtenaye, had raised her, and how, without waiting for a\ncarriage, and rejecting all aid, he had borne her in his arms to her\nhouse near by.\n\nNanette listened with closed eyes and a happy smile. All this was balm\nto her poor, sorely-tried heart. She even ventured to ask what had\nbecome of the kind gentleman. He had waited, they told her, to hear the\ndoctor\u2019s report giving assurance of her safety, and had then gone away,\ninvoking for her their most zealous care. Presently the prince\u2019s valet\ncame to inquire after her health; but he himself did not come. Nanette\nwas wounded, but she said nothing. Even pain in such a cause was too\nsacred a thing to be shared with another. Woman-like, she hugged her\ngrief as though it were a treasure, and smiled, without knowing why, at\nthe empty compliments of a crowd of _petits-ma\u00eetres_, who, after the\nfashion of the time, had rushed to pay her their condolences, and who\nransacked Dorat for their vapid homage. Each took the smile to himself\nand redoubled his insipid gallantries. But Nanette was too much in love,\nif she had not been too clever, to heed them. So she contented herself\nand them by smiling.\n\nAt heart she was happy, in spite of the prince\u2019s neglect. At least he\nwould not marry; so much was secure. But the future: might he not have\nsurprised her secret\u2014she blushed as she thought it\u2014and would he seek to\nabuse his power? No, she felt he was too noble for that, and, come what\nmight, she would enjoy the present hour, the happiest she had known. So\nin vague, delicious hopes, and doubts not less delicious; in fluttering\nfears and half-formed, undefined resolves; in pain that seemed to be\npleasure and pleasure whose sweetest element was pain\u2014all the exquisite\n_m\u00e9lange_ of confused and dreamy emotions which take possession of a\nyoung and innocent heart so soon as it has fairly admitted to itself it\nloves\u2014Nanette awaited her prince. She knew he would come; her heart told\nher so. And she was not deceived.\n\nEarly the next day he was announced. She essayed to rise as he entered,\nbut sank back into her chair, half from weakness, half from agitation,\nmurmuring incoherent excuses for her awkwardness. In an instant the\nprince was at her feet.\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d he cried, \u201cI have found you out at last, my good cousin. But I am\nnot come to return you your benefactions; only to beseech you to make it\npossible for me to keep them by adding to them a still more precious\nboon.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd that is\u2014?\u201d\n\n\u201cThis fair, kind hand. Ah darling! you cannot refuse it me when you have\nalready given me your heart.\u201d\n\nIn sacrificing his name to this obscure young girl the prince was no\ndoubt conscious of doing a noble and magnanimous act. And so it was\u2014how\nnoble, can only be realized by those who know the measureless distance\nwhich, in the days of Louis XV., divided the nobility from the people,\nor the insolent disdain with which the former looked down on the\nlatter\u2014a disdain commemorated to this day in the use of the word\n_peuple_ to indicate a vulgar fellow. But if he thought to conquer\nNanette in generosity, he was mistaken. The flower-girl, after a\nmoment\u2019s reflection, begged her lover to give her till to-morrow to\nanswer. He consented reluctantly, but not doubting the result. Who could\nhave looked in the eighteenth century to see a fish-monger's daughter\nrefuse the hand of a French prince?\n\nDe Courtenaye arose the next morning satisfied with himself and with the\nworld, and more in love than ever. He longed impatiently for the message\nwhich should summon him to the feet of his adored mistress to receive\nthe seal of his happiness. At last, after, it seemed to his eagerness,\nan age of waiting, his servant brought him a letter. He glanced at the\nsuperscription; it was in the well-known hand. He pressed the dear\ncharacters to his lips and tore the missive open with trembling fingers.\nThis is what he read:\n\n    \u201cLove blinds you. A marriage with me would dishonor you. You love me\n    too well for me to refuse you the most convincing proof of my love.\n    I give you up, and I give up life for you. When you read this the\n    flower-girl Nanette will have quitted the world for ever. Do not\n    scruple to keep the money you have received, in your aunt\u2019s name; it\n    is yours by right. A kinsman, who accomplished your father\u2019s ruin,\n    simply made me the instrument of his tardy atonement. I leave to my\n    family a fortune ample for their wants. Adieu! Think of me sometimes\n    in the cloister, wherein I take refuge from my heart, and where I\n    shall never cease to pray for you.\u201d\n\nSo ends the history of Nanette Lollier. The Archbishop of Paris in\nperson, it is said, conducted her to the convent of her choice, and the\nPalais Royal went into mourning. The prince was almost wild with grief;\nbut his prayers, his supplications, his almost frenzied entreaties,\ncould not shake Nanette\u2019s resolve. He never married. The allusion in the\nflower-girl\u2019s letter recalled to him certain rumors current at the time\nof his father\u2019s death; but, as our chronicler shrewdly surmises, the\nstory of the kinsman was simply a device of Nanette\u2019s affection to\ndisarm her lover\u2019s pride.\n\nThis is the romance of Nanette, the flower-girl of the Palais Royal, as\nit is recorded in a chronicle of the time. In the foul and fetid annals\nof that most polluted reign, barren alike of manly honor and womanly\nvirtue, it comes to us like a jewel we lift from the mire, or a\nfresh-blown rose we rescue from the kennel. Let us not ask if it be\ntrue. Stories of disinterested love, of magnanimity and devotion, let us\nrather accept as always true, saving our incredulity for narratives of\nanother sort. For our own part we had rather believe Tiberius to be a\nmyth than that Cordelia is a fiction; that Nero never fiddled in his\nlife than that Henry Esmond never put his birthright in the fire to\nspare his benefactress pain.\n\n\n\n\n                           NEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\n    CLASSIC LITERATURE, PRINCIPALLY SANSKRIT, GREEK, AND ROMAN. With\n    some account of the Persian, Chinese, and Japanese in the Form of\n    Sketches of the Authors and Specimens from Translations of their\n    Works. By C. A. White, author of _The Student\u2019s Mythology_. New\n    York: Henry Holt & Co. 1877.\n\nWe find on p. 12 of this new _Hand-book of Classic Literature_, as it is\nentitled on the back, among the \u201cmost commendable maxims\u201d of the\n_Pancha-Trantra_\u2014a work on morals composed by Hindoo sages\u2014the\nfollowing: \u201cAs long as a person remains silent he is honored; but as\nsoon as he opens his mouth men sit in judgment upon his capacity.\u201d The\nyoung people who will make use of this book, which is principally\nintended for their benefit and pleasure, must be the final judges of the\ncapacity of its author to make classic literature intelligible and\ninteresting to their minds. The author appears to understand them, and\nto have acquired that experience and skill in adapting instruction to\nthe juvenile mind, by practical familiarity with young students in the\nclass-room, which is almost necessary to ensure success in preparing a\ngood text-book. The _Hand-book of Classic Literature_ is not intended as\na manual for lessons and recitations. It is not exclusively intended for\nthose who study Latin or Greek; and we are not aware of any considerable\nnumber of young people who are studying Sanskrit, Persian, or Chinese,\nso that evidently no such class of pupils could have been in the eye of\nthe author. In fact, the aim of the author is to give some general\nnotion of the ancient authors and their principal works, and some fine\nspecimens of the best translations which have been made into English, to\nthose who do not study the ancient languages at all, or at most learn\nonly the rudiments of one or two of them. Three-fourths of the volume\nare devoted to the Greek and Latin classics. The remaining eighty pages\nare divided between the Sanskrit, Persian, and Chinese, with a brief\nnotice of the Japanese. The most elaborate and valuable portion of the\nwork is that devoted to Greek literature. The author has made use of the\nbest critical works and selected a large number of the most excellent\ntranslations. So much learning, pains, skill in faithful and idiomatic\nrendering, and even poetic genius, have been expended by English\nscholars in translating the Greek classics that any reader of\nintelligence and taste may understand and enjoy to a very great extent\nthese ancient masterpieces without learning a word of Greek. We notice\nas particularly discriminating and just the criticisms of the author on\nthe three great tragedians. Specimens of several different authors who\nhave translated Homer are presented, and a number of extracts from\nAristophanes and others of the generally less known poets. There must be\nmany whose curiosity will be excited by these choice morsels to read the\nentire translated works themselves. Next in interest to the sketches and\ntranslations from the Greek are those from the Sanskrit and Persian, on\naccount both of the novelty of the subject-matter to the generality of\nreaders, and also the intrinsic beauty of the selected passages. The\nauthor writes enthusiastically about Zoroaster, and we think with great\njustice. The song of the tea-pickers, from the Chinese, pleases us\nextremely, and is one of the prettiest and most touching of the minor\npieces in the volume. The author has shown remarkable judgment and good\ntaste in making this compilation, and writes in all that part of it\nwhich is of original composition in a style of peculiar accuracy and\nfelicity of diction. The strict and conscientious regard in which the\nold saying _Maxima reverentia debetur pueris_ has been kept throughout\nis an example for all those who write for the young. There is nothing\nwhich can endanger the faith or damage the moral delicacy of the young\nChristian pupil in all this volume filled up with the literature of\nheathen nations. On the contrary, its effect is salutary, and shows\nbeautifully not only the great obscurity in which those gifted pagans\nlay from the want of a clear revelation of truth, but also that the\nhuman mind everywhere, in all times, naturally Christian, longs for the\nlight.\n\nThe mechanical execution of the _Classical Hand-book_ is remarkable for\nbeauty and accuracy. We have noticed only two or three typographical\nfaults in the whole volume. It is a most attractive book to take up and\nread. We have said that it is not properly a class-book. It is a\nreading-book for higher pupils, and a companion for lectures, suitable\nfor reference or use in class-readings. We recommend it most cordially\nto all higher schools, especially academies for young ladies, and others\nwhere classical studies are not made one of the chief branches of\ninstruction. The great number of choice and elegant extracts from the\nbest writers, many of which are unfamiliar, as well as the historical\nnotices and criticisms, make this book equally suitable for use in\nfamilies and literary circles, especially for reading aloud, as for\nschools. We wish for the author the best reward which can be bestowed on\none who is devoted to the culture of young pupils\u2014the love and gratitude\nof their generous, affectionate hearts.\n\n\n    THE CRADLE OF THE CHRIST: a Study in Primitive Christianity. By\n    Octavius Brooks Frothingham. New York: G. P. Putnam\u2019s Sons. 1877.\n\nThe author of this volume is one of the representative men of the left\nsection of Unitarianism in this country. He is distinguished by a clear\nstyle, a finely-cultivated imagination, and his writings are\ncharacterized by a pervading placidity which is only occasionally\nruffled by a mocking scepticism that suggests the too close proximity of\nDr. Faust\u2019s intimate friend.\n\nThe volume abounds in sweeping assertions, slovenly-expressed ideas, and\nlacks throughout the cement of a sound logic. It fosters on Cardinal\nWiseman and Dr. Newman opinions which can only be accounted for on the\nsupposition of the author\u2019s inaccurate scholarship or his contempt for\nthe intelligence of his readers. (See preface, page 5.) Among other\nthings, he informs his readers that \u201cit has been customary with\nChristians to widen as much as possible the gulf between the Old and the\nNew Testaments, in order that Christianity might appear in the light of\na fresh and transcendent revelation, supplementing the ancient, but\nsupplanting it\u201d (page 10). The custom of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and\nCatholic theologians generally is precisely the contrary. There is a\nremarkable book by a Catholic on this very point, published in our own\nday, entitled _De l\u2019Harmonie entre l\u2019Eglise et la Synagogue_, par Le\nChevalier P. L. B. Drach, a converted rabbi. The rabbi, in his two\nvolumes, aims at showing that a Jew, in becoming a Catholic, does not\ndeny or change his religion, but follows out, completes, and perfects\nit. The Jewish Church and the Catholic Church are identically one, and\nthe former is to the latter as the bud to the full-blown flower.\n\nWith a criticism that kills beforehand the life it would dissect, Mr. O.\nB. Frothingham ends by coolly telling his readers that Christianity is\nextinct. And with a self-satisfied air he na\u00efvely exhorts them, by the\nefforts of their imagination, to build up a new and superior religion to\nChristianity. His readers will, we opine, politely decline this task,\nand leave to him who had the genius to conceive the idea its\naccomplishment. What a pity he did not tell them what he means by the\nimaginative faculty! For if in this, as in other things, he follows his\nforeign masters, we have no reason to expect as the result of its\nexercise in this direction, other than an additional illusion to the\nlong list of religious vagaries given to the world, from Simon Magus\ndown to Joe Smith and the Fox girls.\n\nA scholar who has read the volume describes its contents as\n\u201ctheological, philosophical, and speculative old shreds picked up in\nGerman and French tailor-shops and cunningly sewed together in the shape\nof a cloak by a 'cute\u2019 Yankee apprentice, in order to cover the nudity\nof the latest form of the unbelief of New England.\u201d\n\nThe book before us shows no mean literary skill, but contains nothing\noriginal in the way of thought or erudition, not even an original error,\nthough its errors are many more than the number of its pages.\n\n\n    THE PROBLEM OF PROBLEMS, AND ITS VARIOUS SOLUTIONS; OR, ATHEISM,\n    DARWINISM, AND THEISM. By Clark Braden, President of Abingdon\n    College, Ill. 8vo. pp. 480. Cincinnati: Chase & Hall. 1877.\n\nRecent scientific research has at last put the orthodox world on its\nmettle and elicited expressions of opinion from all shades of believers.\nCoquetting with dangerous premises, even in the guise of science,\ntoleration of views implicitly or indirectly infidel, and a general\ndisposition to compromise, are not indicative of a healthy tone in any\norganization avowedly Christian. Yet such tendencies have for a long\ntime characterized the relation of the various Protestant sects towards\nscientism, and one of the greatest outcries raised against the Syllabus\nproceeded from its alleged intolerance of, and general hostility to,\nunhampered scientific inquiry. But coaxing and cajoling, and a\nconcurrent cry against the stupidity of Catholics, had no weight with\nMessrs. Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, and Draper, who went on just as ever\ndealing their blows against revelation and all positive forms of belief,\nas though his Lordship of Canterbury were a myth and his faith a sham.\n\nAt length consistency compelled the representative men of the various\ndenominations to resist the further encroachments of an irreligious\nphilosophy, and they are beginning to do so with the bitter\nconsciousness that they were the very ones who most ridiculed the\nsagacity of the Holy Father when he censured the tone and tendency of\nmodern scientism. But it is better late than never; and if the gentlemen\nwho, from Princeton to Abingdon, feel themselves called upon to do the\nwork will only graciously allow that they are eleventh-hour workers, we\nwill find no fault with their intention, but confine ourselves to a\ncriticism of its execution.\n\nThe _Problem of Problems_ is the latest addition to the\nreligio-scientific controversy, and it is entitled to serious\nconsideration because of the earnestness of the author and the elaborate\ncharacter of the work. This elaborateness is, however, more apparent\nthan real, and consists in a measure of diluted thought and diffuse\nexpression. Whether it is unfortunately a peculiarity of Western authors\nto strip a thought entirely bare and leave nothing to suggestion, as the\ncharge is made, we are not prepared to say, but certain it is that Mr.\nClark Braden has gone far towards justifying such a suspicion. He is not\nsatisfied with a placid presentment of his own views, nor with a brief\narraignment of what he deems to be the errors of others, but he must\nreiterate, emphasize, and in general lash himself into a state of\nincandescence not at all needful for his purpose. Dignified opposition,\neven if a little tame, is somewhat more congenial to the frigid tastes\nof persons living east of the Alleghenies than those fervid utterances\nwhich mistake sound for sense. This, however, is an error of form which\ndoes not necessarily militate against the intrinsic value of the work,\nnor do we think that an allusion to it is likely to discompose the\nlearned author; for in a little prologue, addressed to \u201cReviewers and\nCritics,\u201d he courts and solicits dispassionate and impartial criticism.\nIn addition he requests that all publishers send him a copy of what\ntheir _imprimatur_ has allowed critics to say concerning his book. We\npresume this is right; but when the request comes coupled with the\ncondition that every one undertaking to comment on his work must not do\nso before having read it from cover to cover, we fear that it will not\nalways be faithfully complied with, or that he will have to read some\npages in which gall and wormwood abound more than the milk of human\nkindness. The reason of this we have hinted at. The book is prolix and\nrepeats to a fault. Many excellent thoughts are covered up in a mass of\nverbiage which emasculates and obscures them. We wish the author had the\nacademic fitness to cope with his antagonists\u2014whose culture has made\ntheir productions marvels of composition and terribly enhanced their\ninfluence for evil. We are sorry that this charge should be the main one\nto prefer against a book which was prompted by the best of motives and\nwhich really exhibits rare evidences of argumentative power. Take even\nthe opening sentence, and we find ourselves face to face with a flagrant\ngrammatical inaccuracy: \u201cOne of the wise utterances of one whom his\ncontemporaries declared spoke as never man spoke was, that no wise man,\netc.\u201d Here, apart from the slovenly repetition of \u201cone\u201d we find no\nsubject for the first \u201cspoke,\u201d unless it be \u201cwhom,\u201d and that is in the\nobjective case. Similar mistakes occur throughout, and give painful\nevidence that Mr. Braden began his scientific investigations before he\nhad made himself familiar with Blair or Lord Kames. We would, in\nconnection with this same matter of style, suggest that the too frequent\nuse of interrogation not only mars the beauty of a page, but has an\ninevitable tendency to wearisome diffuseness. Lest, however, we may be\nsuspected of harshness towards the author, we select a passage at\nrandom, that the reader may judge for himself how little Mr. Braden is\nacquainted with the quality of a good style. On page 171 he says: \u201cWe\nhave no horses on the pampas of the New World, _although they existed as\nthe most adapted to horses of any portion of the globe for ages_, and\nthere were _equine types in the New World for several geologic epochs_.\nMultitudes of cases might be given where man has carried animals into\nplaces where they did not exist and they flourished, and even improved,\nthus showing that the conditions were especially fitted for them, yet\nhad not produced them, although they had existed for vast ages. Hence\nconditions have failed to evolve what was especially fitted to them, and\njust what they would produce, did they produce anything.\u201d We submit that\nthese sentences are not only clumsy in construction, but are positively\nungrammatical, and no one who undertakes the guidance of others along\nthe thorny paths of scientific research has a right to tax the general\npatience with slipshod composition of this kind. Such examples as those\ngiven are not isolated, but disfigure nearly every page. On page 87 we\nfind the following; \u201cThere was at first use of bodily organs in\nappropriating food and slaying for food animals, and the use of\nspontaneous productions of the earth, like animals.\u201d\n\nSo much for the form of the book. The matter is indeed better, though\nnecessarily much impaired by the many faults of style. In consideration\nof fair play towards the author we will not accept his own standard of\njudgment while passing an opinion on his book; for we would then have\neither to mistrust our own intelligence entirely or to utter unqualified\ncensure of all that he has written. In his appeal to \u201cReviewers and\nCritics\u201d he says: \u201cIf there is censure or condemnation of what is\nwritten, let it be only after the critic understands what he condemns,\nand _because he understands it_.\u201d Now, we do not propose to condemn any\nportion of the book _because we understand it_; for we freely confess\nthat there is much valuable thought to be found in its pages, and the\nauthor gives proof of having a good logical mind, not hampered, indeed,\nby the subtleties of _Port Royal_ or the _Grammar of Assent_, but sturdy\nand vigorous, with a Western breadth and freedom. We have not space to\ngive even an outline of the plan Mr. Braden has mapped out for himself.\nMethod is an important feature of a scientific and argumentative work,\nand, when judiciously adopted, goes far to promote the purpose of the\nauthor.\n\nClearness, natural development, logical sequence of thought, and ready\nconviction are the results of a suitable method, while confusion,\nweariness, and dissatisfaction follow from a neglect thereof. Mr.\nBraden\u2019s lack of method will do much in the way of injuriously\ninterfering with the effect of his book. Divisions and subdivisions\nwithout number, irrespective of reason, may swell the dimensions of a\nwork, but do not certainly contribute to the satisfaction of the reader.\n\nIf all Mr. Braden has written in the present volume were presented in a\nmore orderly and attractive manner his book would be a valuable\ncontribution to polemics, but the faults we have indicated will\nconstantly militate against its usefulness.\n\nIn the Appendix both Draper and Huxley come in for a share of censure,\nbut while the author utterly fails to make a point against Draper, he so\noverloads with irrelevant matter his review of Huxley\u2019s three lectures,\ndelivered in this city, that the reader rises from the perusal of it\nwith a tired memory and a dissatisfied mind.\n\n\n    THE CHILDHOOD OF THE ENGLISH NATION; or, The Beginnings of English\n    History. By Ella S. Armitage. New York: G. P. Putnam\u2019s Sons. 1877.\n\nThe authoress of this \u201clittle\u201d book tells us, in her preface, that when\nshe began to write it \u201cno _short and simple_ history of England had\nappeared _which made any attempt to give unlearned people an insight\nbelow the surface of bare facts_,\u201d but that \u201csince then numerous works\nof the kind have appeared.\u201d Yes, indeed, too numerous; yet, as far as we\nknow, not one of them so pretentious as this. With a very readable style\nand a great show of erudition (an appalling \u201clist of authorities\u201d is\nappended to her volume) she sets up for \u201can interpreter to those who\nhave no knowledge of history,\u201d taking for her theme what she is pleased\nto call the \u201cchildhood of the English nation\u201d\u2014by which she means the\nhistory of England \u201ctill the end of the twelfth century.\u201d Of course,\ntherefore, she has to deal largely with the work and influence of the\nCatholic Church. Now, when those who are not Catholic undertake to\nexpound a philosophy to which they have not the key\u2014to wit, the\nphilosophy of any part of history with which Catholic faith has been\nconcerned\u2014we can pardon their mistakes, provided they evince that\nhumility which is the mark of fair-mindedness. But, if this condition be\nwanting, we can only regard their attempt as a piece of insufferable\nimpertinence; their very concessions to our cause\u2014a trick quite\nfashionable of late\u2014but making them the less excusable.\n\nHere, then, lies our quarrel with the writer of this book. She goes out\nof her way to theorize on matters she does not understand, instead of\nconfining herself to \u201cbare facts.\u201d For example, after acknowledging (p.\n19) that \u201cthere is no saying how long the English might not have\nremained heathen if Pope Gregory I., in the year 597, had not sent\nmissionaries to bring them to the faith of Christ,\u201d she must needs\nendeavor to account for the Papacy as follows:\n\n\u201cGregory was Pope or Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604. In his time the\npopes of Rome had not yet risen to the position of universal bishops and\nsupreme heads of the church, though they were tending towards it. All\nmen were agreed that there must be one, and only one, visible, united\nchurch, but all had not yet made up their minds that the Bishop of Rome\nwas to be the head of that church. The church of the Welsh, for example,\nand that of Ireland (!), owed no obedience to Rome. The pope himself did\nnot dare to call himself universal bishop: 'Whosoever calls himself so\nis Antichrist,\u2019 said Gregory I. Still, it was natural that Rome, which\nhad been the ruling city of the one universal empire, the queen of the\nWest, should be the chief centre of the one universal church, and that\nthe Bishop of Rome should become the head of the church, and all other\nbishops should bow to his authority. This was what did come to pass in\ntime, but at the time of which I am now speaking it seemed very\nuncertain; for things had sadly changed with Rome. She had no emperor\nnow; the emperor was at Constantinople; Italy was invaded by barbarians,\nRome herself was scourged by plague and famine. The Bishop of\nConstantinople tried to set himself up as Universal Bishop and Head of\nthe Church; and that the popes afterwards won the day in this struggle\nwas largely due to the great influence which Pope Gregory I. gained by\nhis wisdom and his powerful character.\u201d\n\nThe cluster of absurdities contained in this passage would be \u201cmatter\nfor a flying smile,\u201d were it not that the ignorance displayed looks too\nmuch like perverted knowledge. Can the lady have really failed to\nperceive the transparent nonsense of supposing that such a power as the\nPapacy originated in people making up their minds that the church ought\nto have a visible head, and that the Bishop of Rome was the right man\nbecause, forsooth, Rome _had been_ the seat of empire? If, again, she\nknows what St. Gregory said to the ambitious John of Constantinople, why\ndoes she not quote a few more of his remarks? \u201c_The care of the whole\nchurch_,\u201d said he, \u201c_was committed to Peter; yet he is not called\n'Universal Apostle_.\u2019\u201d \u201c_Who does not know that his see_ (of\nConstantinople) _is subject to the Apostolic See_ (of Rome)?\u201d St.\nGregory, like his predecessor St. Pelagius, refused the title of\n\u0152cumenical Patriarch, or Universal Bishop, for himself out of humility;\nhow, then, could he tolerate the assumption of it by a bishop who did\n_not_ sit in Peter\u2019s chair?\n\nBut we need not cite this book further to show that it is valueless in\nCatholic eyes.\n\n\n    DR. JOSEPH SALZMANN\u2019S LEBEN UND WIRKEN DARGESTELLT VON JOSEPH\n    RAINER, PRIESTER DER ERZDI\u00d6CESE MILWAUKEE, PROFESSOR AM\n    PRIESTERSEMINAR SALESIANUM. St. Louis: Herder.\n\nThe Salesianum is an ecclesiastical seminary near Milwaukee which enjoys\na very high reputation for the learning of its professors, the solidity\nof its course of studies, and the strictness of its discipline. Near it\nthere is a Normal College for the training of school-teachers, and\nanother college for the intermediate education of boys. The man who was\nthe principal founder of these excellent institutions was the Very Rev.\nJoseph Salzmann, D.D., an Austrian priest, who came to Wisconsin as a\nmissionary thirty years ago and finished his earthly course in January,\n1874, honored and regretted throughout the United States. The venerable\nArchbishop of Milwaukee first conceived the idea of founding a seminary\nto educate priests for the Northwest more than thirty years ago, while\npraying at the tomb of St. Francis de Sales, and this is the reason of\nthe name Salesianum by which the seminary was christened. The first\nrector was the present learned Bishop of La Crosse, Dr. Heiss. Dr.\nSalzmann succeeded him in office in 1868. The Rev. Professor Rainer, in\nthe little volume before us, gives an interesting account of the whole\nlife of Dr. Salzmann, but especially of his great and arduous work of\nfounding and establishing the Salesianum, which we may truly call a\nheroic achievement. He was a thoroughly learned and accomplished\nscholar, a man of sacerdotal dignity and personal attractiveness, an\neloquent preacher, with fair and seductive prospects before him in his\nown beautiful Catholic land. He was well fitted to adorn those positions\nin the church which are surrounded with the most outward _\u00e9clat_, and\ngive the opportunity of enjoying all the ease, comfort, and pleasure in\nliterary pursuits and quiet seclusion which are lawful and honorable in\nthe priesthood. Nevertheless, he chose the life of a Western missionary,\nand devoted the greater part of his time and energies, not to the\nintellectual and attractive employments of preaching and instruction in\nthe sciences, but to that most repugnant and arduous work of collecting\nmoney and looking after the drudgery of building, providing, caring for\nthe material wants of new, poor, struggling institutions. It is not\npossible for any who have not been brought up in some one of the old\nCatholic countries of Europe to estimate the sacrifice made by young men\nof refined character and education, and strong love of home and country,\nwhen they devote themselves to missionary labor in a new country, and to\nits hardest, most repulsive departments. There are special difficulties\nand hardships to be encountered by those who work among our German\npopulation. When they are bad or indifferent Catholics, they are the\nmost obstinate and unmanageable people with whom a priest can have to\ndeal, and very difficult to reclaim. Apostate and infidel Germans have a\nbrutality in their hatred to the Catholic Church and all religion which\nis extremely odious and cannot be fully appreciated by one who has not\ncome into personal contact with that class, whose only god is beer and\nwhose church is the lager-beer saloon. _Zur H\u00f6lle_ is the appropriate\nmotto we have seen over one of these dens in New York. When thoroughly\nimbued with the Catholic spirit, the German people are admirable. The\nwonderful work of Christian civilization wrought out among them in past\nages is known to all readers of true history. Dr. Salzmann, and others\nlike him, are worthy successors of the apostolic men whose names are\nrecorded in the history of the church. They are the men who carry on the\ntrue Cultur-Kampf in the vast realms of our Western territory. Their\nacts are worthy to be classed with those so charmingly related in _The\nMonks of the West_ and _Christian Schools and Scholars_. A keen Western\nspeculator said that \u201ca bishop was worth as much as a railroad to a\nWestern town.\u201d All that is wanted to repeat in the immense regions of\nour new States and Territories the creation and development of great\ncivilized and Christian communities is the virile force, the manhood, of\nthose early times. Land and material resources exist in prodigal\nabundance. It is men that are wanted\u2014masses of people with strength and\nspirit to abandon our crowded cities and old States and colonize new\ndomains, and men with the ability and virtue of leaders, guides,\nfounders, instructors, legislators, rulers, and benefactors. We trust\nthat the modest recital of the life of one generous young priest who\nleft his charming Austrian home to engage in this work may find its way\namong the educated young men and young ecclesiastics of Germany. There\nis work here for some among the hundreds of such young men, full of\nvigorous health, full of intellectual vigor, full of sound learning, who\nare at a loss to find a sufficient sphere for their activity in their\nown country.\n\nThe greatest and noblest project of Dr. Salzmann was one which he could\nnot even begin to carry into execution\u2014that of founding a university, a\nnew _Fulda_, for the Germans of America. We do not think that such an\ninstitution could or should remain permanently an exclusively German\nuniversity. We desire, nevertheless, to see this grand idea carried out,\nas a special work of our Catholics of German origin and language, under\nthe direction of a _corps_ of learned German professors, and with\nspecial reference to the education of youth who are of the same descent\nor who wish to study the language and literature of Germany. Time and\nthe course of nature will eventually blend all our heterogeneous\nelements together, but we do not believe in violent efforts to hurry on\nthe process. All that we can borrow from any European language or\nliterature, all the recruits we can gain from the nurseries of scholars\nor population in the Old World, is so much added to our intellectual,\nsocial, and political strength and breadth. Of course the English\nlanguage and literature, American history and institutions, ought to be\nassiduously studied by the learned foreigners who are domesticated among\nus, and taught to their pupils of a different mother-tongue. This may be\ndone without abdicating the advantage which they possess, and which\nothers must acquire at the cost of great labor, by being born heirs to\nthe inheritance of their own immediate ancestors.\n\nThe great practical question of the moment is that of Catholic\neducation. The advocates of compulsory secular education are the enemies\nof religion, of their country, and of true culture. The seminaries,\ncolleges, and schools where Catholic priests, youths, and children are\ntrained in sound religious knowledge, morality, and science are the\nfortresses and the centres of real civilization. Whoever does a great\nwork in the cause of Catholic education is a benefactor to the church\nand the country. Such a noble and meritorious man was Dr. Salzmann, a\npriest powerful in word and work, a model for the young ecclesiastics of\nthe Salesianum to imitate, an encouraging example for all who are\nlaboring to found and perfect similar institutions. The diocese of\nMilwaukee was a poor and feeble little bishopric when the venerable Dr.\nHenni was consecrated in 1844. Now it is a metropolitan see, with above\n190,000 Catholics in its diocesan limits, above 180 priests, several\nflourishing institutions for the higher education of both sexes, and\nschools in almost every parish. The Salesianum, where the first rector,\nDr. Heiss, was professor of Greek, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and\nmoral theology, numbers thirteen professors and two hundred and fifty\nstudents. Surely, the prayers and labors of a good bishop, seconded by\nthose of able and zealous priests, can work wonders now as well as in\nthe best ages of the past. Indeed, works which a St. Francis of Sales\nwas unable to accomplish are now successfully performed within a short\ntime and with comparatively little difficulty. Assuredly, we cannot fail\nto recognize a special benediction of God upon the church of the United\nStates.\n\n\n    THE CONSOLATION OF THE DEVOUT SOUL. By the Very Rev. Joseph\n    Frassinetti, Prior of Santa Sabina, in Genoa. Translated by\n    Georgiana Lady Chatterton. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by\n    The Catholic Publication Society.)\n\nThe worth of a book ought to be estimated chiefly from its intrinsic\nmerits, yet, even without being acquainted with these, we may often\nobtain a fair idea of its character by knowing something about the\nauthor.\n\nFather Frassinetti was an extraordinary man. He was born in the city of\nGenoa on Dec. 15, 1803, and died there on the 3d of January, 1868.\nThirty-nine years of his life were spent in the priesthood, with an\nunsullied reputation for piety and zeal, and a wide-spread fame as a\npreacher, director of consciences, and writer on spiritual matters. A\nuniform edition of his works, which are all in Italian, was published\nshortly before his death in ten volumes, and dedicated to the late\nCardinal Patrizi, Vicar of Rome.\n\nThe first volume of his collected works contains _Il conforto dell\u2019\nAnima Divota_, of which we have the excellent translation before us. Its\nauthor was not only a remarkably learned man, but also a singularly\npious man\u2014one whom our Holy Father Pope Pius IX. called, in a certain\nbrief, a priest _spectat\u00e6 doctrin\u00e6 et virtutis_\u2014and distinguished by the\nrare faculty of being able to communicate his knowledge to others, and\nof knowing how to lead others on to personal holiness. Nearly forty\nyears of his life were passed in leaching his fellow-men by word and\nexample how to love, serve, and honor God and save their souls. That\nsuch a one should have written this little book on _The Consolation of\nthe Devout Soul_ is a sufficient guarantee of its usefulness and\ndoctrine. The work is divided into five chapters and an appendix, in\nwhich the author successively defines what is meant by Christian\nperfection, shows that it is not a thing too difficult to be acquired,\nsolves certain objections against facility of sanctification, explains\nthe beauty and utility of Christian perfection, points out the means of\narriving at this much-desired end, and concludes with a short treatise\non the holy fear of God. Several notes are added.\n\nThis translation bears the _imprimatur_ of the devout and learned Bishop\nof Birmingham. We earnestly recommend it to the members of religious\norders, and to people who serve God in the world.\n\n\n    THE CODE POETICAL READER, for school and home use. With marginal\n    notes, and biographical notices of authors. By a Teacher. London:\n    Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)\n\nThis Reader is made up of eighty short poems from British and American\nauthors. Each selection is accompanied by marginal notes and is headed\nby a short biographical notice. The plan is excellent, the publishers\u2019\nwork is well done, but the biographical notices are so brief as to be of\nlittle value, and the marginal notes are nothing more than commonplace\ndefinitions of difficult words. Perhaps it is hardly just to call the\nwords referred to difficult, since the majority of the poems are as\nsimple in diction as _Lord Ullin\u2019s Daughter_. The fault may be\nattributed partly to the marginal-note plan, since an absence of notes\nwould leave an unsightly page. Still, this is no excuse for careless\ndefinitions: _unfriended_ is a poor substitute for _forlorn_;\n_California_ is not _a mountainous country of North America on the\nPacific coast_; _Indian_ is a name given to the _aboriginal_ inhabitants\nof America, not to the _ancient_ inhabitants; _pollution_ does not mean\n_to corrupt_; concealing can hardly mean at once _hiding_ and _to keep\nsecret_. In the lines from _The Village Blacksmith_,\n\n    \u201cEach morning sees some task begun,\n    Each evening sees its close,\u201d\n\nthe word _close_ is defined _finished_. These are a few inaccuracies out\nof many. The selections comprise some of the most exquisite short poems\nin the language, there being few extracts and but one translation. Were\nit not for the absence of selections from Catholic sources, this would\nbe a desirable class-book. Why Adelaide Procter, Aubrey de Vere, Gerald\nGriffin, Davis, McGee, are excluded, and Bret Harte honored in two\nplaces, is a mystery. Nor do other poets fare better. Caswall is not\nmentioned; in truth, there is not one poem from a Catholic author.\nCatholics are not the only persons who suffer from the editor\u2019s\ndiscrimination. Tennyson is excluded, while Rev. Charles Kingsley\ncontributes two pieces. Six selections come from Longfellow. These facts\nshow that it was not for want of space that Catholic poems find no room\nin a text-book published by a Catholic firm. Nor was it merit alone that\nprompted the editor in his selection. The book seems to have been\nprepared for schools in which neither the name nor the sentiment of a\nCatholic writer might enter. The system that excludes the grace and\npurity of Adelaide Procter, the sweetness and vigor of De Vere, and the\nperfect rhythm of Tennyson will bring forth bitter fruit, and those who\nassist the projectors in their plans may expect to reap the usual\nharvest of ingratitude, together with the unpleasant memory of having\nclosed their eyes to the merits of Catholic poets because of the\nhostility of some so-called non sectarian school-board.\n\n\n    SUMMA SUMM\u00c6. Pars Prima\u2014De Deo. Confecit ac edidit T. J. O\u2019Mahony,\n    S.T.D., Philos. in Collegio OO.SS., Dublinii, Professor. Dublinii:\n    apud M. H. Gill et Fil.; Lond.: Burns et Oates; Paris: J. Lecoffre\n    et Soc. 1877.\n\nThis summary of the _Summa Theologica_ of St. Thomas is chiefly intended\nas an aid to ecclesiastical students in the study of the great work of\nthe Angelic Doctor. The first part only is yet published. Dr. O\u2019Mahony,\nof All-Hallow\u2019s College, its author, with great skill and painstaking,\nhas endeavored to make the order and arrangement of topics and divisions\nin the _Summa_ more intelligible by means of a convenient\ntype-arrangement and distinctive headings, and to facilitate the\nunderstanding of the text by an analytical abstract which contains many\nliteral quotations, followed by a synthetic synopsis of subjects. The\nwork seems to have been done intelligently and well, and its utility is\nobvious to every student who has attempted to read even one page of the\n_Summa_. It is neatly printed, and we trust may soon be completed.\n\n\n    WHY ARE WE ROMAN CATHOLICS? BECAUSE WE ARE REASONABLE MEN. By\n    Hermann Joseph Graf Fugger Gl\u00f6tt, Priest of the Society of Jesus.\n    From the German. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The\n    Catholic Publication Society.)\n\nA clear, solid, and short exposition of the Catholic faith, in view of\nactual objections against its reasonableness. It would be well if there\nwere more works of this kind. The rational side of revealed truth needs\na various development to meet the many intellectual demands of our age.\nBesides, there are many sincere persons in Protestant communities who\nare disposed to be Christians, but are in suspense because of the\ninconsistency of Protestantism with reason. These need only the\nobstacles to faith to be removed for them to become Catholics. For such\nthis short treatise will be of special service. It should be also read\nby Catholics, as they ought to be prepared when asked to know how \u201cto\ngive a reason for the hope that is in them.\u201d The author shows a familiar\nknowledge of the anti-Christian writers of our day, is free from all\nbitterness, and we hope to hear from his pen in this field again. The\ntranslation reads as if written in English.\n\n\n    CARTE ECCLESIASTIQUE DES ETATS-UNIS DE L\u2019AMERIQUE. LYONS. 1877.\n\nA few copies of this chart have been sent to this country, and we have\nreceived one through the courtesy of Father Perron, of Woodstock\nCollege. It is a handsome, well-executed, and, so far as we have\ndiscovered, correct map of the provinces and bishoprics of the United\nStates. Such a map is convenient and valuable. We think it would be\nimproved by making each of the provinces of one distinct color, and\nmarking the dioceses by broad colored lines, and the States by similar\nblack lines. The titles of the provinces and dioceses might also be\nprinted in large letters, and the sees receive more conspicuous signs.\nThe chart is published by the Society of Catholic Missions, 6 Rue\nd\u2019Auvergne, \u00e0 Lyon. Directeur, M. l\u2019Abb\u00e9 Stanislas Laverri\u00e8re. All the\nprofits are given to the missions. We suggest to our Catholic publishers\nto send for copies and keep them on hand for sale.\n\n\n    HEROIC WOMEN OF THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH. By the Rev. Bernard\n    O\u2019Reilly, D.D. With art illustrations. New York: J. B. Ford & Co.\n    1877.\n\nWe can do no more now than call the attention of our readers to this\nmost beautiful work\u2014beautiful in every sense\u2014of which we have received\nadvance sheets. The author\u2019s name needs no introduction to Catholic\nreaders. We reserve for a future date a fuller notice of a\nwell-conceived and admirably executed work, one too of great practical\nutility. Father O\u2019Reilly\u2019s statement in the preface, that \u201cthe\npublishers have spared neither labor nor expense to make this book most\nbeautiful in form,\u201d is obviously true at the first glance.\n\n\n\n\n                          THE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n                    VOL. XXV., No. 147.\u2014JUNE, 1877.\n\n\n                           THE PAPAL JUBILEE.\n                       SONNETS BY AUBREY DE VERE.\n\n\n                                   I.\n                         THE GREAT PILGRIMAGE.\n\n\n    What beam is that, guiding once more from far\n    Earth\u2019s Elders Rome-ward over sea and land?\n    What Sanctity, serene as Bethlehem\u2019s star,\n    From East and West leads on each pilgrim band?\n    God\u2019s light it is\u2014on an unsceptred Hand!\n    God\u2019s promise, shining without let or bar,\n    O\u2019er sleeping realms that yet may wake in war,\n    Forth from that Brow Discrowned whose high command\n    Freshens in splendor with the advancing night\n    Missioned to blot all godless crowns with gloom:\u2014\n    Like fruits untimely from a tree in blight\n    Such crowns shall fall. Even now they know their doom!\n    Advance, pure hearts! Your instinct guides you right\n    The Bethlehem Crib, this day, is by Saint Peter\u2019s tomb.\n\n\n                                  II.\n                     THE JERUSALEM OF THE NEW LAW.\n\n\n    \u201cThe Tribes ascend.\u201d Ten centuries and nine\n    Have well-nigh passed since first the earth\u2019s green breast\n    Confessed, deep-graved, those feet that Christ confessed,\u2014\n    Those feet which, then when earth was Palestine,\n    Circled her Salem new. Mankind was thine,\n    O Rome, that time. All nations sent their best\n    To waft thee offerings, and their faith attest:\u2014\n    They love thee most who love thee in decline.\n    The noble seek thy courts. What gibbering crew\n    Snarls at their heels? The brood that fears and hates;\u2014\n    Prescient Defeat in bonds, that jeers the brave:\n    Ascend, true hearts! Such tribute is your due!\n    In Rome\u2019s old triumphs thus the car-bound slave\n    Scoffed, as he passed, of Fortune\u2019s spite, and Fate\u2019s.[42]\n\nFootnote 42:\n\n  In the Roman triumphs a captive slave was bound to the car of the\n  conqueror, into whose ear his office was to whisper of fortune\u2019s\n  instability.\n\n\n                                  III.\n                         THE CONFESSOR PONTIFF.\n\n\n    Full fifty years are past since first that weight\n    Descended on his head which made more strong\n    His heart, his hands more swift to war with wrong\u2014\n    His martyred Master\u2019s dread Episcopate:\n    Full thirty years beside the Apostles\u2019 Gate\n    He reigned, and reigns: he roamed, an exile, long:\n    Restored, he faced once more the apostate throng,\n    Unbowed in woes, in greatness unelate.\n    New Hierarchies he sped to realms remote:\n    Central, by Peter\u2019s Tomb he raised his hands\n    Blessing his thousand bishops from all lands;\n    Confirmed their great decree. False kings he smote:\u2014\n    How long, just God, shall Treason\u2019s banner float\n    O\u2019er faith\u2019s chief shrine profaned by rebel bands?\n\n\n\n\n                        POPE PIUS THE NINTH.[43]\n\nFootnote 43:\n\n  _Pie IX.: sa vie, son Histoire, son Si\u00e8cle._ Par J. M. Villefranche.\n  Lyons. 1876.\n\n  _Rome: its Ruler and its Institutions._ By John Francis Maguire, M.P.\n  New York. 1858.\n\n  _Italy in 1848._ By L. Mariotti. London. 1851.\n\n  _The Secret Societies of the European Revolution, 1776-1876._ By\n  Thomas Frost. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1876.\n\nThe whole Catholic world prepares to celebrate on the 3d of June of this\nyear the fiftieth anniversary of an episcopate which has no parallel in\nthe history of the church. Our Holy Father Pius IX. has surpassed most\nof his predecessors in the importance of his labors, and has far\nexceeded them all in the length of his pontificate. He was young when he\nreached the dignity of bishop, but Leo XII., to whom he owed his\npromotion, had already discerned the beauty of his character.\nSinigaglia, where he was born, on the 13th of May, 1792; Volterra, where\nhe passed six years at college; Rome, where he studied theology, abound\nwith stories of the sweet and sunny disposition, the fervent piety, and\nthe burning zeal which illustrated even his tenderest years. He was six\nyears of age when the venerable Pius VI. was dragged away into\ncaptivity, and the biographers of Pius IX. speak of the excitement which\nstirred his boyish heart, and the prayers which he poured out night and\nmorning at his mother\u2019s knee for the outraged church. His earliest\nrecollections of the Papacy were a fit preparation for what he was to\nundergo in after-life. The Holy Father appeared to his young eyes, not\nas the crowned pontiff, but as the suffering and heroic confessor. He\nsaw Pius VII. following Pius VI. into banishment. He saw the last inch\nof territory taken from the Holy See. One of his uncles, a canon of St.\nPeter\u2019s, was driven from Rome on account of his fidelity to the pope;\nand another uncle, who was Bishop of Pesaro, was thrown into prison for\nthe same cause. He had finished his course at college and was living at\nhome when Pius VII. returned from exile, and he was presented to the\npontiff as he passed through Sinigaglia on the road to Rome. The Mastai\nfamily were distantly related to Pius VII., and the pope took an\ninterest in his kinsman. But there was an obstacle which seemed likely\nto defeat the young Mastai\u2019s desire to enter holy orders. He was subject\nto fits of epilepsy. The physicians gave him no hope of a cure. About\nthe time of the pope\u2019s return, however, the violence of the disorder\nbegan to abate, and his health was soon so far restored that he was\nencouraged to continue his studies for the church. He always ascribed\nhis relief to the protection of the Blessed Virgin. In 1819 he was\nordained priest by special dispensation, and appointed to the humble\nduty of serving the asylum for poor children established in the Via\nGiulia in Rome by a pious mason named Giovanni Borgi. It was called the\nAsylum Tata Giovanni, because \u201cTata Giovanni\u201d\u2014or Papa John\u2014was the name\nwhich the lads used to give their protector. The Abbate Mastai had been\na good friend and helper of Papa John, and was glad of the privilege of\ncontinuing his work now that the benevolent old man had gone to his\nreward. He occupied a little chamber in the asylum. He ate at the table\nwith the boys. He spent all his income in their service. He kept his\nregard for them long after they had grown up, and even as Pope he\nremembered the names of his pupils and followed their fortunes with a\ntender interest. It has often been said that Pius IX. never forgot\nanybody.\n\nThe first employment which brought him into public notice was a mission\nto the New World. Some of the clergy of the South American states had\npetitioned the Holy See to fill their long-vacant bishoprics. Many years\nhad passed since the close of their war of independence with Spain, but\nthe mother-country still asserted the authority which she no longer\nattempted to enforce, and claimed the right of presentation to sees long\nwithdrawn from her jurisdiction. The church in South America remained,\nconsequently, in lamentable confusion until the Sovereign Pontiff\nresolved to re-establish order by the exercise of his prerogative,\nwithout government interference from either side; and the embassy of\nwhich we speak was despatched in consequence. Monsignore Muzi, with the\ntitle of vicar-apostolic, was at the head of it, and the Abbate Mastai\nwas appointed adjunct.[44] Before the expedition sailed Pope Pius VII.\ndied, but Leo XII. confirmed the selections made by his predecessor;\nand, indeed, the choice of the Abbate Mastai had been made originally by\nhis advice. On the voyage the ship was driven by stress of weather into\nthe Spanish port of Palma, in the island of Majorca. The governor threw\nthe embassy into prison and kept them for some days in seclusion, on the\nground that the country to which they were bound was in rebellion\nagainst the Spanish crown. \u201cThen,\u201d said the Pope, in telling this\nadventure nearly half a century afterward, \u201cI realized the necessity of\nthe papal independence. They sent me a ration of food every day from the\nship, but I was allowed neither letters nor papers. I was initiated on\nthis occasion, however, into the little stratagems of solitary\nprisoners; for we hid our correspondence in loaves of bread.\u201d The\nembassy got away at last and spent two years of fatigue and danger in\nSouth America, visiting the missions of Chili, Peru, and Colombia,\ntraversing the awful passes of the Cordilleras, and crossing the\ncontinent in bullock-carts\u2014a journey which took them nearly two months.\nOnce, in going by sea from Valparaiso to Callao, their vessel, caught\nnear the coast in a gale, was driving upon the rocks when a fisherman\nput off in his boat, boarded them in the midst of the storm, and brought\nthem through intricate passages into the harbor of Arica. The next day\nthe Abbate Mastai visited the hut of this daring pilot, and left with\nhim a purse containing about four hundred dollars. After becoming Pope\nhe sent the man a second purse of equal value and his picture. The\nfisherman was overwhelmed with gratitude. The first four hundred dollars\nhad proved the making of his fortune. He gave the second to the poor,\nand placed the picture of the Pope in a little chapel which he had built\non a spot overlooking the sea.\n\nFootnote 44:\n\n  For a full account of this mission see THE CATHOLIC WORLD for January,\n  1876.\n\nThe embassy returned to Rome in 1825, and the Abbate Mastai was\nappointed canon of Santa Maria in Via Lata, a little church on the\nCorso, with an oratory in which pious tradition relates that St. Paul\nand St. Luke used to teach the faith to the first Christians of Rome. He\nwas also promoted to the prelacy and placed at the head of the great\nHospital of St. Michael. \u201cThe Hospital of St. Michael,\u201d says one of the\nlatest of the biographers of Pius IX., \u201cis a city in itself, and its\nadministration is a real government.\u201d Founded two centuries ago by\nInnocent X., it grew, by the additions of later pontiffs, to be one of\nthe greatest and grandest asylums in existence\u2014a house of refuge for the\nyoung, a retreat for the aged and infirm, a hospital for the sick, a\nreformatory for Magdalens, a home for virtuous girls, and, besides all\nthat, a school of arts and industries. When Monsignore Mastai assumed\nthe presidency of this vast and complicated institution, every\ndepartment of it was in a deplorable state of disorganization. Nearly\nall the earnings of the boys and girls in the industrial schools went\ntowards the support of the establishment, and yet there was an enormous\ndeficit in the revenues. Bankruptcy seemed at hand. The new president\ntook up his task with magnificent ardor and equally magnificent\ndiscretion, with the enthusiasm of a reformer and the practical sagacity\nof a man of business. In two years the disorder was at an end. The\nexpenses of the institution were brought within its income, yet its\ncharity was enlarged rather than restricted, and a large share of the\nearnings of the boys was paid into a savings\u2019 fund, to be returned to\nthem when they went out into the world. Monsignore Mastai had obtained\nthis remarkable result in part by his talent for business; but not\nwholly by that, for when the work was done his own patrimony had\ndisappeared. \u201cOf what use is money to a priest,\u201d said he, \u201cexcept to be\nspent in the cause of charity?\u201d So it happened that when Leo XII. called\nhim to the archbishopric of Spoleto in 1827 he had not money enough to\npay for his bulls. The last acre of his estate was sold for the\ncustomary fees, and he entered Spoleto as penniless as the apostle whom\nour Lord commanded to take the tax-money from the mouth of a fish.\n\nThe first years of his episcopate were passed as any one who had watched\nthe labors of his priesthood might have predicted that they would be. He\nwas rarely seen by the courtiers of the papal palace, but his people\nknew him as the friend and father of the poor, and loved him for a\ntenderness and generosity almost without bounds. He filled his diocese\nwith good works, founding seminaries and asylums, introducing charitable\norders, always setting a practical example of beneficence by attending\npersonally to the wants of the unfortunate. He spent in alms the last\ncopper in his purse, and sold the ornaments from his parlor for the poor\nwhen his purse was empty. It was the golden time of his life\u2014a time of\npeace and consolation. The church in Italy just then was at rest. A long\nperiod of political disturbance had been followed by comparative quiet.\nConvents and pious schools were multiplied, and the saintly Archbishop\nof Spoleto found himself in the midst of a devout clergy and a grateful\npeople. There was a short outbreak in the Romagna in 1831, premature and\neasily suppressed, and it was then that the archbishop was brought for\nthe first time into contact with the spirit of revolution destined to\nmake such a bitter and memorable war upon him in later years. Among the\nadventurers implicated in the movement were two scions of the Bonaparte\nfamily. The elder brother died during the enterprise; the younger lived\nto become emperor. There is a story that when Louis Napoleon fled from\nthe ruin of the revolt in the Romagna, he knocked one night at the door\nof the Archbishop of Spoleto, and owed his safety to the charity of that\nmost charitable of men. It is a story which rests upon no very firm\nauthority, and yet, though often published, it stands uncontradicted. It\nis certain, however, that in the last days of the insurrection the\narchbishop did show his tenderness for the unfortunate in a signal\nmanner. Four thousand revolutionists, pursued by Austrian troops,\npresented themselves before Spoleto. The archbishop went out to meet\nthem. He persuaded them, since their cause was lost, to lay down their\narms. He gave them several thousand crowns for their immediate needs. He\npledged his word that they should not be molested. Then he performed the\nstill more difficult task of inducing the Austrian commander to ratify\nthe promise. The pursuit was abandoned; the insurgents retired quietly\nto their homes. Pope Gregory XVI., however, was not pleased with this\ntransaction, and the archbishop was called to Rome to defend himself. We\nmust presume that his explanation was satisfactory; for the next year he\nwas advanced to the see of Imola. This is only a suffragan see, but it\nis more important in itself than the archbishopric of Spoleto, and is,\nmoreover, what is called a cardinalitial post\u2014under ordinary\ncircumstances a step towards the higher dignity of the scarlet hat. It\nwas held by Pius VII. when he was Cardinal Chiaramonti. The promotion of\nBishop Mastai came in due course. His creation as cardinal was announced\nin December, 1840, having been reserved _in petto_ since the previous\nyear, and he took his title from the church of SS. Peter and\nMarcellinus. With his new dignity he adopted no new mode of life. Works\nof charity and devotion still filled his days. The love and respect of\nall classes of men still encompassed him. It is the best proof of the\ntranquil and happy course of his episcopate that of the nineteen years\nwhich he passed at Spoleto and Imola there is hardly an incident to be\nrelated.\n\nHis whole life thus far seems to have been a providential preparation\nfor the two great works for which he was destined by Almighty God. On\nthe spiritual side of the church he was to bring about the consolidation\nof Catholic dogma and the complete definition and development of the\nauthority of the church over the minds and hearts of her children. On\nthe secular side, after showing the perfect compatibility of the\ntemporal power with the needs of modern society, he was to guide the\nchurch with fortitude and prudence, and give the Christian world a\nshining example of constancy during the trying days that were to see\nthat power destroyed. What better training could he have had for this\ndouble destiny than so many years of charitable labor and close\nintercourse with God? He issued at last from his pious retirement with a\ncharacter enriched by the daily practice of virtue, a disposition\nsweetened by the habit of self-sacrifice, a resolution strengthened by\nreliance upon God, and a heavenly courage that was proof against the\nthreats and buffets of the world.\n\n\n                                   I.\n\n\nWe have spoken of the brief season of repose in Italian politics about\nthe time of our Holy Father\u2019s elevation to the episcopate. It was,\nindeed, only a transient gleam of sunlight in the midst of a tempestuous\nera. We come now to a period of universal disturbance. This is not the\nplace to discuss the causes of the great revulsions of 1848. Probably\nthey were more complex and reached further back than the world generally\nsupposes. But whatever may have been the local provocations for revolt\nin particular states, it is clear that, for more than a quarter of a\ncentury before the date with which we are now occupied, the\nrevolutionary tendencies of all Europe had shown a unity of direction\nwhich implied a single guiding impulse. It is not credible that a few\nclubs of political enthusiasts, visionary young students, hare-brained\napothecaries, and metaphysical breeches-makers should be able by the\nfire of their own genius to set a continent in flames. The revolutionary\npropaganda of 1830-1848 found in every country of Europe a combustible\npopulation only waiting for the spark. Some states were rotten with\nsocial and moral disorders of long standing; some, like Poland, were\nwrithing under an oppression which moved the sympathies of the whole\nworld; some fretted under the restrictions of antiquated forms of\ngovernment, unsuited to the wants of an expanding society. Thus the\ngenerous and patriotic were easily hurried into enterprises whose true\npurpose they were far from suspecting. The central influence which\nvitalized and directed all the scattered tendencies towards revolt was\nthe conspiracy of the secret societies. \u201cIn the attempt to conduct the\ngovernment of the world,\u201d said the British prime minister last autumn,\nin his address at Aylesbury, \u201cthere are new elements to be considered\nwhich our predecessors had not to deal with. We have not only to deal\nwith emperors, princes, and ministers, but there are the secret\nsocieties\u2014an element which we must take into consideration, which at the\nlast moment may baffle all our arrangements, which have their agents\neverywhere, which countenance assassination, and which, if necessary,\ncould produce a massacre.\u201d Lord Beaconsfield\u2019s statement was a very mild\none. The secret societies had become, at the time of which we write, the\nmost formidable force in European politics. There was not a corner of\nthe Continent in which their power was not felt. Intimately allied with\nFreemasonry, their origin dates back to a remote, unknown time. They\nwere already strong in the eighteenth century, and their share in the\ngreat French Revolution is well understood. They became formidable in\nthe Illuminism of Weishaupt in Germany a hundred years ago. They\nappeared in the Tugendbund, which had so large a share in the overthrow\nof the governments imposed upon the German states by Napoleon I. They\nwere busy in Russia, in Greece, in Ireland, in Spain, and even in the\nSwiss Republic; in Italy they have never been idle since the first\nappearance of the Carbonari at the beginning of the century; in France\nthey are the only power which seems to be permanent. As early as 1821\nthe Italian revolutionist, Pepe, gave Carbonarism an international\ncharacter by establishing in Spain a secret association of the \u201cadvanced\npolitical reformers of all the European states\u201d; and in 1834 Mazzini\nmade a much more effective union of the revolutionary elements when,\nwith the aid of Italian, Polish, and German refugees, he founded at\nBerne the society of Young Europe. The organization of Young Germany,\nYoung Poland, and Young Switzerland dates from the same time and place,\nand Switzerland became the centre of all the agitations of the\nContinent. Young Italy had been grafted upon Carbonarism by Mazzini as\nearly as 1831.\n\nMany of these associations, as we have already intimated, professed an\nexcellent object. They would have been comparatively harmless, if they\nhad not attracted and deceived the good. The Tugendbund, for instance,\noriginally aimed at the deliverance of Germany from a foreign yoke;\nYoung Poland captivated the noble and the ardent; even the Carbonari had\nan alluring watchword in the Unity and Independence of Italy. But there\nwas always an ulterior purpose, revealed only to the initiated. That\npurpose was one and unchanging, and it was the bond which united all the\nleaders of the vast conspiracy from the Irish Sea to the Grecian\nArchipelago, from Gibraltar to Nova Zembla. It was the establishment\neverywhere of an atheistic democracy; or rather the destruction\nsimultaneously of all religion, all government, and all social bonds.\nKings and priests were equally hateful to the \u201cIlluminated.\u201d There was\nto be no recognition of God in their republic. It was hostile not only\nto the Catholic Church as an organization, but to Christianity as a\nmoral influence. The Illuminati were founded in the midst of the Masonic\nlodges of Bavaria; they passed thence into Austria, Saxony, Holland,\nItaly, and Switzerland; they were carried to Paris by Mirabeau, who was\ninitiated in Germany; they were united with the Freemasons all over\nFrance. Recognized as the parents of the later societies, they sounded\nas early as 1777 the key-note of the whole complex movement. Findel, the\nMasonic historian of Freemasonry, declares that \u201cthe most decisive\nagent\u201d in giving the order a political and anti-religious character was\n\u201cthat intellectual movement known under the name of English deism, which\nboldly rejected all revelation and all religious dogmas, and under the\nvictorious banner of reason and criticism broke down all barriers in its\npath.\u201d But Weishaupt found still too much \u201cpolitical and religious\nprejudice\u201d remaining in the Freemasons, and consequently devised a\nsystem which, as he expressed it, would \u201cattract Christians of every\ncommunion and gradually free them from all religious prejudices.\u201d The\n\u201cillumination\u201d of the brethren was to be accomplished by a course of\ngradual education in which Christianity was carefully ignored. It was\nonly in the higher degrees that the initiated were taught that the fall\nof man meant nothing but the subjection of the individual to civil\nsociety; that \u201cillumination\u201d consisted in getting rid of all\ngovernments; and that \u201cthe secret associations were gradually and\nsilently to possess themselves of the government of the states, making\nuse for this purpose of the means which the wicked use for attaining\ntheir base ends.\u201d We quote this from the discourse read at initiation\ninto one of the higher degrees, and discovered when the papers of the\nfraternity were seized by the Elector of Bavaria in 1785. The same\ndocument continues: \u201cPrinces and priests are in particular the wicked\nwhose hands we must tie up by means of these associations, if we cannot\nwipe them out altogether.\u201d Patriotism was defined as a narrow-minded\nprejudice; and, finally, the illuminated man was taught that everything\nis material, that religion has no foundation, that all nations must be\nbrought back, either by peaceable means or by force, to their pristine\ncondition of unrestricted liberty, for \u201call subordination must vanish\nfrom the face of the earth.\u201d The ceremonies of initiation into the\nlodges of the Carbonari remind us so strongly of this explanation of the\nprinciples of Illuminism that it is impossible to resist the conclusion\nthat the two associations are closely connected. The neophyte was taught\nthe same doctrine in both: that man had everywhere fallen into the hands\nof oppressors, whose authority it was the mission of the enlightened to\ncast off. Here, however, as in the earlier society, the pagan character\nof the proposed new life was only revealed by degrees to those who were\nprepared for it. The conspirators seem to have accommodated their system\nof education to the peculiarities of national training and disposition.\nFor example, they humored the religious tendencies of the Italians by\nretaining the name of God and the image of the crucifix in the\nceremonial of the lower degrees, and even published a forged bull, in\nthe name of Pope Pius VII., approving the Carbonari; while in the\ntraining of Young Germany just a contrary course was adopted. \u201cWe are\nobliged to treat new-comers very cautiously,\u201d says a report from a\npropagandist committee established among the Germans in Switzerland, \u201cto\nbring them step by step into the right road, and the principal thing in\nthis respect is to show them that religion is nothing but a pile of\nrubbish.\u201d Indeed, the rampant atheism of the secret societies of\nGermany, and also of France, has always been notorious. Of the still\nmore horrible manifestations of impiety to which they were carried in\nItaly we hesitate to speak, lest we be suspected of sensational\nexaggerations. All that we have said thus far of the principles and\npractices of the Masons, Illuminati, and Carbonari is quoted from their\nown books and papers, and may be found in the work of their admirer and\napologist, Thomas Frost, the title of which we have placed at the head\nof this article. For a more startling picture of their inner mysteries\nwe refer the reader to Father Bresciani,[45] who lived in Rome in 1848\nand had direct testimony of horrors which almost defy belief. Mr. Frost,\nhowever, gives a glimpse of the worse than pagan spirit of Carbonarism\nwhen he describes the initiation into the second degree\u2014a ceremony\nwherein the candidate, crowned with thorns and bearing a cross,\npersonated our divine Lord, and knelt to ask pardon of Pilate, Caiphas,\nand Herod, represented by the grand master and two assistants, the\npardon being granted at the intercession of the assembled Carbonari! In\nall the societies an abstract morality was taught which was not the\nmorality of Jesus Christ, and laws were laid down at variance with the\nlaws of the state. Assassination was one of the chief duties which the\nfraternity enjoined upon its votaries. The initiated fancied that they\nemancipated themselves from all subordination; but they bound themselves\nby the most awful penalties to murder any one, even friend or brother,\nwho might be pointed out for death by some unseen, unknown, and shadowy\nauthority.\n\nFootnote 45:\n\n  _The Jew of Verona._ English translation, 2 vols. 12mo. Baltimore.\n  1854.\n\nWhen Pope Gregory XVI. came to the throne the conspiracies of ten years\nwere just ripening. He was assailed in the very first month of his\npontificate by the rising in the Romagna, and he spent the fifteen years\nof his reign in a struggle to keep down the evil spirit whose apparition\nthen alarmed him. All Europe during these fifteen years was a volcano\nsending forth the deep mutterings and sulphurous vapors which presage an\neruption. France was never at peace from the overthrow of Charles X. in\n1830 till after the re-establishment of the empire\u2014if even she is at\npeace yet. Every capital in Germany was in nightly danger of the dagger,\nthe torch, and the barricade. Switzerland, though a free republic, was\nno less severely tormented by conspiracies than the monarchical\ncountries, and after several years of contention her secret societies\ntook arms in 1844 to compel the Catholic cantons, against the\nconstitution of the confederation, to expel the Jesuits. In Poland, at\nthe very moment when the nobles were preparing a revolt against the\nAustrian yoke, a socialistic and agrarian rising of the peasants against\nthe nobles filled Galicia with massacres of incredible barbarity. In\nItaly the Carbonari negotiated for a while with the Duke of Modena, by\nwhose aid they proposed to expel the Austrians from Lombardy and Venice,\nand unite the states of the north and centre under one sovereign\u2014of\ncourse with the further object, held in reserve, of getting rid of the\nDuke of Modena as soon as they had no further use for him: a scheme\nalmost exactly like that which Young Italy tried a few years later with\nCharles Albert of Sardinia. Defeated in this project and crushed in\nattempts at insurrection, they worked for some time in secret, but they\nworked with furious energy. The doctrines of Illumination were carried\ninto every corner of the peninsula. A score of local secret associations\ncame into existence, adding to the wickedness of the parent society some\npeculiar brutality of their own. Ancona had its \u201cSociety of Death,\u201d\nSinigaglia its \u201cInfernal Association,\u201d Leghorn its \u201cSociety of Slayers,\u201d\nFaenza its \u201cBand of Stabbers.\u201d\n\nBetween 1831 and 1840, however, the policy of the Italian revolutionists\nwas greatly modified. Mazzini established Young Italy under the\nconviction that the old methods of conspiracy must fail. Instead of\nwasting their strength in vain efforts to overturn the Italian princes\nsingly, he urged the brethren to concentrate their energies upon a\nmovement for the expulsion of the Austrians and a consolidation of all\nthe Italian states. The fate of pope, and kings, and princes could be\nsettled afterwards. \u201cAll questions as to forms of internal policy,\u201d he\nwrote, \u201ccan be put off till the close of the war of independence.\u201d Italy\nand independence! This was a programme, not for the secret societies\nalone, but for the whole peninsula. It captivated the generous, the\nimpulsive, the ardent, the ambitious. It brought to the same work\npoetry, patriotism, and religion, the pistol, the dagger, and the\npoisoned cup. What was to be done with Italy, when it was united and rid\nof the Austrians, was one of the secrets of the initiated never\nexplained to the common people; but remarkable illustrations of the\ninner character of this movement were found in 1844 among certain papers\nseized by the police in Rome. \u201cOur watchword,\u201d wrote one of the leaders,\n\u201cmust be Religion, Union, Independence. As for the King of Sardinia, we\nshould seek some favorable opportunity to poignard him. I recommend the\nsame course to be pursued in regard to the King of Naples. The Lombards\nmay second our efforts by poison, or by insurrection, under the form of\nlittle 'Sicilian Vespers\u2019 against the Germans. Functionaries or private\ncitizens who show a hostile spirit must be put to death. Let them be\narrested quietly during the night, and the report be circulated that\nthey have been exiled or sent to prison, or have absconded.\u201d Mazzini\nhimself a little later, in an address to Young Italy, gave a significant\nexplanation of his idea. \u201cIn your country,\u201d said he, \u201cregeneration must\ncome through the princes. Get them on your side. Attack their vanity.\nLet them march at the head, if they will, so long as they march your\nway. Few will go to the end. If they make concessions, praise them and\ninsist upon something further. The essential thing is not to let them\nknow what the goal of the revolution is. They must never see more than\none step at a time.\u201d And he urged also the importance of \u201cmanaging\u201d the\nclergy. \u201cIts habits and hierarchy make it the imp of authority\u2014that is\nto say, of despotism\u201d; but the people believe in it, and we must make\nits influence of use. With the Jesuits, however, he proclaimed war to\nthe knife. None of the socialists and infidels were willing to make any\nterms with the sons of St. Ignatius.\n\nIn the prosecution of this new scheme of revolution the conspirators\nobtained invaluable help from a most unexpected ally. The erring genius\nof the unfortunate Abbate Gioberti did more for them than the\nmachinations of the lodges. Carried away by visions of a new Italy and a\nnew Catholicism, he forgot the divine mission of the church in\nspeculations as to what she might accomplish in purely secular\nenterprises. His great error was in thinking of religion as an agent of\ncivilization rather than an instrumentality for saving souls, and thus\nhe was led into the blunder of attempting to unite God and the world in\nan equal partnership. He conceived the idea of an Italian federation\nwith the King of Sardinia as military head and the Pope as spiritual\npresident\u2014a sort of dual empire like that of Japan, with a tycoon at\nTurin, a mikado at the Vatican. But the clergy were to abdicate their\ndominion over the minds of men, and bend their energies to effecting an\nalliance of religion with a material progress that in his theory had\noutstripped the church and become for ever incompatible with\necclesiastical tutelage. He wished the priests to put themselves at the\nhead of the new social movements, and, hand in hand with the political\nagitators, to lead Italy to a material glory such as no nation on earth\nhad ever seen. His book, _Del Primato_, was welcomed with unparalleled\nenthusiasm. The charm of a brilliant style, the force of an original,\ncultivated, and poetic mind, the glamour of a philosophy which seemed to\nmeet all the wants of an exciting and uneasy time, turned the heads of\nthe whole nation. Gioberti, Cesare Balbo, Massimo d\u2019Azeglio, were the\ncreators of a new literature, and all Italy read them with flashing eyes\nand quickening pulse. Theirs was a reform which seized upon the fancy of\ngood and bad alike, and hurried into a common delusion the heedless\nChristian and the veteran Carbonaro, the young, the imaginative, the\nadventurous, and the artful. Mazzini, who afterwards became one of\nGioberti\u2019s bitterest enemies, was too shrewd to undervalue this\ninfluence. He sought an interview with Gioberti in Paris; he offered\nterms of co-operation; he even went through the form of renouncing what\nhe styled his own \u201cmore narrow views,\u201d and proposed a National\nAssociation which, adjourning all questions of forms and spirit of\ngovernment, faith or scepticism, God or the devil, should unite Italy in\nthe single purpose of creating an Italian nation. Different as the aims\nof the two men were\u2014for Gioberti included even the Austrian government\nof Lombardy and Venice in his union\u2014they embraced each other for the\nmoment. Together they swept the peninsula. Every city from Palermo to\nMilan was aflame with the new ideas. The soberest patriots lost their\ncomposure, and many of the clergy began to dream wild dreams of\npolitical change, and to see visions of reformed conspirators kneeling\nat the feet of a democratic pope. We look back upon those days from the\nvantage-ground of experience, and we wonder that men should have been so\ndeceived. But 1848 had not then given the lie to the professions of\n1846. Devout Italians at that time did not see, as we do, that the\nsecret societies which assailed the church on one side of the Alps with\nfire and sword could not be sincere in offering to place it in a new\nposition of power and glory on the other, nor did they realize the\nextent of the conspiracy to overwhelm religion, government, and social\norder throughout Europe in one general ruin.\n\nThat conspiracy was more formidable in Italy than anywhere else, and it\nwas more formidable not only because it was better organized, but\nbecause it involved so many men of blameless character and offered to\nsatisfy a lofty national aspiration. During the last years of Pope\nGregory XVI. an explosion seemed inevitable. Probably nothing kept it\nback except the age and infirmities of the venerable pontiff; the\nleaders preferred to wait for his death. He died on the 1st of June,\n1846. The whole peninsula was instantly in commotion, and the symptoms\nof violence in Rome were so alarming that people doubted the possibility\nof an election. Austria, as the power most directly interested in the\nsecular politics of the Holy See, was understood to demand a continuance\nof the restrictive policy of Gregory; France, on the contrary, was said\nto desire a moderately liberal pope. To avoid pressure upon the\nconclave, as well as to forestall an outbreak, the Italian cardinals\nresolved to begin their deliberations at once and finish them quickly.\nWithout waiting for their distant colleagues, they entered the Quirinal\non the 14th, the doors were closed, the guards were set, and the\nballoting began. Two ballots are taken in the conclave every day. The\npersons whom public opinion selected as most likely to command the\nnecessary thirty-four votes were Cardinals Gizzi and Lambruschini. The\nmodest and retiring Cardinal Mastai seems to have been little known by\nthe outside world, though his merit was no secret to the Sacred College.\nHe was appointed scrutator, to open and read the ballots. At the first\nsession of the conclave his name was proposed by Cardinal Altieri,\nPrince-Bishop of Albano, and the first scrutiny showed that he united a\nlarge party of the cardinals. On the second ballot he gained a little.\nOn the third his vote was twenty-seven\u2014only seven less than a majority.\nHe retired to his cell and spent the whole time in prayer till the\nevening meeting. He came to the performance of his functions pale and\nagitated. When the ballots were taken from the chalice in which they had\nbeen collected, he read his own name on the first, on the second, on the\nthird, on every paper up to the eighteenth. He could not go on; he\nbegged the conclave to commit the rest of the task to another. But to\nchange the scrutator in the midst of the vote would invalidate the\nelection. The cardinals gathered around him; for some time he sat\nterrified and almost insensible, while streams of tears flowed down his\ncheeks. On the completion of the count it was found that he had the\nsuffrages of thirty-six out of the fifty-four cardinals present. As the\nwhole assembly rose to confirm the choice by unanimous acclamation, the\nPope-elect fell upon his knees, and profound silence reigned in the\nPauline Chapel while he communed with Almighty God.\n\nIt was on the following day, June 18, that, according to custom, the\nbricked-up window in the front of the Quirinal Palace was broken open,\nand the cardinals came out upon the balcony to announce to the waiting\nmultitude the choice of a new pope. It is said that men turned to one\nanother in surprise when they heard the name, and asked who this\nCardinal Mastai could be. But when his beautiful and benignant face\nappeared among the throng, and his hand was raised in that gesture of\nbenediction which all who have seen him will for ever associate with his\nmemory, he won the love and admiration of the Roman people; and the true\nRomans have loved him ever since.\n\nThe story of his first days in the pontificate reads like a charming\nromance. He called the steward of the palace and said to him: \u201cWhen I\nwas bishop I spent for my personal expenses a crown a day; when I was\ncardinal I spent a crown and a half; and now that I am Pope you must not\ngo beyond two crowns.\u201d He went about the city alone to search out abuses\nand to look into the condition of the poor. He presented himself without\nwarning at public institutions. He knocked at the doors of religious\nhouses at night. He startled the congregation at St. Andrea del Valle by\nappearing unannounced in the pulpit to preach against blasphemy. He\ndelighted children by visiting the schools. He talked freely with the\nhumble whom he met in the streets and on the country roads. He gave\nlavishly to the needy. A poor market-gardener lost his horse and walked\nboldly into the palace to ask the Pope if he could not spare an old one\nfrom the Quirinal stables. A secretary found the man on the stairs and\ntook his message to the Holy Father. \u201cYes,\u201d was the Pope\u2019s reply; \u201cand\ngive him this money, too. He must be very poor, or he never would come\nto the Quirinal to get a horse.\u201d\n\nBut Pius IX. was not ignorant of the dangers which surrounded his\nthrone. He chose his course promptly. It may be doubted whether stern\nmeasures of repression could have accomplished any good in the\nexcitement of that time, but at any rate he had no taste for them. He\nfavored the idea of a national confederation under the presidency of the\nPope, wishing to accomplish it by a friendly alliance of the existing\ngovernments, not by war and revolution. For the rest, he looked forward\nto a reform in the administration of his states, and the introduction of\nliberal and popular institutions as fast as the old forms could be\nsafely changed, and he purposed to rule by kindness, generosity, and\nconfidence. Yet, as we shall see, he did not lack firmness when firmness\nwas needed. One of his first acts was to declare an amnesty for\npolitical offences, and a characteristic anecdote is told of him in\nconnection with it. He called a council of his principal advisers and\nasked their votes upon the proposed measure of mercy. To his chagrin, a\nmajority of the balls voted were black. He took off his white cap and\nplaced it over them; \u201cNow,\u201d said he, \u201cthey are all white.\u201d The prisons\nwere opened. The exiles returned. One thousand six hundred persons were\nrestored to freedom and friends. Rome was in a tumult of joy. The\npopulace thronged about the pontiff whenever he went abroad, and waited\nlong hours before the palace windows to get his blessing. On the feast\nof St. Peter\u2019s Chains a great number of the pardoned received communion\nfrom the Holy Father's hands, and the occasion was celebrated with\nlively demonstrations. Nor was the Pope satisfied with an easy act of\nclemency. He made a close personal study of the administration. A\nmultitude of petty abuses were swept away. The taxes were reduced. The\nliberty of the press was enlarged. Industries were fostered; railways\nwere planned. The Jews were relieved of burdensome and humiliating\nrestrictions. Then the old municipal privileges of Rome were restored,\nand a long stride ahead was made by the formation of a lay consulta of\nstate and the popular representation of the provinces in the central\ngovernment.\n\nNothing could surpass the enthusiasm of the people at this dawn of a new\npolitical era. It was almost a continuous holiday in Rome, with gay\nprocessions by day and torch-light parades by night, public banquets in\nthe vineyards and gardens, triumphal arches spanning the streets, the\npapal colors fluttering from every window and decorating every breast.\nBecause those colors were white and yellow, it became a point of honor\nwith delighted Romans to breakfast every morning on boiled eggs. Nor was\nit only Italy which raised the chorus of applause. All over the world\nthe Papacy shone with a glory which it had hardly displayed since Leo\nXII. The Protestants of New York held a monster meeting of felicitation\nat the Broadway Tabernacle, where cordial letters were read from\nex-President Van Buren and Vice-President Dallas, and an enthusiastic\naddress to the Pope, prepared by Horace Greeley, was adopted by\nacclamation. The British government offered its congratulations. The\nFrench ministry, led by M. Guizot, rivalled the French opposition, led\nby M. Thiers, in resolutions and speeches of encouragement. Mazzini,\ntrue to the policy already explained, addressed to the Holy Father a\nletter of ostensible sympathy and praise. Such halcyon days might well\nhave filled the most wary with a dangerous confidence.\n\nThe Pope was not deceived. He knew that under this outward show of peace\nthe conspiracy was active. The first attempt of the revolutionary party\nwas to separate him from the cardinals. Three weeks after the amnesty,\nas he drove under one of the arches erected in his honor, the mob\nstopped some of the prelates of his suite and refused to let them pass.\nCertain demonstrations at the popular out-of-door repasts became so\nsignificant that the gatherings had to be forbidden. Before the end of\nthe year the cry of \u201cViva Pio Nono!\u201d changed to \u201cViva Pio Nono Solo!\u201d\nand mingled with shouts of \u201cDown with the Jesuits!\u201d and \u201cDeath to the\nretrograders!\u201d The next summer Rome was thrown into a fever of rage by\nan invention so outrageous and yet so ridiculous that one reads of it\nwith amazement. It was alleged that Cardinal Lambruschini, the Austrian\ngovernment, and the General of the Jesuits had organized a plot to fall\nupon the populace on the anniversary of the amnesty, and in the midst of\nthe massacre to get possession of the Pope and put a stop to his\nliberalism. The _f\u00eate_ appointed for the anniversary was given up, and\nthe excitement enabled the revolutionists to depose the old police and\nthrow the city into the arms of the civic guard, of which they were\nreally the directing force. On New Year\u2019s day, 1848, the Pope was\nmolested in the street by a disorderly mob, shouting menaces against\n\u201creactionists\u201d and \u201cJesuits.\u201d The violence of the radical faction\nincreased; their demeanor became more and more insulting; the danger of\nriot grew imminent; the civil guard showed plain symptoms of disloyalty.\nYet all this while the Holy Father persevered in his reforms. He took no\nstep backward. He withdrew no concession. The measure of popular liberty\nwas constantly enlarging, the administration becoming more thoroughly\nrepresentative. If it was \u201cprogress\u201d that the agitators wanted, what was\nthis?\n\nWe cannot understand the history of this strange time without bearing\nin mind that the danger arose, not from anything the Pope had done or\nfailed to do, but from the steady and stealthy advance of the pagan\nconspiracy. Rome, under the mild rule of Pius IX., became the resort\nof all the chief revolutionists of the Continent, and it is hardly too\nmuch to say that the particular house in Rome where they met and\nplotted with the most comfort was the British embassy. Palmerston\u2019s\npolicy was always to encourage radical movements on the Continent.\nWhen he sent Lord Minto, therefore, as a special envoy to Italy, the\nparlors of that nobleman were instantly thronged by the Carbonari. In\nthis diplomatic sanctuary gathered a strange company of princes and\ndemagogues\u2014Ciceruacchio, the orator of the rabble; Prince Charles\nBonaparte, the radical in purple; Sterbini, the poet, physician, and\njournalist; Tofanelli, the tavern-keeper; Materazzi, patriot and\njoiner; Galetti, the grocer, who became Minister of Police in one of\nthe later democratic cabinets.\n\nA letter of Mazzini\u2019s, written in 1847, taught Young Italy that the time\nfor action was close at hand; it was useless to count upon the Pope;\ntheir best policy was to inflame the popular hatred of Austria; then\nprovoke Austria to attack them; and in the heat of war to accomplish the\nrest. But at this critical time Austria herself committed an act which\nhastened the explosion. Alarmed at the aspect of affairs in Central\nItaly, she marched a body of troops into the papal territory. The treaty\nof 1815 gave her the right to place a garrison in the citadel of\nFerrara; she went further and occupied the town; and although the\nspirited protest of the Pope caused her to withdraw after some delay,\nthe occasion which the secret societies desired had been given, and a\ncry for war and independence resounded from the Gulf of Genoa to the Bay\nof Naples. We know but imperfectly the hidden springs of action of that\nyear of revolutions; but, as if by concert, the insurrection flashed up\nalmost simultaneously all over the Continent. The Milanese flew to arms.\nThe revolt broke out in Vienna. Barricades arose at Berlin. The Republic\nwas proclaimed in Paris. Naples and Tuscany were menaced. The\nmunicipality of Rome waited upon the Pope and demanded a constitution.\nHe consented to give it. \u201cI would have preferred,\u201d said he, \u201cto watch\nfor a while the result of the reforms already instituted; but other\nItalian princes have granted constitutions, and I will not show less\nconfidence in my subjects than they have had in theirs.\u201d At the same\ntime the ministry was changed. Cardinal Antonelli, whose management of\nthe finances had made him very popular, became Secretary of State, and\nthree of the most moderate of the liberals\u2014Minghetti, Galetti, and\nSturbinetti\u2014entered the cabinet. It is characteristic of the spirit of\nthe revolution that the first effect of these concessions was to\nstimulate a fresh attack upon the church, disorders in Rome, and an\nassault upon the Ges\u00f9. The Jesuits were forced to close their\nestablishment, some taking flight, others finding shelter in private\nhouses. The constitution was proclaimed in March. It provided for a\nSenate and a House of Deputies\u2014the senators to be appointed for life,\nthe deputies to be elected by the taxpayers of Rome and the provinces.\nThis parliament was not to meddle with ecclesiastical affairs, but in\nother matters it had the usual powers of legislation.\n\nMeantime, the war of independence in the north of Italy was in the full\ntide of success. Young Italy believed it had found a leader in Charles\nAlbert of Sardinia. The Austrians were driven from Milan. The republic\nlived again in Venice. The Pope sent 17,000 men to protect his\nfrontiers, with strict orders not to cross them. At once the\nconspirators spread the report that he had declared war against Austria.\nThey called the people together in the Colosseum to ratify the new\ncrusade, and there the Barnabite monk, Gavazzi, masquerading in the\ncharacter of a new Peter the Hermit and brandishing a tricolored cross,\nmade his first bid for notoriety. There were only 7,000 regular troops\nin the papal expedition; the rest were motley volunteers\u2014the flower of\nthe nobility and the dregs of the wine-shop, the most gallant lads of\nRome and the scum of all the political clubs of the Continent. They\nhurried through the Romagna, gutting taverns and hunting Jesuits by the\nway, and when they reached Bologna their general (the Piedmontese,\nDurando) announced that the Austrians were making war upon our Lord, and\nthat the soldiers of the Pope would give them battle with the cry, \u201cGod\nwills it!\u201d It was afterwards discovered that this direct defiance of the\nPope\u2019s commands, this open act of hostility against a power with which\nthe states of the church were at peace, was in accordance with secret\ninstructions from the Pope\u2019s radical Minister of War. While the\nsovereign ordered his troops to remain strictly on the defensive within\ntheir own boundaries, the ministers told Durando to cross over into\nLombardy and place himself at the disposal of Charles Albert; and\nDurando prepared to obey them. It was impossible for the Holy Father to\nremain silent under such an outrage. He repudiated Durando\u2019s order of\nthe day in the official press, and he spoke more fully in an allocution:\n\u201cWe shall not make war upon Austria; we embrace all countries, all\nnations, with an equal paternal love.\u201d And he took occasion at the same\ntime to denounce the project of destroying all the governments of the\npeninsula in order to build out of their ruins one Italian republic with\nthe Pope at the head of it. He was no doubt prepared for the explosion\nof wrath which followed. But the revolution was not to be ignored any\nlonger. For some time ministers had been in the habit of counterfeiting\nhis assent to measures of which he disapproved; if the army was to make\nwar without his consent, his reign was at an end. Rome was in a tempest.\nThe cry of \u201cTreason!\u201d rang through the streets. Ciceruacchio proposed to\nkill all the priests. The civic guards flew to arms, posted soldiers at\nthe doors of the cardinals, and refused to recognize the Pope\u2019s orders.\nA new and more radical ministry, led by Count Mamiani, came into office\non the 3d of May, and on the same day the Holy Father wrote a touching\nletter to the Emperor of Austria\u2014a plea for peace and Italian\nindependence: \u201cWe exhort your majesty with the most paternal affection\nto withdraw from a contest which cannot reconquer for the empire the\nhearts of the Lombards and Venetians. There is no grandeur in a\ndomination which rests only on the sword.\u201d\n\nThe new ministry insisted at once upon war, but here it found the\ndetermination of the Pope unalterable. There seems to have been an\nattempt, of which the ministers themselves were possibly innocent, to\nprecipitate hostilities by rousing an uncontrollable popular impulse.\nOne day a courier, breathless and dusty, rode through the Corso\nannouncing a great victory of Charles Albert over the Austrians. The\ncity was illuminated; there was talk of forcing the clergy to chant _Te\nDeum_ in the churches. But the next day it was discovered that the\nmessenger, who entered Rome as if from Lombardy by the Porta del Popolo,\nhad left the city only an hour before by the Porta Angelica, gathering\nall the stains of travel in an easy ride along the walls, and had been\npaid three dollars for the performance. Charles Albert had been signally\ndefeated.\n\nWhatever fitness for self-government might be latent in the Roman\npeople, it was certain that, in the existing condition of the Pontifical\nStates, a government by the people was out of the question. Every\nattempt to satisfy the popular aspirations, every scheme for the\nintroduction of parliamentary and representative institutions, was\nbaffled by the Mazzinian clubs, whose rule, supported by conspiracy and\nassassination, was the most cruel and absolute of despotisms, yet\ndestitute of that stability and force which make some despotisms\nrespectable. They threatened the church with spoliation, the clergy with\ndeath, the young with atheism. They undermined the authority of all\ngovernment, not merely of this or that particular form, but of all\nforms. Italy appeared to be rushing towards anarchy. It was time to cry,\nHalt! Pius resolved to yield not another inch, but, without withdrawing\nany reasonable concession, to put what remained of his authority upon a\nfirm basis. He invited Count Pellegrino Rossi to form a cabinet.\n\nCount Rossi was an Italian by birth, a Swiss by adoption, a Frenchman by\nsubsequent choice, an old Carbonaro, an old conspirator, an old\npolitical exile. He was an ardent partisan of Italian unity, but he had\nseen the emptiness of some of his early illusions, and he had abandoned\nthe secret societies. He had come to Rome in the time of Gregory XVI. as\nambassador of Louis Philippe, charged with a negotiation for the removal\nof the Jesuits from France; in his diplomatic capacity he had been one\nof the most moderate advisers of Pius IX.; and after the fall of Louis\nPhilippe he had remained in Rome as a private citizen. He accepted the\ntask of restoring order; he reorganized the administration, negotiated\nwith Naples, Turin, and Florence for the formation of an Italian\nconfederation under the presidency of the Pope, arrested Gavazzi, who\nwas preaching rebellion, and brought back some of the troops which his\npredecessors had sent away from Rome. The radical press speedily opened\nan attack upon him. The clubs began to prepare for his downfall. The\n15th of November, two months after his accession to power, was the date\nfixed for the opening of the Chambers. He received more than one warning\nthat the same day had been appointed for his death. The wife of the\nMinister of War wrote him that his life was to be attempted as he\nentered the Chamber. A Frenchman sent him a note to the same effect. A\npriest stopped him at the Quirinal and repeated the warning. The Pope\nhad also learned of the plans of the conspirators and begged Rossi to\nbeware. \u201cThey are cowards,\u201d replied the count; \u201cthey will not dare to\nstrike.\u201d \u201cThe cause of the Pope,\u201d said the intrepid minister to one of\nhis colleagues, \u201cis the cause of God. I must go where my duty calls me.\u201d\nOn the night before the opening of the parliament a corpse was taken\nfrom one of the hospitals and carried secretly to the little Capranica\ntheatre. There a select band of conspirators rehearsed the\nassassination, and the chosen instrument of the vengeance of the\nsocieties, a young sculptor named Costantini, learned by repeated\npractice where to strike. They were waiting for the count at the\nentrance to the hall of Deputies. As he placed his foot upon the steps\nthey gathered around him. One struck him on the side. He turned his\nhead, and Costantini plunged a dagger into the carotid artery. The\nnearest priest was called, and Rossi lived just long enough to receive\nabsolution. He had yielded to the fears of his friends so far as to post\nextra guards about the court and staircase; _sed quis custodiet\ncustodes?_ The assassin and his accomplices walked away unmolested and\npassed the night promenading the city with songs of triumph. The streets\nwere hung with flags. The bloody dagger, decked with flowers, was\nexposed to the veneration of their party on the top of a tricolored\nstandard, and held up before the windows of the weeping family of the\nvictim. When the news of the awful crime committed on the stairs was\ncarried into the Chamber, the deputies manifested no concern. \u201cIt is\nnothing, gentlemen,\u201d said Sterbini; \u201clet us to business.\u201d When it was\nmade known to the Pope he fell upon his knees and remained some time in\nsilent prayer. \u201cCount Rossi has died a martyr,\u201d said he; \u201cGod will\nreceive his soul in peace.\u201d\n\nThe next day the Quirinal was surrounded by a menacing crowd demanding\nan immediate declaration of war against Austria, the convocation of a\nConstituent Assembly to devise a new form of government, and the\nsurrender of all power in the meantime to a ministry headed by Sterbini.\nThe Pope would not listen to them. Then they tried to burn the palace. A\nsingle volley from the Swiss Guard, fired over the heads of the mob,\ndrove them back. But they returned in force, with an ultimatum, backed\nby cannon and the whole civic guard. Sharp-shooters occupied the\nhouse-tops or sheltered themselves behind the famous equestrian groups\nin the centre of the piazza, and poured a shower of balls into the\npalace windows. One of the papal secretaries was killed. A bullet\nentered the Pope\u2019s chamber. The Holy Father called the diplomatic corps\ntogether and told them that he must yield. \u201cBut let Europe know that I\nam a prisoner here; I have no part in the government; they shall rule in\ntheir own name, not mine.\u201d\n\nHis chief thought now was flight. But he was closely watched and the\nguards invaded even his private apartments. On the 22d of November, six\ndays after the attack upon the Quirinal, he received from the Bishop of\nValence in France a silver pyx in which Pope Pius VI. used to carry the\nBlessed Sacrament suspended from his neck during his painful exile.\n\u201cHeir to the name, the see, the virtues, the courage, and many of the\ntribulations of this great pontiff,\u201d wrote the bishop, \u201cyou will perhaps\nattach some value to this interesting little relic, which I trust may\nnot serve the same destiny in your Holiness\u2019s hands as in those of its\nformer possessor.\u201d The Pope looked upon this as a providential provision\nfor his journey. The ingenuity of the Duke d\u2019Harcourt, ambassador of\nFrance, and the boldness of the Bavarian minister, Count Spaur, aided by\nthe quick wit of his pious French wife, finally arranged the escape. The\nPope\u2019s faithful gentleman-in-waiting, Filippani, collected the little\narticles absolutely needed on the route, and at night carried them under\nhis cloak, one by one, to the residence of Count Spaur. Meanwhile, it\nwas announced in Rome that the count, accompanied by his family, was\ngoing to Naples on a diplomatic errand. The countess started first in\nher travelling carriage with her son and his tutor, giving out that her\nhusband, detained a few hours in Rome by important business, would\novertake her at Albano. Towards evening on the same day (November 24,\n1848) the Duke d\u2019Harcourt visited the Quirinal in state, and, being\nadmitted to a private official interview with the Holy Father, began to\nread to him a series of long despatches. He read in a loud tone, so that\nhis voice could be heard by the guards in the ante-room. If they could\nhave seen what passed as well as they heard, they would have been very\nmuch astonished. For no sooner had the duke begun than the Pope retired\nto an inner chamber and transformed himself into a simple priest. He put\non a black robe, an ample cloak, and a low, round hat, and, accompanied\nby Filippani, he reached the grand staircase by a private door, passed\nthe guards unsuspected, and found himself in the street. Filippani had a\ncarriage in readiness, and drove with his august master to the church of\nSS. Peter and Marcellinus, beyond the Colosseum, where Count Spaur was\nwaiting with another conveyance. The Pope entered it; the count took the\nreins; they passed out by the gate of St. Giovanni, near the Lateran,\nthe sentries being satisfied with the count\u2019s declaration of his name\nand quality; and late in the night they reached a certain fountain on\nthe Appian Way, where the countess was to meet them with the coach and\nfour. When she drove up a few minutes later she was terrified at finding\nthe fugitive surrounded by an armed patrol. Count Spaur was answering\nthe questions of the soldiers, and the Pope and a trooper stood side by\nside against the fence. The countess did not lose her presence of mind.\n\u201cCome, doctor,\u201d she exclaimed, \u201cjump in; you have kept us waiting\u201d; and\nbidding good-night to the patrol, the party drove off at full speed. The\nPope was the first to speak. \u201cCourage!\u201d said he; \u201cI carry the Blessed\nSacrament in the same pyx in which it was borne by Pius VI.\u201d They\ncrossed the Neapolitan frontier at daylight, and as soon as they were\nsafe beyond the Pontifical States they all recited the _Te Deum_. They\nreached Gaeta in the afternoon. There Cardinal Antonelli joined them in\ndisguise, and Count Spaur, posting on to Naples, with a letter from the\nPope to King Ferdinand, resigned the care of the Holy Father to the\nsecretary of the Spanish embassy. Refused admission to the bishop\u2019s\npalace because the bishop was absent, the Pope and his companions took\nup their quarters at a poor inn, and there they were placed under\nsurveillance by the military commander, Gen. Gross, who suspected them\nas spies. The general was questioning the countess and the cardinal next\nday, when he was astounded by the arrival of the king and queen with\nthree vessels of war and a guard of honor. Count Spaur had reached\nNaples and delivered his letter to the king in person about midnight,\nand his majesty, after spending the rest of the night in preparations,\nembarked in the early morning to do honor to his illustrious guest. And\nduring the year and a half spent by the Pope in the Neapolitan\ndominions, either at Gaeta or Portici, there was no possible mark of\nrespect which King Ferdinand failed to show him. His purpose had been to\nembark in a Spanish frigate for the Balearic Islands, the scene of his\nbrief and absurd imprisonment in 1823, but Ferdinand persuaded him to\nremain in Gaeta, where the royal palace was prepared for his occupation.\nThere the diplomatic body gathered around him, and the cardinals\nassembled after escaping from Rome by various stratagems and disguises.\n\nAnd how was it in Rome? The ministry of Sterbini, the parliament, and\nthe authorities left by the Pope disappeared with equal suddenness, and\nthe government passed into the hands, not by any means of the Roman\npeople, but of Mazzini with the secret clubs, and of Garibaldi with two\nor three thousand soldiers of fortune, brought into the city from other\nparts of Italy. They pronounced the deposition of the Pope, and declared\na republic with an executive triumvirate. Nominally the triumvirs were\nMazzini, Armellini, and Saffi; in reality the head of the administration\nwas Mazzini alone. Wherever the pagan democracy triumphed, even for a\nfew days, the result was the same. Religion, the rights of property, and\ncommon morality suffered together and personal liberty vanished. Private\nestates in Rome were confiscated to the uses of the triumvirate under\nthe guise of forced loans. The goods of the church were seized. The\nshrines and altars were stripped bare. Confessionals were burned in the\nPiazza del Popolo. The houses of the cardinals were sacked, convents\nwere assaulted. Profane rites were celebrated in St. Peter\u2019s at Easter\nand Corpus Christi; the papal benediction _urbi et orbi_ was travestied\nby a suspended priest; the canons of St. Peter\u2019s were fined for refusing\nto take part in the impious ceremonies; the provost of the cathedral of\nSinigaglia was put to death for a similar cause. The clergy were hunted\nlike vermin, cut down in the public roads, dragged from hiding-places.\nThe convent of St. Callisto was turned into a slaughter-house, where one\nof the Roman priest-catchers used to shut up his victims, and kill them\nat pleasure without the formality of trial or sentence. He killed\nfourteen there in one day. Two vine-dressers, accused of being Jesuits\nin disguise, were torn to pieces on the bridge of St. Angelo. Murder and\npillage stalked hand in hand through the city. There soon ceased to be\nany real government at all in Rome, until on the 2d of July, 1849, the\nFrench army restored the papal authority after the horrors of a severe\nsiege, in which foreigners, not Romans, manned the defences. Anywhere\nelse in the world the quelling of such a revolt would have been followed\nby wholesale condemnations to the galleys and the scaffold. But nothing\ncould conquer the kindness of Pius IX. His restoration, like his\naccession, was followed by an act of amnesty. It left in exile the\nguiltiest of the leaders; and care was taken to give the re-established\ngovernment as much strength as the situation demanded. Some restrictions\nwere certainly necessary; several priests had been assassinated since\nthe surrender of the city; two attempts had been made to burn the\nQuirinal; and placards menaced with the vengeance of the societies all\nRomans who should welcome the Pope on his return.\n\nNevertheless, the Holy Father\u2019s journey home in April was a continuous\ntriumph, and his entrance into Rome was celebrated with frantic\ndemonstrations of delight. He confirmed many of the most valuable of his\npolitical reforms, and resumed his old life of charity and devotion. The\nnext ten years of his reign are commonly described as a period of severe\nreaction. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pius IX. has never\nbeen an absolutist, never ceased to favor all true liberty, never\nbelieved that nations can be governed in the nineteenth century by the\nmethods which prevailed in the ninth. From his accession down to the\npresent day he has not only been the kindest ruler known to history, but\nhe has invariably granted his people the most liberal institutions and\nthe fullest measure of personal freedom which the incessant activity of\nthe secret conspirators would allow. The enemies of Italian liberty are\nthe dagger and the bayonet. It is mere cant and bigotry to assume that\neverything calling itself a republic, whatever its true character, is\nentitled to the sympathy of a free people.\n\nWhen Charles Albert was defeated by the Austrians, Mazzini declared that\nthe war of the kings had ended and the war of the peoples was about to\nbegin. The war of the peoples had failed in its turn, and now the secret\nsocieties went back to a conspiracy of the kings. They found Victor\nEmanuel a more useful instrument than his father, and with him they made\na compact whose terms we can gather plainly enough from the event. As\nthe destruction of Christianity was the avowed purpose of the secret\nsocieties from the very beginning, so the first service which Sardinia\nmust render them in payment for the crown of Italy was a systematic\nattack upon the church in the Sardinian territory. The method of these\nattacks is always the same. They begin by silencing the clergy,\ndispersing the religious orders, and giving an anti-religious character\nto public education. In Sardinia the government went so far as to found\na state school of heretical theology, and to impose it upon the\nepiscopate by force. In the university of Turin it was taught that the\nstate is omnipotent over the church, that the temporal power of the Pope\nis incompatible with the spiritual, that marriage cannot be proved a\nsacrament; and the government prohibited the appointment of any\nclergyman to a benefice who had not followed the condemned theological\ncourse at this university. For warning their clergy against such\nheresies the bishops were imprisoned and their revenues were seized.\nPriests were arrested for preaching \u201cinsubordination.\u201d Convents were\nsuppressed without warning, and even without law. Nuns were turned into\nthe streets in the middle of the night. Clerics were pressed into the\narmy. Religious communities engaged in teaching were treated with\nespecial rigor. Church property was confiscated and priests were reduced\nto beggary. Thus so early as 1849 did the Sardinian government join the\npagan conspiracy, and lend itself for a price to the work of\nemancipating the people from all religious belief.\n\nIt was not until 1859 that the plot was ripe, and then, to the dismay of\nthe great Catholic party in France, an accomplice of Victor Emanuel\npresented himself in the person of Napoleon III. There was no reason to\nwonder at such an unnatural alliance. Napoleon, whose empire was built\nupon revolution, and who held despotic power by the double and doubly\nfalse titles of massacre and counterfeit suffrage, was always\ntreacherous to the Pope. After the fall of the Mazzinian republic in\n1848 he attempted to impose upon the Holy Father a policy in the\ninterest of the revolutionists, and that was the cause of the Pope\u2019s\nlong delay at Portici; Pius IX. would not return to Rome until he could\nreturn without conditions. He declared that he \u201cwould sooner go to\nAmerica; he knew the way thither already: or he would take refuge in\nAustria.\u201d[46] Napoleon was compelled to yield. Then came the\ndemonstration of Count Cavour at the Congress of 1856, made,\nundoubtedly, with Napoleon\u2019s connivance. Cavour hurled \u201cthe Roman\nquestion\u201d into the midst of European politics by his proposal for the\nseparation of the Legations from the Pontifical States, and their\ngovernment by a lay vicar; and although the subject was postponed, the\nmere discussion of it served a practical purpose. \u201cIt is the first\nspark,\u201d said Count Cavour\u2019s own newspaper, \u201cof an irresistible\nconflagration.\u201d Count Rayneval, the French representative at Rome,\nrefuted the charges brought by Cavour against the papal administration,\nbut his able report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs was suppressed in\nParis, and only saw the light through the pages of a London daily paper.\nTwo years later (January 14, 1858) Orsini made his attempt upon\nNapoleon\u2019s life, and from his prison he warned the emperor that the\nCarbonari held him to his ancient engagements. \u201cSo long as Italy shall\nnot be independent the tranquillity of Europe _and that of your majesty_\nwill be but a chimera.\u201d From this time there was no more mystery about\nNapoleon\u2019s purposes. He had a long private conference with Cavour at\nPlombi\u00e8res, and on the 1st of January, 1859, he made the famous\nunfriendly remark to the Austrian ambassador at the Tuileries which\nproved the signal for the Franco-Italian war. A month later appeared his\npamphlet, _Napoleon III. and Italy_, in which he denounced the civil\ngovernment of the Pope as incompatible with modern civilization, and\nproposed anew the double-headed confederation of Gioberti, with the King\nof Sardinia as military chief and the Sovereign Pontiff as honorary\npresident. And Piedmont, in the meantime, played her part astutely. For\na long time her agents had been busy among the Italian states. A\ncircular signed by Garibaldi, who was now a general in the Piedmontese\nservice, gave instructions to the conspirators:\n\nFootnote 46:\n\n  Villefranche.\n\n\u201c1. Before hostilities have commenced between Piedmont and Austria you\nare to rise with the cry of 'Italy for ever! Victor Emanuel for ever!\u2019\n2. Wherever the insurrection triumphs, he among you who enjoys most\npublic esteem and confidence is to take the military and civil command,\nwith the title of provisional commissioner, acting for King Victor\nEmanuel, and to retain it until the arrival of a commissioner sent by\nthe Sardinian government.\u201d But it is unnecessary to quote proofs of the\nplot; Mazzini himself laid it bare when he attacked the government on\naccount of its prosecution of the authors of the abortive revolt at\nGenoa, in 1857: \u201cMonarchico-Piedmontese committees exist at Rome,\nBologna, Florence, and several cities of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom;\nand there are secondary centres in several other towns. I could name to\nyou the persons, several of them deputies, who are the agents between\nthe poor dupes and the personages of the government.\u201d In Florence the\nplot against the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which resulted in his abdication\nafter his troops had been bribed to desert him, was matured in the very\nhouse of the Sardinian ambassador. In Parma the Sardinian agents\ninstigated the expulsion of the Duchess Regent, who was yet so popular\nthat her subjects spontaneously recalled her, and Victor Emanuel had to\ndrive her out a second time. In the Papal States the Sardinians stood\nupon no ceremony, but, when the insurrection took place, they boldly\nmarched in troops to sustain it.\n\nBefore the peace of Villafranca all Central Italy was in the hands of\nthe Piedmontese commissioners. By the terms of that treaty these\ncommissioners were to be withdrawn. The amazement of Europe, therefore,\nwas profound when, even before the signatures to the convention were\ndry, Victor Emanuel was found to be setting up provisional governments\nin Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and the Romagna, and getting ready to play\nthe favorite French farce of the plebiscitum. As it was managed in one\nstate it was managed in all. The Romagna has a million of inhabitants.\nThe Sardinian agents prepared voting lists, restricted to the large\ntowns where the revolutionary party was strong and bold, and put on\nthese lists only eighteen thousand names. Of these not more than a third\nvoted. The total vote for and against annexation represented, therefore,\nonly three-fifths of one per cent. of the population. And this is called\na plebiscitum! Nevertheless, on the 18th of March, 1860, the Legations\nParma, Modena, and Tuscany were declared annexed, like Lombardy, to the\nSardinian monarchy, and the king, assured of the countenance of the\nemperor, made preparations for the invasion of Umbria and the\nMarches.[47] It was a comparatively simple process; in this case\nSardinia frankly took the coveted provinces by force of arms. The\nexpedition was concerted at Chambery between Napoleon and the\nPiedmontese general Cialdini, and in closing the interview the emperor\nis reported to have said, _Faites, mais faites vite!_\u2014almost the very\nwords which our Lord spoke to Judas: \u201cWhat thou doest, do quickly.\u201d On\nthe tenth anniversary of this interview Napoleon, a prisoner in the\npower of the great German Empire which he had done more than any other\none man to create, ceased to reign.\n\nFootnote 47:\n\n  When the Pope launched a bull of excommunication against the\n  spoliators of his territory, Napoleon forbade its publication in\n  France. He allowed the official and radical journals, however, to\n  publish a forged bull, and to ridicule and denounce at pleasure the\n  extravagant language which it imputed to the Holy Father. The bishops\n  tried to expose the forgery, but the press was closed to them.\n\nWe are near the end. A fortnight after Sedan the Piedmontese army,\n60,000 strong, appeared before the walls of Rome to seize the last of\nthe temporal possessions of the Holy See. Defence was impossible. The\npontiff instructed his little army to resist only until a breach had\nbeen made in the walls. Then he went to pray in the venerable Lateran\nbasilica, the mother-church of Christendom. He visited the neighboring\nchapel of the Scala Santa, and made on his knees the painful ascent of\nthe twenty-eight marble steps from the judgment-hall of Pilate which our\nSaviour\u2019s blessed feet had pressed. In the little chapel at the top he\nimplored the pity and protection of Almighty God for the afflicted\nchurch. Then, followed by the acclamations of a crowd of affectionate\nsubjects, and blessing them as he went, he entered the Vatican, and Rome\nhas never seen him since.\n\nThe troops of Victor Emanuel made themselves masters of Rome the next\nday, September 20, 1870. The king followed them in time and established\nhis court in the Quirinal. And since then, in Rome as in the rest of\nItaly, the pagan revolution has gone steadily forward to the suppression\nof Christian education, of monastic and charitable orders, and, as far\nas possible, of all divine worship. When Garibaldi rode on horseback\ninto the church of Monte Rotondo and ordered his prisoners to cover\ntheir heads, which they had bared out of respect to the sacred place, he\nonly gave emphasis to the sentiment which pervades the whole movement.\nThe convents are empty; the churches are desolate; libraries are\nscattered; great seminaries of theology are broken up; Christian\neducation has been driven from the school-room; there are hundreds of\npriests who go hungry and in rags; there are nuns in Rome whose whole\nincome is three cents a day; the bishops have been robbed of everything\nand live on the charity of the Pope; pious processions are prohibited;\nmembers of religious orders who survive the suppression of their houses\nare forbidden to receive novices; the father-general of the Jesuits is\nan exile from Rome, and his nearest representative lives as a private\nlay person in hired lodgings. Today a bill is pending in the Italian\nparliament, and has already passed one branch of it, to punish bishops,\npriests, religious writers, and journalists for what is styled\n\u201cdisturbing the public conscience\u201d and the \u201cpeace of families.\u201d The\nItalian government has pretended to guarantee the freedom and\nindependence of the Sovereign Pontiff in the exercise of all his\nspiritual functions, but now it proposes to prevent the publication of\nhis encyclicals and allocutions; to condemn him not only to perpetual\nimprisonment, but to perpetual silence; to prosecute the bishops if they\ntransmit his instructions to the faithful, and the priests if they\npreach against any heresy sanctioned by the state. To censure, by speech\nor writing, any law or institution approved by the civil authority is to\nbe treated as a felony calculated to \u201cdisturb consciences.\u201d Our divine\nLord passed the whole period of his ministry on earth in disturbing\nconsciences; the history of Christianity, the labors of missionaries and\nreformers, are nothing else than a record of the disturbance of\nconsciences. But the pagan revolution has no toleration for\nChristianity. Close the confessionals, tear down the pulpits, burn the\nBibles, break the tables of the law; the sleeping conscience of Italy\nmust not be disturbed.\n\nThus the conspiracy of the kings has moved on towards the subjugation of\nthe church. The secret societies are only using the kingdom of Italy and\nthe despotic empire of Germany for the accomplishment of their\nanti-religious purpose, and when that is done the kings, in their turn,\nwill be the victims of the deep-laid and long-cherished plot for the\nabolition of \u201csubordination\u201d and worship. Let nobody imagine that they\nare inactive or that they are satisfied with national unity. Mazzini\nnever pretended that their work was done when a king was set up in the\nPope\u2019s palace. He died conspiring against Victor Emanuel and urging\nItaly to press on to \u201cthe goal of the revolution.\u201d Nor did his projects\ndie with him. The anniversary of his death was celebrated last March by\ndemocratic demonstrations all over Italy which the government was\nhelpless to suppress. \u201cA funeral march, a national hymn, and a few\nshort, earnest words from some well-known and esteemed local republicans\nand _capi-popolo_,\u201d says an English liberal journal, \u201cdeclaring the\ncommemorative ceremony to be not merely a token of remembrance, but 'a\n_promise_,\u2019 was all that took place; but the fact that these things did\ntake place on the same day throughout the whole of Italy is one of great\nsignificance. In many instances the authorities did their best\npreviously, by warnings and even by threats, to prevent these\ndemonstrations, but we have heard of no case in which they ventured upon\nany attempt to put them down by force.\u201d[48] The flags which the\nassociations carried were \u201cfree from the stain,\u201d to use the popular\nphrase\u2014that is to say, they did not show the arms of Savoy; and the\nletters read and addresses delivered spoke openly of a \u201ctime for action\u201d\nwhich was yet to come. And while the clubs were thus parading and\ndeclaiming the following circular was distributed among the rank and\nfile of the Italian army:\n\nFootnote 48:\n\n  _The Examiner_ (London), March 31, 1877.\n\n    \u201cFree citizens! Brother Carbonari! Every sect, every family, every\n    individual is free to investigate, as best he may, the road which\n    leads to heaven; but it belongs to the Carboneria to indicate and\n    open up the way to the kingdom of liberty, to the triumph of\n    justice, to social amelioration upon earth. The Carboneria, in its\n    principles, in its development, and in the means which it proposes\n    to employ for its purpose\u2014_i.e._, for the amelioration, economic and\n    moral, of mankind, for the diffusion of liberty, and for the perfect\n    equalization of society\u2014is the one association which can boast of\n    the right of nature and the most perfect justice. All other\n    associations, because based on privilege and ambition, either miss\n    their aim or become useless. Persuaded of this, the apostles of our\n    principle have devoted themselves to propagating and defending it\n    with ardor, defying dangers, condemnations, and calumnies of the\n    most deadly kind. Many were the acquisitions which our association\n    made in a short time in every branch of social science, in the arts,\n    and in commerce, and now all our aspirations are turned towards you\n    who compose the army\u2014the material force of nations. Soldiers!\n    remember that you are sons of the people, free citizens, and at the\n    same time the obstacle to the common weal and the hope of all. Do\n    you wish to serve tyranny, privilege\u2014in a word, the oppressors?\n    Remember that you are sons of the people; that force alone dragged\n    you from the bosom of your desolated families; that, slaves of a\n    stern discipline, you are forced to shoot down the oppressed, to\n    protect the oppressors; and do not forget that to-morrow, wounded\n    and crippled, you will return to the ranks of the people whom you\n    charged with the bayonet, and that in your turn you will then be\n    charged and oppressed. Remember that before being slaves you were\n    free, and that before serving the despot you were citizens. The\n    Carboneria expects you among its ranks; come and range yourselves by\n    the side of thousands of other brave ones, officers and graduates,\n    who do not disdain to stake everything to preserve themselves true\n    sons of the people, generous citizens of our common country.\u201d\n\n\n                                  II.\n\n\nWe have endeavored to follow thus far the progress of that general\nrevolt of the world against the divine authority which has marked the\npontificate of Pius IX. and embraces the Holy Father\u2019s heroic life of\nconstancy and suffering. But simultaneously there has gone on a contrary\nmovement\u2014a clearer development and consolidation of the authority of\nGod\u2019s church over the minds of the faithful; and herein we trace his\nglorious life of triumphant action. For his attitude towards the\nrevolution has not been one of mere passive resistance. He has fought a\nstout fight for the imperilled truth. It is a time of corruption and\nunbelief, when the world is lifted up with satanic pride to defy Heaven,\nand society is sacrificing all the guarantees of order, and even the\nelect are sorely tempted. History will record that the great mission of\nPope Pius IX. was to expose the fallacies and illusions of these evil\ndays, to stamp every error as it arose with the reprobation of the\ninfallible judge, and, after empires, and kingdoms, and republics have\nbeen racked by a century of the pagan revolt, to prepare again the\nfoundations of Christian civilization. \u201cGod has laid on me,\u201d said he to\nthe great assembly of bishops in 1867, \u201cthe duty to declare the truths\non which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which\nundermine its foundations. And I have not been silent. In the Encyclical\nof 1864, and in that which is called the Syllabus, I declared to the\nworld the dangers which threaten society and I condemned the falsehoods\nwhich assail its life. To you, venerable brethren, I now appeal to\nassist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. I am\naged and alone, praying on the mountain, and you, the bishops of the\nchurch, are come to hold up my arms.\u201d \u201cThere is perhaps hardly any\npontiff,\u201d says Cardinal Manning, \u201cwho has governed the church with more\nfrequent exercises of supreme authority than Pius IX.\u201d; and surely there\nis something magnificent in the courage with which he has met every\nattack of the world by a new and bolder assertion of the everlasting\ntruths against which the world is in arms. There is not a characteristic\nheresy of the time for which we Catholics cannot find in the utterances\nof this great pontiff a complete antidote; there is not a loss inflicted\nupon the church by her enemies for which we cannot trace a compensation\nin some clearer recognition of her spiritual power, some sublime\nrestatement of her sovereign authority. Our Holy Father has healed\ndivisions, abolished national and doctrinal parties within the pale of\nthe church, and displayed to the universe the household of Christ one\nnot only in the bonds of faith, but in unity of sympathies. Four times\nhe has summoned the bishops to meet him at the tomb of the apostle. In\n1854 more than two hundred bishops and cardinals assembled for the\ndefinition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception\u2014an act which,\nbesides its importance in a doctrinal sense, had a special significance\nas illustrating the supreme authority of the see of Peter. In 1862, just\nafter the first spoliation of the temporalities of the Papacy by Victor\nEmanuel, two hundred and sixty-five bishops assembled in Rome for the\ncanonization of the martyrs of Japan, and their meeting, both for the\ncircumstances under which it was summoned and the strong terms in which\nthe prelates expressed their union with the Holy See and their absolute\nsubmission to its teachings, made a profound impression throughout\nChristendom. Five years later the revolution had made immense progress;\nyet in the midst of political disturbance the world not only saw five\nhundred bishops gather at Rome to celebrate the centenary of St. Peter\u2019s\nmartyrdom, and again to testify their devotion to Peter\u2019s successor, but\nit heard the announcement of a general council, the first in three\nhundred years, called at a time when to the unaided human eye the papal\nthrone seemed tottering to its fall. Here was an inspiring example of\nfaith and Christian courage!\n\nCardinal Manning\u2019s admirable sketch of the history of the Vatican\nCouncil,[49] now in course of publication, shows the reasons for calling\nthat grand assembly, and the reasons especially for the definition of\ninfallibility, its supreme and most glorious achievement; and it brings\nout in clear light the fact that it was with Pius himself that the idea\nof the council originated. If it could ever be said that a general\ncouncil was the work of one man, the Council of the Vatican might be\ncalled the crowning work of the long life of Pius IX.\u2014one which alone\nwould place him among the most illustrious of all the Roman pontiffs,\nand make his reign a remarkable era in the history of the Catholic\nChurch. The circumstances of the time which give such immense importance\nto the convocation of this council are summarized in the opinions of the\ncardinals to whom the Pope submitted the question as early as 1864, and\nwe find an excellent synopsis of them in the papers by Cardinal Manning\nalready cited. \u201cThe special character of the age,\u201d say their eminences,\n\u201cis the tendency of a dominant party of men to destroy all the ancient\nChristian institutions, the life of which consists in a supernatural\nprinciple, and to erect upon their ruins and with their remains a new\norder founded on natural reason alone.... From these principles follows\nthe exclusion of the church and of revelation from the sphere of civil\nsociety and of science; and, further, from this withdrawal of civil\nsociety and of science from the authority of revelation spring the\nnaturalism, rationalism, pantheism, socialism, communism of these times.\nFrom these speculative errors flows in practice the modern revolutionary\nliberalism which consists in the supremacy of the state over the\nspiritual jurisdiction of the church, over education, marriage,\nconsecrated property, and the temporal power of the head of the church.\u201d\nThese and a multitude of other prevalent errors Pius IX. had condemned\nin the Syllabus and Encyclical which Cardinal Manning elsewhere refers\nto as \u201camong the greatest acts of this pontificate,\u201d summing up the\ndeclarations of many years, and giving them \u201ca new promulgation and a\nsensible accession of power over the minds not only of the faithful, but\neven of opponents, by the concentrated force and weight of their\napplication.\u201d[50] But it was expedient that the declaration should be\npublished again with the united voice of the whole episcopate joined to\nits head. Thus the council was almost unanimously approved as a\nsovereign remedy for the disorders of the time, an encouragement for the\nfaithful, a cure for dissensions, an antidote for evil tendencies within\nthe church, an impulse to the new and nobler life which even amid the\npolitical and social confusion had already begun to spring up among the\nCatholic peoples. And so, even while the pagan revolution was preparing\nits last assault upon the pontifical throne, an astonished world\nwitnessed this most majestic demonstration of the authority, the unity,\nand the power of the church, and the whole body of the faithful were\nfilled with courage and fresh enthusiasm. Driven from his capital,\nrobbed, and insulted, the captive of the Vatican, whose voice rings out\nclear and firm above the din of the century, whose strong arm sustains,\nwhose saintly example inspires, is yet victor over the world in the\ncouncil and the Syllabus.\n\nFootnote 49:\n\n  _The Nineteenth Century_ (London), March and April, 1877.\n\nFootnote 50:\n\n  _Petri Privilegium._ London. 1871.\n\nIt would be pleasant, if space allowed, to follow the course of his\nbeautiful private life. It is a model of devotion and simplicity. In his\ngreat palace he occupies only a plain bed-chamber with a bare stone\nfloor, and a working-cabinet with little furniture except a table and\ntwo chairs. He rises, summer and winter, at half-past five. He says\nMass, and hears a second Mass of thanksgiving; or if sickness prevents\nhim from celebrating the Holy Sacrifice, he does not fail to receive\ncommunion. His hours of work are long and regular. His fare is plain,\neven to meagreness. Every day he takes exercise in the Vatican gardens,\nand one of his favorite resorts is a beautiful alley of orange-trees,\nwhere the pigeons come to feed from his hand. One day he was discovered\nwith three cardinals, playing \u201chide and seek\u201d in the gardens with a\nlittle boy. Yet with all his gentleness he has a keen and caustic wit.\nThe author of a pious biography sent his book to the Pope for approval.\nThe pontiff read till he came to these words: \u201cOur saint triumphed over\nall temptations, but there was one snare which he could not escape: he\nmarried\u201d; and then he threw the book from him. \u201cWhat!\u201d said he, \u201cshall\nit be written that the church has six sacraments and one snare?\u201d Of a\nCatholic diplomatist whose conduct and professions were at variance he\nsaid: \u201cI do not like these accommodating consciences. If that man\u2019s\nmaster should order him to put me in jail, he would come on his knees to\ntell me I must go, and his wife would work me a pair of slippers.\u201d\nDuring the French occupation of Rome a certain French colonel was guilty\nof so gross an offence to the Pope\u2019s authority that the Holy Father\ndemanded his recall. Before his departure he had the effrontery to\npresent himself at the Vatican and ask for a number of small favors,\nending with a request for the Pope\u2019s autograph. The Pontiff wrote on a\ncard the words which our Lord addressed to Judas in the garden, \u201c_Amice,\nad quid venisti?_\u201d (\u201cFriend, wherefore hast thou come hither?\u201d), and the\ncolonel, who did not understand Latin, showed it to all his friends as a\ntestimonial of the Pope\u2019s regard, until somebody unkindly supplied him\nwith the translation. It is the etiquette of the Vatican that carriages\nwith only one horse must not enter the inner court. This rule was\nenforced one day in 1867 against the Prussian ambassador, Count von\nArnim, and Bismarck, for purposes of his own, endeavored to make a\ndiplomatic scandal of the transaction, instructing the ambassador to\nclose the legation and quit Rome instantly unless he was allowed to\ndrive with one horse to the very foot of the papal staircase. But\nBismarck was no match for Pius IX. The Pope caused Cardinal Antonelli to\nwrite that \u201cHis Holiness, taking compassion on the difficulties of the\ndiplomatic body, would in future allow the representatives of the great\npowers to approach his presence with one quadruped _of any sort_\u201d\u2014avec\n_un quadrup\u00e8de quelconque_. It is believed that the Prussian minister\nnever availed himself of this permission in its full extent.\n\nThe newspapers bring us bad news from time to time of the Pope\u2019s health.\nLet us not be alarmed. He comes of a long-lived family. His grandfather\ndied at ninety-three, his father at eighty-three, his mother at\neighty-eight, his eldest brother at ninety. \u201cI am in the hands of God,\u201d\nhe said to an English gentleman; \u201cI shall bless my hour when it comes.\nBut, my son, when I take up certain newspapers nowadays, and do not find\nin them an account of my last illness and my end, it always seems to me\nas if the editors had forgotten something.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                  A VISION OF THE COLOSSEUM, A.D. 1873\n\n\n    O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled\n    thy holy temple: they have made Jerusalem as a place to keep\n    fruit.\u2014_Ps._ lxxviii.\n\n    I had been idly reading, through the quiet afternoon,\n    A poet\u2019s passionate verses, falling softly into tune\n    Of even, measured rhythm, and of fine, melodious words,\n    Rippling along with easy grace like careless song of birds;\n    Now warblings, half unconscious, like the happy songster\u2019s trill\n    Poured from some wind-swayed bough when all the woods are still;\n    Now shriller notes that rose above harsh, grating sounds of war,\n    Loud clarion-notes, above the drums, proclaiming peace afar\u2014\n    Loud p\u00e6an sounds triumphant that Italy was free,\n    United, and one mighty realm from smiling sea to sea;\n    From Sicily\u2019s smoke-crowned peak to Savoy\u2019s Alpine chain\n    One flag met every rambling breeze that breathed o\u2019er hill and\n       plain;\n    And haughty Rome, in truth, the C\u00e6sar\u2019s city now once more,\n    The perilous reign of Peter passed for ever safely o\u2019er.\n    \u201c_Io!_ _triumphe!_ onward! All ye guarding eagles, come!\n    And with its ancient glory fill your old imperial home.\u201d\n\n    I, sighing, closed the volume. Ah! for me how sadly dim\n    The poet\u2019s glowing setting of pale Freedom\u2019s Roman hymn,\n    Whose music, as I heard it, only direst discord made.\n    The martial beat of rattling drum, the trumpet\u2019s mellowing shade,\n    Hid all the sweeter utterance of a happy people\u2019s voice\n    Or sound of pealing church-bells bidding kindly skies rejoice.\n    I heard above the loudest note the dull, persistent sound\n    Of forging iron fetters\u2014even riveted while crowned,\n    Sweet Freedom saw, indignant, built her frail and crumbling throne\n    Of consecrated marble newly stolen, stone by stone.\n\n    \u201c_Io!_ _triumphe!_ onward! But the shouting could not drown\n    The psalm of homeless friars, weary exiles, marching down,\n    Chapel and cell denied them; for of these the state has need.\n    And from the cross\u2019s folly must St. Francis\u2019 sons be freed!\n    I heard in plaintive chorus nuns sad _Miserere_ sing,\n    As ceased for them for ever their old convent\u2019s sheltering\u2014\n    Let them seek aid from Him on high whose faithful sheep they are;\n    The horses of the hero-king seek not their help so far!\n\n    I heard, above th\u2019 exultant fife, the loud-voiced auctioneer\n    Strike down the church\u2019s garment 'mid the idle jest and jeer\n    Of souls that trembled not to see the sacred chalice borne\n    By hands that would have helped of old to press the twisted thorn,\n    Who would for thirty pieces once their loving Lord have sold\u2014\n    Why not his spouse\u2019s raiment for twice that, glittering gold?\n    I heard the heavy rustle of quaint, figured tapestry\n    By pious fingers cunning wrought in days of chivalry.\n    Loud chimed the strangers\u2019 clanking coin that paid the moneyed\n       worth,\n    But faint the modern anthem\u2019s notes proclaiming Freedom\u2019s birth!\n\n    Of wandering peoples, too, I heard the tired and restless tread,\n    Their little harvest grown too scant for even daily bread,\n    Fair Freedom\u2019s added burden grown too heavy to be borne;\n    While Italy, sad-hearted, watched her children sail forlorn\n    To seek across the western sea the life she could not give;\n    For her cannon must be cast, and a nation she must live.\n    A nation crowned! Ah! royal state is very heavy dole;\n    All too quick the world\u2019s pulse beats to heed plaint of weary soul.\n    Still with triumphant p\u00e6ans did the poet\u2019s verses ring:\n    \u201cShout, Italy, our Italy! all-joyous anthems sing!\n    Clang out, sad-voiced Roman bells! hail Piedmont\u2019s Victor,\u2014king!\u201d\n\n                        \u201c_Miserere, miserere_,\u201d\n                            Sounded church and convent steeple;\n                        \u201cIn thy mercy spare us, Saviour,\n                            Leading back thy erring people.\u201d\n\n    And as the clanging belfries trembled strangely with the sound,\n    The _Miserere_ drifting to the peoples gathered round,\n    Methought the quiet afternoon had faded from my sight,\n    And I, beneath a Roman sky, alone with deepening night,\n    Stood in the Colosseum\u2019s shade, with many a wondering thought,\n    No touch of moonlight falling on the walls the Romans wrought;\n    The calm stars, gazing earthward, seemed to give nor light nor\n       shade;\n    No torches\u2019 fitful splendor through the lonely arches played;\n    And, even as the shade was deep, so deep the silence fell,\n    So calm the night it scarce could wake the wind-harp\u2019s sighing\n       swell;\n    No beaded _aves_ drifted from cowled pilgrims of the cross,\n    No murmur of atoning prayers pleading the nations\u2019 loss;\n    No tourists\u2019 idle laughter broke the silence of the scene,\n    While the shrouding arches sheltered my thoughts of what had been.\n\n    Years, centuries had vanished as my wing\u00e8d thoughts flew fast\n    To days when Rome imperial o\u2019er the world her robe had cast;\n    O\u2019er the wild, barbarian legions I saw her eagles shine,\n    While her nobles quaffed Greek learning in draughts of Grecian wine\u2014\n    Expounding, too, with easy art, the Christians\u2019 foolish faith:\n    How traitorous to C\u00e6sar\u2019s state was every Christian breath.\n    And then I saw the glitter of their perfumed robes no more,\n    As gleaming wings of seraphs stroked my eyelids softly o\u2019er.\n\n    Then I heard the sweet intoning of the Christians\u2019 matin psalm,\n    And I saw them lowly kneeling before the mystic Lamb:\n    Maid patrician bent in prayer with the dark slave of the East,\n    Egypt\u2019s sage, Juda\u2019s captive, meeting at the angels\u2019 feast.\n    Before that holy altar all one sacred likeness wear\u2014\n    His who, on the cross outstretched, all our sin and weakness bare:\n    Subtle Greek before the cross laying down his pride of art;\n    Falling meekly peace divine on some savage Scythian heart;\n    Hapless Jew, haughty Northman, Roman proud, and cowering slave,\n    Bound together by the blood of Him who died all men to save;\n    One by the bond of suffering, one in the voice of prayer\n    That rose with solemn sweetness through the catacombs\u2019 dull air:\n\n                      \u201c_Miserere, miserere_,\u201d\n                          Rose the sad and earnest pleading;\n                      \u201cIn thy mercy spare us, Saviour,\n                          Unto thee the nations leading.\u201d\n\n    Lo! as entranced I listened, there mingled with the song\n    A sound as if of many steps passing the streets along,\n    And the ancient Roman arches 'neath which I dreaming stood\n    Grew peopled with the city\u2019s fierce and restless multitude.\n    What noble game should fitly while the idle hours away,\n    What gracious pastime fill with joy the Roman holiday?\n    Should some strong-limbed barbarian lay his life down in its\n       strength,\n    That the day for Roman matrons should have less of weary length?\n    Nay, daintier sight the maiden tells, binding her mistress\u2019 zone:\n    To-day, by C\u00e6sar\u2019s lions, Christian maid shall be o\u2019erthrown!\n\n    Within the dread arena pale and firm the martyr stood\u2014\n    A strange and dazzling sight she seemed amid the soldiers rude;\n    So slight the little, childish form, so young the radiant face,\n    Whence streams of holy glory flooded all the pagan place;\n    The happy lips half-parted with a love that fain would speak,\n    And the eyes to heaven uplifted beneath the forehead meek\u2014\n    The eyes whence earth had vanished, heaven\u2019s shadow resting there,\n    The glimmer of its shining falling softly on her hair.\n    Ah! happy maid, that, listening, heard above the tumult wild\n    The loved voice of the Father calling home his little child;\n    The voice of the Belov\u00e8d bidding sweet his loved one come:\n    \u201cArise, my Dove, my Beautiful\u201d\u2014it sounded o\u2019er the hum\n    Of wondering crowds who could not guess whence came the martyr\u2019s\n       strength,\n    Her heart with joy nigh breaking that it should rest at length\n    On His whose love had bought it with a price exceeding far\n    The spoils of all the nations gracing C\u00e6sar\u2019s triumph-car.\n    One little grain of incense still might save the martyr\u2019s life,\n    But one little breath for C\u00e6sar still win release from strife\u2014\n    Unto C\u00e6sar what is C\u00e6sar\u2019s, to God the life he gave;\n    Less duty could she offer Him who died that life to save?\n    And then the vision faded, and once more I stood alone\n    Where thought of sainted martyrs seemed to consecrate each stone,\n    And stars as calmly watching o\u2019er as once in days bygone\n    When C\u00e6sar\u2019s dearest pastime won his slaves a deathless crown.\n\n                      \u201c_Miserere, miserere_,\u201d\n                          Seemed the night-wind lowly sighing;\n                      \u201cCall thy erring sheep, O Saviour,\n                          Dearest Lord of love undying!\u201d\n\n    Soft then I saw advancing through the darkness\u2019 mighty shade\n    A tall and stately figure in wide, trailing robes arrayed,\n    The fair, white arms in longing stretched, as if in woe to seek\n    The comfort of the broken heart, the strength of all the weak\u2014\n    Christ\u2019s bless\u00e8d cross with arms outspread, as if to mutely plead\n    For mercy for the sinner, from tender hearts love\u2019s meed;\n    Of mightiest love the symbol true, the link \u2019twixt heaven and earth,\n    The sign by which earth\u2019s frailest one is cleansed for heavenly\n       birth.\n    In vain! No craving hand can touch that sacred symbol now,\n    Its holy vision bring no rest to world-tossed, aching brow;\n    The modern C\u00e6sar has no need to mark where martyrs fell:\n    \u201cUnto C\u00e6sar what is C\u00e6sar\u2019s\u201d\u2014that word they kept too well.\n    And murmuring monks but echo, their chaplets telling o\u2019er,\n    The words these stones repeated in the Roman days of yore;\n    To earthly science dearer far the walls the pagans built\n    Than the precious blood of martyrs for love of Jesus spilt.\n    Perchance beneath these stones might lie rare treasures of old Rome\u2014\n    The cross in Christian kingdom must not wander from its home!\n\n                      \u201c_Miserere, miserere_,\u201d\n                          Seemed the very stones outcrying;\n                      \u201cIn thy mercy spare the nations.\n                          Heed, O God! the prisoners\u2019 sighing.\u201d\n\n    A sound of low lamenting then filled all the silent place,\n    Whose darkness won unearthly light from out the stranger\u2019s face\u2014\n    A face so fair not Paphos\u2019 queen could claim a grace so rare;\n    Ah! only she, the much-desired, such peerless mien could wear.\n    And low I heard her murmuring: \u201cAh! me, woe, woe is me!\n    So weary are my ears with sound of shouts that speak me free.\n    Free! Am I free? Upon my head rests weight of royal crown,\n    And Piedmont\u2019s soldiers guard me, fearing lest I lay it down.\n    Italy! Am I Italy? That name indeed I bear;\n    And among the nations standing a nation\u2019s crown I wear\u2014\n    Proud empires that salute me fair, green lands beyond the sea,\n    Crying aloud: 'Shout, Italy! Thank Victor thou art free;\n    Thy peoples shall no longer 'neath the tyrant\u2019s scourge bend low,\n    And, too, thy seemly garment no unseemly rent shall show;\n    Among thy peers come thou once more to take thy place and name,\n    Fair Southern queen, King Victor has ta\u2019en away thy shame.\u2019\n\n    \u201cO gold-haired northern peoples! know ye not the sound of chains?\n    Ne\u2019er heard ye clink of German spur along my Lombard plains?\n    O rosy-cheeked barbarians! do ye deem that I am free\n    Because my rulers speed you when ye prate of liberty!\u2019\n    When ye the wide arms shorten of the world-redeeming cross\n    Since too far its shadow falls, and ye deem that shade your loss!\n    Far, far across the western seas I hear their poets sing,\n    While Freedom\u2019s joy-bells pealing, loud, exulting anthems ring:\n    'Rise up, dear Italy unchained; thank Victor thou art free,\n    And bend, oppressed, at Peter\u2019s throne no more thy trembling knee.\n    Thy sons shall waste in convent cell no more their manhood\u2019s\n       strength;\n    See! open wide, their prison-doors: free men they are at length!\n    Dark tyranny and priestcraft prostrate fall before thy king;\n    Thy children freemen rise once more beneath his sheltering.\u2019\n\n    \u201cO strong-armed western people! in your home beyond the sea,\n    Bearing even as your birthright the grace of liberty,\n    List not the songs such poets sing: they know not me or mine;\n    Studded with cruel thorns for me each laurel wreath they twine.\n    A mournful queen I am, alas! crowned in another\u2019s place\u2014\n    The mighty One from whom my face hath won its look of grace.\n    I sit as a usurper where I fain would kneel and pray,\n    Crowned with Rome\u2019s earthly circlet from her forehead stol\u2019n away!\n    The world\u2019s imperial mistress once, now queen of love and peace,\n    Holds she her life and liberty but as earth\u2019s monarchs please?\n    Fain would they on her gracious brow my coronet have set,\n    Its lustre dimmed with Savoy\u2019s loss, with Naples\u2019 tears all wet!\n    The handmaid of her Maker, fair with lustre not of earth.\n    Should she to Piedmont\u2019s Victor bend her brow of heavenly birth?\n    The mother of all peoples where the cross\u2019s light is shed,\n    Was my dull, narrow diadem fit crown to grace her head?\n    In her old palace I sit throned, crowned with her earthly crown,\n    With jealous care watched ever, lest I cast the honor down.\n    I see my children wander wide in exile from their own,\n    And, when they ask for living bread, my masters give them stone.\n    I sit beside St. Peter\u2019s chair; like his, my hands are bound;\n    My eyes weep bitter sorrow at your p\u00e6ans\u2019 wild, glad sound;\n    Beneath the heavy cuirass that is girded on my breast\n    I bear the wreath mysterious St. Peter\u2019s hand hath blessed.\n    Upon the cannon rests my hand craving to lift the cross,\n    And 'neath Sardinian colors I bewail the blind world\u2019s loss.\n\n                      \u201c_Miserere, miserere_,\u201d\n                          Seemed the weary voice outcrying,\n                      \u201cSpare thy heritage, O Saviour!\n                          Hearken thou the prisoners\u2019 sighing.\n\n    \u201cO credulous Western people! cease shouting I am free.\n    My masters have no knowledge of the truth of liberty,\n    Who murmur with ignoble lips my old and honored name,\n    And seek to rebaptize me with unholy rites of shame.\n    Are ye drunk with Freedom\u2019s dregs that ye have forgot her face,\n    And bend before th\u2019 unworthy thing men show you in her place?\n    Stretch not your hands, God-fearing race, to welcome such as these:\n    God, who your shepherd is, and judge, gives not to such his peace.\n\n                      \u201c_Miserere, miserere_,\n                          Mighty Lord of all the living,\n                      In thy mercy spare the erring,\n                          Sacred Heart of love forgiving!\u201d\n\n    \u201cThe great arched walls sent echoing back the sad, indignant plaint,\n    The light from that fair, mournful face grew evermore more faint,\n    Till, fading in the darkness, light and shadow both were gone,\n    And I sat where crimson sunset with southern splendor shone,\n    Lighting the western city with a flood of harmless fire,\n    With a glory, quickly fading, enwreathing mast and spire;\n    Whence no mellow bells pealed earthward, sounding the angel\u2019s call,\n    Nor _Miserere_ drifted from roof and tower tall;\n    The busy craft went sailing up and down the crowded stream\u2014\n    Upon my lap the poet\u2019s book, the conjurer of my dream.\n    Vision and sound had vanished, only still dim echoes fell\n    Of pleading voices rising on the night-wind\u2019s scarce-felt swell:\n\n                      \u201c_Miserere, miserere_,\n                          Hear, O God! the prisoners\u2019 sighing;\n                      Spare thy heritage, O Saviour!\n                          Dearest Lord of love undying.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                         THE DOOM OF THE BELL.\n\n\nTwo men were sitting in a garret at the very top of one of the craziest\nold houses in Bruges\u2014_not_ a house dating from the fifteenth century,\nsuch as those we admire to this day, but a house that was already two\nhundred years old when those were built. It stood on the brink of the\ncanal beyond which are now the public gardens that have displaced the\nramparts of the once turbulent and independent city. _Then_ the houses\ncrowded into the wide fosse of not too fragrant water, and leaned their\nbalconied gables over it. This was not in the busy or the splendid\nquarter; it was far from the cathedral and the Guildhall. And in those\nprosperous times of the Hanseatic League, of the Venetian and Genoese\nmerchant-princes visiting and marrying among their full peers of the\ncity of Bruges\u2014the times of the grand palaces built by those royal and\nlearned traders\u2014these two men I speak of were poor, obscure, and with\nlittle prospect of ever being anything else. Yet one of them had it in\nhim to do as great things as the Van Eycks, and to take the art-loving\ncity by storm, if he could only get \u201ca chance.\u201d It was the same in the\nyear 1425 as it is now, and men in picturesque short-hose and flat caps\nwere marvellously like those we see in ugly chimney-pots and tight\ntrousers. The rivalry of other artists\u2014none _very_ eminent\u2014and the\nungetable patronage of rich men stood in this young painter\u2019s way, and\nhe got disheartened and disgusted. This garret was his studio, his\nbedroom, and his kitchen. It was cheap, and the light could be managed\neasily and properly to suit his painting; but it was not one of those\nelaborately artistic studios, a picture in itself, which we associate\nwith the idea of the \u201cold masters.\u201d The things that were there had\nevidently drifted there and got heaped up by accident\u2014homely things most\nof them, and disposed with the carelessness natural to a man who had\nlittle belief or hope in his future. There was an air about the whole\nplace as well as its owner that seemed to say as plainly as any words,\n\u201cWhat is the use?\u201d But the other man was a contrast to him. He was much\nolder; a wiry form, and eager, small eyes, and an air of resistance to\noutward circumstances, \u201cas if he could not help it,\u201d but not in the\nsense of what is popularly called an \u201ciron will,\u201d were his chief\ndistinguishing marks. He was neither artist nor merchant, and he lived\n\u201cby his wits.\u201d In those days, just the same as now, that meant something\nbordering on dishonesty; and such men were known as useful, but scarcely\nreputable. This individual was seated on a low trunk or chest of\npolished wood, but not carved, nor even adorned with curious hinges or\niron-work; the other stood opposite, leaning on the high sill of a\nwindow in the gable, looking down into the canal.\n\n\u201cPeter,\u201d said the latter after a pause, \u201chave you heard of any one dying\nlately in the great houses, or, for that matter, in the rookeries?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, not _dying_\u2014at least, not lately,\u201d said the other slowly.\n\n\u201cNot _dying?_\u201d said the first, laying the same emphasis on the word as\nhis friend had done, and not showing any lack of understanding or sign\nof surprise.\n\n\u201cWell, I mean she recovered; but she was pretty near death, and of\ncourse will be again as soon as it is safe. It put some of his\nlordship\u2019s plans out a little when he heard how badly Simon had done his\nwork. But you know it was not at his house, but in a kind of prison, and\nshe was put there on a charge of stealing her mistress\u2019 Genoese\npearl-embroidered robe, and _it was said_ the lady begged as a favor she\nmight not be publicly executed for the attempt, but allowed some time to\nrepent and prepare; and when she was ready, she was to be told that one\nday, within the week, she would be poisoned by something in her food,\nwhich she could not taste and which would give her no pain, but put her\nto sleep\u2014_for ever_. But no one believed that this was her mistress\u2019\nrequest, nor that she ever stole anything, of course. Every one knows\nthat poor Dame Margaret is a cipher in her husband\u2019s house\u2014a worse\nvictim of my Lord Conrad\u2019s than any one there, many as they are; and he\nis just now out of reach of punishment, being, by the Count of Flanders\u2019\ninfluence, a member of the government, a councillor, and I know not what\nbesides. But it seems Simon did not do his work aright, and the poor\ngirl is still there, and no doubt, in a week or two, the experiment will\nbe quietly tried again and with success. Jan, are you listening?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the artist as he turned round with absent look and a\ngesture, as if he had unconsciously been picking off some buttons from\nhis sleeve and dropping them in the canal below.\n\n\u201cWell, what do you think of it?\u201d\n\n\u201cPeter,\u201d said the other abruptly, \u201cis Simon your friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, we have had dealings together sometimes. He sells me clothes now\nand then; you know he has a good deal of such stuff on his hands.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I could pay him,\u201d said the artist bitterly, \u201cI should not need any\ngo-between; but I have nothing. I want something he could give me, and,\nif I had it, I should not need any patron, and would take none, short of\nthe Count of Flanders himself.\u201d\n\n\u201cRiddles again,\u201d said Peter quietly; \u201cpoverty makes you mysterious.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you plainly what the riddle is, if you\u2019ll help me.\u201d\n\n\u201cFor friendship\u2019s sake?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! no, indeed. Is there one in all Bruges would do it, or I expect it\nof him?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well, do not croak; but _you_ know by experience that it is hard\nto live.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you will get me what I want of Simon, you shall have one-fourth of\nmy future reward and Simon one-fourth.\u201d\n\n\u201cToo mean terms, those, Jan,\u201d said Peter quietly, but intently watching\nhis friend\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cVery well, each a third, then; I knew you would want no less. But, look\nyou,\u201d he added, brightening up, \u201cno one can share the fame, and I shall\nbe known all over Flanders and Brabant, and France\u2014ay, even Italy and\nGermany; and who knows if the Greek merchants will not carry my name to\nthe court of Constantinople itself?\u2014and you two poor wretches will have\nnothing but a pitiful handful of gold.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite enough for me, at any rate,\u201d said Peter composedly; \u201cit will be\nmore than I ever had before. But do not let us 'count our chickens\nbefore they are hatched.\u2019 What is it, though, that you want to work this\nmiracle with?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly a vial of her blood after the girl has been dead four hours.\u201d\n\nPeter betrayed no emotion.\n\n\u201cRather an unusual request,\u201d he said meditatively, \u201cand one that savors\nstrongly of witchcraft, which you know is scarcely less dangerous than\nheresy. You remember what happened at Constance scarcely more than ten\nyears ago?\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense! What has heresy to do with the mixing of my colors? And who\nbut a leech will find out the mixture? And after all, if a fool were to\nuse this potion just mixed as I shall mix it, and paint a picture with\nit, his picture would be only fit for a tavern-sign, and no one could\ntell the difference. If you need the ingredients, you need the skill\nmore.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Jan, you are getting enthusiastic\u2014a miracle, that, in itself. I\nthought you had made up your mind that you would never do anything that\nwould get known.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I have a feeling, since you mentioned this case, that I _shall_\nbe known before I die, and known by _this_ means too. Can you get me\nwhat I want?\u201d\n\n\u201cI dare say I can. But shall I tell the old sinner Simon that I want it\nfor you, or say it is for a leech?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy lie about it?\u201d said the young man fiercely.\n\n\u201cPrudence, you know,\u201d said the other, perfectly unabashed.\n\n\u201cNo; tell him the bare truth, but swear him to secrecy. If he tells it,\nhe shall forfeit his share.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe could get twice as much for denouncing you.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet him! Where is his interest to denounce me? He is not a fiend, and\n_he_ knows it is hard to live.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe _did_, but may be he has forgotten it in his present position. All\nthe grandees know him now.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you forget, Peter, that his own business is more dangerous than my\nundertaking could be, even taking it for granted I should be suspected\nof witchcraft, and he would scarcely like to draw attention on his own\ndelicate doings.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo far true,\u201d said Peter. \u201cI respect your shrewdness; you _can_ talk\nsense sometimes. I will get that vial for you some time this week or\nnext.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo not forget the _exact_ time after death\u2014four hours. The perfection\nof the mixture would be gone if you did not attend to that. I shall come\nwith you to the door, and wait for you and the vial, any night and any\nhour you mention.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d said Peter, as he got up and stretched himself. \u201cI suppose\nyour larder is empty?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! I forgot. You can have what there is\u2014cheese three days old, and\nsome fresh brown bread, and two eggs, new-laid yesterday morning, which\nmy friend the washerwoman gave me for sitting up at night with her sick\nboy. She _would_ make me take them, and I am glad now _I_ need not eat\nthem myself. I should feel mean, if I did; and yet, if they stayed there\ntill to-morrow, hunger would drive me to it. You are welcome to them.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile, Peter had silently helped himself to all the articles\nmentioned except one \u201chunch\u201d of bread, and left the garret with a cool\n\u201cThank you.\u201d Jan turned back to the window, and stayed nearly an hour\nlooking down into the drowsy canal with its fringe of dark, huddled\nhouses, each, as he thought, a frame for a picture full of the same\nagony of hopeless aspirations and submission to grim and sordid\ncircumstances as his own. But he saw through glasses of his own\nstaining; for many of those wretched, crazy, but beautiful houses held\npictures of a bright home life and love that looked no higher or farther\nfor happiness, and was, in truth, the outcome of a mind more\nphilosophical than the future glory of Flemish art, staring into the\nflood from his garret window, could boast of possessing.\n\nThree months went by, and no one saw the young artist, save the man who\nsold him his meagre provisions, Peter, and his friend of the eggs. Five\ndays after the conversation we have recorded Peter and he were walking\nhome at two o\u2019clock in the morning through the streets, where no one but\nthe watchman had leave and license to be, calling out the hour when the\nchimes struck it. It was bright moonlight, and the two men would gladly\nhave dispensed with the beauty of the night, much as it enhanced the\ncharm of the great mansions they passed, the carved doorways, the\ndelicate balconies, the ponderous, magnificent iron bell-pulls, the\nlions\u2019 and griffins\u2019 heads on the many bridges over the narrow canals.\nEven Jan passed hurriedly by, standing nervously back in a doorway if he\nheard the clear cry of a watchman, starting as a loose stone rattled\nunder his feet in the pavement, and even when his companion\nill-naturedly put his hand in a fountain and noisily disturbed the water\nwith a \u201cswish\u201d that made the other turn pale and look around in horror\nof being pursued.\n\nAs the weeks went by and the young man worked on alone, feverishly and\nbattling with his own superstitions as well as the fear of being\ndenounced by his two associates, an odd change came over him. Peter\nnoticed it about one month after the day they had procured the vial of\nblood. Jan was taken with a pious fit that day, and insisted on spending\nsome miserable pence he had on candles offered for the soul of the\npoisoned girl, and which he, with genuine devoutness, put on the iron\nspikes provided for the purpose in the church of Notre Dame. That day,\nhaving spent all in this way, he fasted altogether and nearly fainted at\nhis easel; but when he left off work Peter saw that a startled,\nexpectant look was in his eyes, which he directed furtively every now\nand then to one particular corner of his room. When questioned he\nhurriedly turned the conversation; but the scared look grew more and\nmore intense as time went on. At last, one night, the young man asked\nPeter seriously and with great trepidation to stay and sleep with him.\n\n\u201cI believe I am getting nervous,\u201d he said, with a laugh that was\nanything but genuine. Peter made no objection, but in the middle of the\nnight he was awakened by Jan. The poor fellow was in a violent cold\nperspiration, and, pointing excitedly to the same corner, cried:\n\n\u201cThere she is; and she never says a word, but only looks at me\nreproachfully! She has been there every night since the first Month\u2019s\nMind!\u201d\n\n\u201cPshaw!\u201d said Peter, \u201cI see nothing there, Jan; you should be bled\u2014that\nis all. You have been overworking yourself.\u201d\n\nBut nothing would persuade the artist that the ghost of the poisoned\ngirl was not there, silent and reproachful; and there, day after day and\nnight after night, he saw her, and, though he longed to speak to her, he\nnever dared.\n\nThree months were over and his picture was done; but he was only the\nskeleton of his former self, and he looked, as Peter said, like what the\nFlorentine woman had said of Dante\u2014\u201cthe man who had gone down to hell\nand come back again.\u201d His bitterness was gone, so was his hopelessness,\nbut there was no healthy joy or youthful enthusiasm in their place; he\nseemed to have grown old all at once, except for the feverish, eager\nhaste to show his picture and win the name that should darken that of\nthe national pets and the popular favorites. Where to show it? was a\nquestion Peter put more than once, but Jan waived it as not worth any\nanxiety. He should write a notice, and post it on the church doors and\nthose of the Guildhall and the Exchange, to the effect that a new and\nunknown painter had a picture for sale and exhibition at such and such a\nplace; and if the public did not care to come there to see it, they\nmight see it once on next market-day in the Grande Place, where the\nartist would show it himself, free to all.\n\nThe subject was \u201cJudith and Holofernes\u201d\u2014a common subject enough in those\ndays, but the artist thought that no one had ever treated it in the same\nway before. When we see it in the market-place and hear the comments of\nthe people, we shall understand in what lay the difference.\n\nThe day appointed by the artist came. All the rich and learned men had\nnoticed the placard on the church doors, and the connoisseurs and\ncritics were on the alert. This unpatroned and self-confident painter\nstung their curiosity, and the merchants, native and foreign, were also\neager to see and, if they liked it, \u201cbuy up\u201d the new sensation. The\npeople, too, had heard of the exhibition, and many crowded earlier than\nusual to the market-place to get a glimpse of the mysterious picture\nbeing set up by the artist.\n\nNo one did see it, however. A good many stalls, booths, and awnings were\nup long before daylight, and no one noticed the stand of the new-comer,\nput up in a corner, and screened all round with the commonest\ntent-cloth. As soon as dawn made it possible to see things a little, the\nstand was found to be open, and a picture, unframed, was seen set up on\ntrestles, and some coarse crimson drapery skilfully arranged round it,\nso as to take the place of the frame which the artist was too poor to\nbuy. A few loungers came up, and, fancying this was the screen to some\nmystery-play to be acted later in the day, sauntered away again, like\nuncritical creatures as they were. Presently a priest and a merchant\ncame up, evidently searching for some particular booth, and soon stopped\nbefore the picture.\n\n\u201cHere it is,\u201d shortly said one of them.\n\n\u201cSo _that_ is the picture?\u201d said the other; and for a while they both\nstood in silence, examining it in detail.\n\n\u201cWonderful!\u201d said the merchant presently. \u201cIt beats the hospital 'St.\nJohn.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cThere _is_ a strange power about the drawing,\u201d said the other.\n\n\u201cBut the coloring!\u201d retorted the merchant. \u201cSee the depth, the\nlife-likeness, the intensity; and yet there is nothing violent or merely\nsense-appealing. It is horror, but rather mental than physical horror.\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue,\u201d said the priest. \u201cI wonder if he had a model.\u201d\n\n\u201cMost likely, but there is more than he ever saw in any common model;\nthe merit rests with himself alone, I should judge.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, do you think of buying it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am inclined to do so, but want to examine it more closely first.\nBesides, I see no one here to represent the painter, or even guard the\npicture.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! I have no doubt there is some one hovering about\u2014perhaps that\ncountryman who looks so vacant. You know the professional tricks of our\nworthy artists!\u201d\n\nAnd with this he called the person in question, who surely looked vacant\nenough to be in disguise.\n\n\u201cCan you tell me what you think of this picture, friend?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cVery fine, messire.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou do not think it like one of Hendrick Corlaens, do you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI never saw that, messire,\u201d bashfully said the countryman.\n\n\u201cBut you think _this_ is fine?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery, very.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy do you like it?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt seems like life.\u201d\n\n\u201cLike death too?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, messire.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow far did you come this morning?\u201d asked the merchant, fancying his\ncompanion\u2019s shrewdness had overshot the mark this time.\n\n\u201cForty-three miles. I started before midnight from Stundsen.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think,\u201d said the merchant to his brother-critic, \u201cwe shall make\nnothing of this man. He must be one of my brother-in-law\u2019s men at\nStundsen. He is quite genuine in his stupidity.\u201d\n\nAnd the pair moved nearer the picture, while others came up and stopped,\ntill there was soon a little knot of admirers talking in whispers. The\ncrowd grew as the day went on. In the side street leading into the Place\nthe doors of Notre Dame opened to let out the flood of worshippers that\nhad flowed in since dawn from the country, and who now rushed from their\ndevotions to their business. Noise was uppermost, trade was brisk; the\nsun got hot and men got thirsty. It was soon a riotous as well as a\npicturesque scene, and a spectator on that balcony of the\ncuriously-carved corner window on the same side of the Place as the\nGuildhall could scarcely have told which stalls the hurrying masses most\nbesieged, so tangled was the web of human beings jostling and jolting\neach other along the uneven pavement. A good many had stared and gazed\nat the picture. It was the subject of many comments and disputes that\nday; men quarrelled over its merits as they drank their sour wine, and\nwomen talked of it in whispers over their bargains. Some children had\nscreamed and kicked at first sight of it; altogether it had not failed\nto be known, seen, and talked about. Our two friends of early morning\nhad hung about it all day and overheard most of the remarks of the\ncrowd. Some people had been disappointed in finding that it was not the\nsign of a play representing the slaying of Holofernes, but only a\npicture; a Venetian and a Greek, daintily dressed and speaking some\nsoft, foreign tongue\u2014a wonder to the sturdy Flemish peasants from the\ndykes and canals by the sea\u2014lounged near the unpainted railing that\nprotected the picture from the crowd. No one could see behind the\npicture, but many thought the artist was hidden within the closely\n_sewn_ curtains, that never flapped in the breeze like the rest of the\nmarket awnings. These two and the first critics listened in eager\nsilence to the judgment of the crowd, put forth in short sentences at\nlong intervals. On coming up one woman said to her companion:\n\n\u201cWhy, I thought they always painted Judith with black hair; this one has\nhair the color of mine.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps it was his betrothed he painted,\u201d said the other, \u201cand in\ncompliment to her he made it a portrait.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I should not like to be he. A ghostly bride he would have.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut look at her eyes; they seem like a corpse\u2019s just come back to\nlife.\u201d\n\n\u201cPshaw! how could a _corpse_ come back to life? You mean a ghost.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014Lazarus, you know. I can fancy how frightened and reproachful he\nmight have looked when he woke up and found himself in his shroud.\u201d\n\n\u201c_I_ think he would look glad and thankful. But come away. It seems as\nif I should dream of that face.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes; it makes me feel very strange the more I look at it.\u201d\n\nAnd the two women moved off.\n\nPresently another voice was heard in a muffled tone.\n\n\u201cSee the blood in Holofernes\u2019 throat. It looks as if it were moving.\u201d\n\n\u201cJudith looks too weak and small to kill him,\u201d said another.\n\n\u201cSo she does,\u201d said a third, and he added, in a lower tone: \u201cI once had\na cousin very like that picture.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs she dead?\u201d asked a woman, a stranger to the speaker.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the man, with some surprise.\n\n\u201cI thought no live person could remind you of _this_ face,\u201d answered the\nwoman, as if in explanation.\n\nThe two couples of critics glanced appreciatively and with a smile at\neach other, and the Greek said to his friend:\n\n\u201cYour _boors_ are no bad critics, after all. I think the barbarians\nrather beat us in painting.\u201d\n\n\u201cBeat _you_!\u201d laughed the Venetian. \u201cSpeak for yourself. But it is your\nreligion that has fossilized your art; otherwise you would have been\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said the other thoughtfully, \u201cI think you mistake; I doubt if we\nhave the gift you, and the Flemings also, have for painting. Our\nliterature is as far above that of this northern people as heaven is\nabove the earth, and our sculpture, of course, is unrivalled; but they\nhave the gift of music, and of architecture, and of painting\u2014the two\nlast marvellously developed. And in the first I think your people\u2014I do\nnot mean Venetians, but some of your other Italian neighbors\u2014have just\nnow reached a good climax. At Milan I heard some chanting that would put\nus to shame, and even here I have heard something not unlike it. Yes, I\ncede the palm to the barbarians in the arts of Euterpe and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBut in architecture yours is the peer of any northern style,\u201d said the\nVenetian.\n\n\u201cI doubt it,\u201d said the Greek. \u201cThere is a strange impression comes over\nme in these vast, sky-high, delicately-carved cathedrals, dim and\nresonant, that comes nowhere else\u2014not in our gold-colored, mosaic-paved,\ndome-crowned churches, nor your St. Mark, the daughter of our St.\nSophia.\u201d\n\n\u201cEvery one knows how liberal are your views,\u201d said the other, with a\nsmile.\n\n\u201cYes?\u201d asked the Greek, evidently in innocence. \u201cBut I am only fair to\nothers. I would rather be a Greek than a barbarian, as the adage of one\nof our old heathen philosophers has it; but I can see that God has not\nrained every blessing on one spot, and that my native land, as he did on\nthe Garden of Eden before Adam fell.\u201d\n\n\u201cHush!\u201d said the Venetian, interrupting him. \u201cSome girl has fainted.\u201d\n\nSome little stir was taking place in the crowd; it _was_ a girl who had\nfainted, and an old woman, strong and powerful, was holding her.\n\nAmong the many questions tossed to and fro and never answered, our four\nfriends all managed to hear the words of the old woman to her nearest\nneighbors.\n\n\u201cYes, that is the portrait of her sister and my granddaughter, just as\nif the poor lost girl had sat for it herself. But then this must have\nbeen painted since she lost her rosy color. And I believe the painter\nknows what became of her, and where she is, if she is alive; and, God\nforgive me! I always accused the Lord Conrad of Sch\u00f6n of her ruin and\ndisappearance. I _will_ know, too, if this painter is to be found\nanywhere in Flanders. Oh! yes, Agnes is very well; she will be herself\nagain directly, nervous little thing!\u201d And the old woman, with a kind of\nsavage tenderness, shielded the face of her granddaughter in her bosom,\nwhile the girl slowly revived.\n\nSome people hinted that the painter was hidden in the closed tent behind\nthe picture, and others brought out shears to cut the curtains; but the\npriest here interposed.\n\n\u201cI think, my friends,\u201d he said in a clear, authoritative voice, \u201cthat\nyou had better leave this matter to the proper authorities. Messire Van\nSimler and I will see that this good woman is heard, and, if need be,\nhelped to find her granddaughter, or any news of her death and fate. It\nwould be an unwarrantable act to cut these curtains open: if there is no\none there, you will feel like fools, the dupes of the childish trick of\nan unknown painter; if you find the person you are looking for, you may\ndo him a mischief and come yourselves under the eye of the law. I advise\nyou to let the matter rest. And you, my good friend, here is an address\nyou may find useful whenever you wish to make further inquiries. It\nwould be best to take your charge home.\u201d\n\nThe manner rather than the words of the speaker took effect at once, and\nthe group dissolved to make room for other sight-seers, all gaping, all\nadmiring, and all ending by feeling uncomfortable and leaving the stand\nwith muttered words of equal wonder and fear. But it is impossible to\nfollow each comment, and we have yet other scenes to look at before we\nclose the history of this picture.\n\nAmong the crowd that day had been Peter and Simon, and the former,\nfamiliar as he was with the painting, had ceased to feel impressed by\nthe weird, indescribable beauty and awe that were its very essence. But\nhe had been, in a business-like way, alive to everything connected with\nwhat was to him the instrument of future success, and the fainting scene\nand its close were especially observed. He noticed the drift of all the\nremarks made on the picture; he had foretold it himself\u2014for he was\nnothing if not worldly-wise\u2014and he carefully scanned the faces of the\nfour critics who had so pertinaciously lingered round the stand all day.\nHe knew them all for enlightened men, above the nonsense of the age,\ngood art-critics, and men born to be masters of their kind. Even the\nyoung Venetian had the making of a statesman in him; the Greek was as\nsimple-minded as he was generous, and, though his countrymen had a bad\nname at Bruges for conventional sins of which not half of them were\nreally guilty, he was, even with the most ignorant, a signal exception.\nThe other two were trusted native citizens, bosom friends, patrons of\nall that was good, learned, and improving, and, what was more, powerful\nin the council and civic government. The first, by the way, was a canon\nof the cathedral, by private inheritance a rich man, and, by dint of\ncharity to the starving and liberality to men of letters, raised above\nthe scandal that attended on rich ecclesiastics. These four were\nrepresentative men, and though each a representative of the best type of\nhis own class and nation, still no less entitled to be called\nrepresentative men.\n\nPeter noted the way Messire Van Simler went that evening; the canon he\nknew well by reputation. Then he came back to the Place and helped a\nyoung peasant to lift and pack the picture, leaving on the planks in\nfront of the booth the address of the artist and a notice that\npurchasers were asked to meet the painter at his own studio any time\neach day before dark. The peasant seemed slim and tall for a Flemish\ncountryman, but his cap concealed his face, and his loose vest was well\ncalculated to increase his seeming bulk; still, when he got to the\nstudio in the old garret over the canal, and threw off his cap, he\nproved to be the person you must have suspected\u2014the painter himself. He\nsaid nothing, and Peter did not offer to speak; but the former, as soon\nas he came in, glanced hurriedly into one corner and then back at the\npicture. Over their scanty supper the two exchanged a few monosyllables\nas to the result of the show, but each was uneasy and spoke as if\ncompelled by the suspicion of the other. Next morning Peter went to Van\nSimler\u2019s house before the latter was out of bed, and was received during\nthe merchant\u2019s ample breakfast. No one came to Jan\u2019s garret the first\nday, and he stayed at home alone with his work, now and then retouching\nit, as if drawn to it by a spell he could not master; but each time he\nworked at it he seemed more ill and nervous. Towards dusk he heard a\nfootstep on the stair, and opened the door to let in some light on the\nbreak-neck place, full of corners and broken steps, where some stranger\nwas evidently groping his way. It was the Greek. He greeted the painter\nwith grave earnestness and more interest than is usual with a purchaser.\n\n\u201cI have come,\u201d he said after the first civilities, \u201cto buy both your\npictures and _you_, and pack both at once, as my ships will be in port\nby the night after to-morrow night, and it needs time to meet them. They\ncannot wait\u2014at least, _that_ one cannot which happens to be most\nconvenient for you to go in. Have you any objection to go with me to\nGreece?\u2014any tie to detain you here?\u201d\n\nJan looked into the corner before he answered, and shuddered. \u201cI fear I\nhave,\u201d he said unwillingly. The Greek looked fixedly at him.\n\n\u201cI will not keep you any longer than you like, and you probably like\ntravelling? There are scenes in Greece and the East that will delight\nyou, if you have a liking for Scriptural subjects; and the journey need\nnot be longer than the interval between this cargo _from_ here and the\nnext cargo back.\u201d\n\nJan said nothing.\n\n\u201cYou see I am bent on having _you_ as well as your picture,\u201d the\nmerchant went on; \u201cbut if you insist on refusing me your company, I will\ntake the picture at once. I have men below ready to carry it away, and I\nwill give you your own price at once, in gold coin.\u201d\n\nAnd Jan still gazed into the furthest\u2014and empty\u2014corner.\n\n\u201cI have reasons for my haste,\u201d said the Greek, slowly, at last. Jan\nturned inquiringly.\n\n\u201cGood reasons,\u201d said his visitor gravely and gently, \u201cwhich I will tell\nyou when we are at sea, if you will trust me till then; if not, I will\neven tell you now, though the proverb says that 'walls have ears.\u2019\u201d\n\nJan seemed to need no immediate explanation, but said:\n\n\u201cTake the picture, and welcome, and believe in my gratitude, though I\ncannot put it into words; but I can take no gold for the picture.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, you invited purchasers to come here to you!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have learned to-day that I cannot sell it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said the Greek, with a look of intelligence, \u201cI think you and I\nunderstand each other, then, and I may as well take you and the picture\ntoo.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Jan, \u201cyou do not understand _me_, but I understand you and am\ngrateful. If I am in danger, it matters little; I prefer meeting such a\ndanger as you fear for me to seeing what I should see always, on the\nship, in the East, as well as here\u2014or at the stake.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour mind is\u2014preoccupied, my young friend,\u201d said the merchant. \u201cBut let\nme take the picture; at least, it is better to have the evidence put out\nof the way in time. Let me call to my men.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but no gold for it,\u201d said Jan without emotion, as he pushed away\nthe purse on the table. \u201cTake the picture; there will be only _one_ face\nthen, and I shall not be torturing myself as to whether the likeness is\nfaithful enough or not.\u201d\n\nThe Greek bent out of the window and whistled to two men sitting on the\nnarrow stone-work of the canal; one of them struck a flint, lit a pine\ntorch, and, beckoning the other to follow him, came up the winding\nstairs. Jan said not a word, and the picture was packed and carried\naway, while the merchant lingered yet, pressing gold, protection, and\nfuture patronage upon the benumbed artist. Even the hint of fame could\nnot stir the young man.\n\n\u201cI have done my life\u2019s work,\u201d he said gloomily. \u201cI shall never paint the\nequal of that picture again, and I do not wish to,\u201d he added with a\nshudder; \u201cand for the sake of my reputation I must not paint anything\nbelow that standard.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut why should not you do even better?\u201d said the Greek.\n\n\u201cI thought you knew,\u201d said the young man, in puzzled uncertainty.\n\n\u201cI _know_ nothing, and my suspicions are too vague to shape my judgment\non the merits of this particular work of yours. I gathered all I _do_\nknow, or even suspect, from the remarks of the people to-day. I am used\nto watching indications of men\u2019s fancies, prejudices, passions, say even\nsuperstitions, and I thought it a pity that such people as we heard\nto-day should have it in their power to end or mar the career of an\nartist of your genius. We want some young, rising painter\u2014one who can\nrival the Italians; one who can show that there is a future for art,\nthat it is progressive and improvable; one especially who will defy\nconventionalities\u2014for I own that your independent treatment of a\n'Judith\u2019 fascinated me. But if I cannot prevail upon you to accept my\nservices at present, you will not refuse to take this address; it will\nfind me, no matter where I may be, and it will be even a personal\nsafeguard for you in my absence and during the interval that may elapse\nbefore I hear of your appeal.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you a thousand times for your unprovoked and generous interest!\u201d\nsaid Jan more warmly than he had spoken before. \u201cI shall never forget\nit. God grant my life or death may be guided and determined by the\nhighest Power! I should not trust myself to decide wisely, if I had the\nchoice offered me; but if it is ordained that I should live long, I\nprefer _your_ being the instrument of my salvation.\u201d\n\nThe merchant left, and Jan stayed alone all night; he was stonily calm,\nwatching, thinking, waiting as if for an expected event, and never\nbreaking his fast through the long, dark hours. When early morning came,\ntwo men in gray cloaks opened his door and respectfully _ordered_ him to\ncome with them to Van Simler\u2019s house, which he did without surprise and\nwithout remonstrance. Here he found the canon, who with Van Simler told\nhim briefly that they thought it for his good to be taken into the\ncountry to the castle of Stundsen, belonging to the merchant\u2019s\nbrother-in-law. They did not tell him why, and it did not even occur to\nhim to ask. As he passed from the large dining-hall where this short\ninterview took place to a room furnished with Spanish leather and carved\noak\u2014_his_ room, he was told, for a few hours\u2014he thought he recognized\nthe Greek anxiously and quickly open a door that led to the passage, as\nif to assure himself of the presence of some expected person.\n\nVan Simler and his friend, meanwhile, had a short and significant talk,\na few words of which are here set down to explain facts that may look to\nthe undiscerning reader like the conventional tricks of modern\nmedi\u00e6valists, to whom plots and kidnapping are \u201cdaily bread.\u201d \u201cNow,\u201d\nsaid the merchant, \u201cif that scoundrel Peter goes no further, there is\nevery hope of getting this obstinate young genius out of the city in\nsafety; but he may try to get _two_ prices and hint the matter to Conrad\nSch\u00f6n.\u201d\n\nThe canon shrugged his shoulders. \u201cOf course, in that case,\u201d he said,\n\u201call would be in vain, for Count Conrad has the sovereign\u2019s ear; and you\nknow the hobby the Count of Flanders has lately bestridden.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe youth ought to have gone with the Greek; but the latter says he\nbelieves him half-mad, which accounts for his staying in the jaws of the\nlion.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have heard of Jan the painter before,\u201d said the priest, \u201cand, had he\nbeen a different person, I should have gone to him myself; but, from my\ngeneral knowledge of his character, any one would do better than one of\nus, and I am glad the Greek forestalled me. Why did not you keep Peter\nunder lock and key when he came here?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was a mistake, I own,\u201d said the other; \u201cbut still, if I had, there\nwas Simon in the secret.\u201d\n\n\u201cSimon is a fool, and nothing of this would have occurred to him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI doubt about his being a fool; at any rate, he is a dangerous one.\n\n\u201cHe _is_ a fool in such matters as these, though dangerous enough in his\nway, as you say. Now, our Greek friend has just left the house, I see,\nand there is nothing to detain _me_ here just now. You take the\ntransport business in your hands? Well and good; while I attend to any\nfoolish charge made in the city. I expect I shall see old Mother Colette\nbefore dark to-night.\u201d\n\nThere is no need to go through the details of the few days that\nfollowed. In one word, Peter was more powerful than Jan\u2019s four\nprotectors put together, but only because he had Conrad Sch\u00f6n at his\nback, and behind him a greater \u201cpresence\u201d yet\u2014no less a person than the\nCount of Flanders, who had lately taken a mania about witchcraft. It was\neasy to play upon his vanity and tickle his supposed superior sense of\ndiscovery, and Conrad had reasons for diverting to the young artist the\nopprobrium which even he, with all his power, could not fail to have\nbrought upon himself in such an independent and proud burgher-city as\nBruges for the wrong done to the orphan daughter of one of her citizens\nand an attendant of his wife; for there was still a lingering in\nFlanders of the old knightly feeling of the earlier days of chivalry,\nwhich made it the duty of a knight to consider every house-maiden within\nhis walls as his own daughter or sister, and protect, and even defend,\nher as such.\n\nThe dark accusations of Conrad and his informant against the defenceless\npainter were but too readily listened to, and, before his friends could\nconceal him, the sovereign had already sent to demand his person. We\nwill pass over the mock examination which the count held, more with a\nview to satisfy his own curiosity than to assure himself of the\nprisoner\u2019s guilt; over the honest but bitter malignity with which old\nMother Colette, an unconscious tool sought out by Jan\u2019s enemies,\ntestified against the man who, to make such a startling and mysterious\nlikeness of her lost granddaughter, must have been intimately acquainted\nwith her; and, lastly, over Jan\u2019s strange apathy and silence, his\nrefusal to deny the charges brought against him, and his seeming relief\nat being condemned to die.\n\nHe never told any one the reason of all this, and the secret would have\ndied with him, if Peter, years afterwards, when the picture again came\nto light and became famous, had not made known the hallucination of the\npainter, to which was really due the success others had stupidly\nattributed to forbidden practices. The last thing that concerns us is\nthe strange sentence and fanciful doom pronounced by the Count of\nFlanders, the carrying out of which will take us up into the belfry of\nthe Guildhall, just above the market-place where the unlucky picture had\nfirst roused the ignorant suspicions of the mob.\n\nHere, where swings the largest bell of the famous carillon, we find the\nartist once more. The great dark mass hangs dumb beside him; very little\nlight is here, but enough to see by dimly, and make out some of the maze\nof beams and iron-braced stays that uphold the old bell. Even some of\nthe inscription is visible; its gilt letters in relief gleam out of the\ndimness and naturally fix the eye in that kind of magnetic gaze which\nsome say is favorable to sleep. Jan was half crouched in one corner,\nwondering why he was there and how long it was intended he should stay;\nthe two men who had brought him had simply told him that the count had\nsent him up there to see if he could rival the penance of St. Simeon\nStylites, for a few hours at least. Presently the bell began to stir and\nsway softly, slowly; one dull, muffled tone came out as the tongue\ntouched the outbent lips of the mighty bell; the next stroke came\nlouder, the next swing was wider, and Jan\u2019s head already throbbed with\nthe unwelcome noise. Now the monster was alive in earnest. Warming to\nits work, it swung further and further; it tossed its base upwards, till\nthe beams groaned and creaked, and all kinds of hideous minor noises\nseemed to be embroidered on the constant dull echo between each stroke.\nA strange wind blew in Jan\u2019s face; it was the breath of the bell, whose\nrelentless beat grew more and more regular, more and more monotonous, as\nit went on. The artist dared not move; one hair\u2019s breadth nearer the\nterrific engine would be his death, one blow of its lips would be more\neffectual than any stroke of axe or pile of faggots. He shrank close to\nthe wall, but, as his body just cleared the bell in its mad flingings\nand tossings, his mind seemed to be struck by it at every toll, almost\nabsorbed in it, drawn to it with fatal curiosity. Was that the bell\nwhose sound had been so majestic, so solemn, so beautiful in his ears as\na child, so grand when it rang out above the others\u2014eighty of them\u2014that\nchimed on the great church holidays and welcomed the victorious\nsovereign when he came back from war? Was this the heart of the great\nangel that poetry and popular belief had endowed the belfry with\u2014this\nterrible, maddening, brazen-tongued, relentless engine? It only just\nmissed touching him each time it flung itself on his side of the\nbeam-chamber; if it were to swing only a little more fiercely, as it\nseemed easy for it to do, one blow would crush him. Already the air\nseemed to suck him in under the bell, into some dark vault, no\ndoubt\u2014some bottomless pit; had his conductors known, when they put him\nthere, that it was time for the bell to toll, or had they forgotten him?\nHow long would this go on? His brain could not stand it much longer, he\nfelt, but to scream was useless; the great, dread voice hushed all other\nsound. It seemed presently as if the gilt lettering got brighter; it\ntook the shape of a glaring yellow eye; now redder, like fire, now\nalive, now like the eyes in his \u201cJudith,\u201d that the woman had said were\nthe \u201ceyes of a corpse just come back to life.\u201d But had bells eyes as\nwell as tongues? he asked himself helplessly. He remembered learning\nabout the Cyclops and their single eyes in the middle of their\nforeheads; now he really saw a worse monster, with an eye of flame set\nin its huge, black, bulging lip. Was that the gold the Greek had offered\nhim? Surely it was that, and no eye. Of course his fancy had betrayed\nhim. But how could the gold have got there and got stuck to the rim of\nthe accursed bell? How long had he been there, and when were they coming\nto fetch him? But they could not get in while that fiend was tossing and\nbellowing in these narrow walls. What was that other noise now?\u2014a\nwhirring of a thousand wheels! Where? It seemed all round; and now the\nbell appeared to him in a network of wheels, all going round faster than\nthe eye could follow\u2014a mass of moving air formed of many hazy circles\nintertwined; he _knew_ they were wheels, but could not actually see\nthem. He dared not hold his ears and head with his hands, for between\neach fling of the bell there was not time to lift his hands; and if they\nwere caught\u2014Some one was there now\u2014come to bring him away. How did he\nget in? But it was not a man; it had long, fair hair and a misty sort of\ncovering. He knew the face. Was there an angel of the bell, after all,\nwho was going to stop the great tongue and deliver him? No; that face\nwas a dead face\u2014Judith just as he had painted her, just as he saw her in\nthe corner of his room; and _this_ was his room, and he had been\ndreaming of the bell. Scarcely\u2014he could not dream of such a noise; then\nthe devil must have got into his room and changed everything. But the\nclangor never stopped, and never spoke either louder or softer\u2014one\neternal, dreary, vexing, maddening ring. He would go mad, no doubt, if\nhe stayed there another quarter of an hour; how long had he been there?\nNow he was fascinated by the unerring accuracy of the strokes, and, in a\ntrance, expected feverishly the next dull boom, and mechanically counted\non his fingers till the next was due again, and so on for five minutes.\nSuppose he should hang on to the tongue; would it make a feather\u2019s\nweight of difference in the time or the sound of the stroke? He wondered\nhow the bell sounded to those in the Place; they did not heed it at all,\nmost likely, or some thought it must be getting near their time for\ndinner, while pious women were reminded to say a prayer, and some\ngleeful child would clap its hands and count the strokes. He could count\nthe beats of his heart and the throbs in his head. He was not mad yet,\nhe hoped, and his thoughts came regularly, and he saw pictures burned\ninto the air one minute and gone the next; if he could have put them on\ncanvas, they would have made his name and fortune. He was sure he could\ncatch their shading; they looked as if fire had been made liquid and\ncolored. It was better than any of the windows in the cathedral, famous\nas they were through the art-world for their undiscoverable secret of\nvivid, jewel-like coloring. But one picture followed the other so soon\nthat, had he painted them all, it would have taken him twice the\nthreescore years and ten of an ordinary life, and they would have filled\nevery Church in Flanders fuller than twenty chapels in each could\nrequire. What was the coloring of \u201cJudith,\u201d with the pitiful chemical\ncombination for which he had risked so much, to these rich, mellow,\nmiraculous tones, with a thousand new, unnamable shades, and shadows\nthat looked more like the depths of a dark-blue Italian lake than the\ndarkness of common air? But through all these meditations of a second\u2019s\nlength, though they seemed like the reveries of hours, the boom of the\npitiless bell went on, crashing through the brain of the prisoner,\nshattering each new picture which the last interval had stamped on his\nfancy, sounding to him now like a roaring fall of water, now a ploughing\navalanche, now a thunder-clap, now the fall of a burning house, now the\nthud of earth upon a coffin, now the blow of a massive cudgel on his own\nhead. Instinctively he cowered lower, and a beam struck him on the back\nwith a sudden violent blow that made him stand upright and remember that\nthe bell was there, but no cudgel; but as he rose he had stretched out\nhis hand, blindly feeling for support, and touched the great rocking\nmonster. A thrill went through his frame; he looked upward and vaguely\nwondered if this was the end, and he saw his \u201cJudith\u201d again, a shadowy\nform among the rafters. The next feeling of consciousness was that of\nlying flat on his back and a strong, cold wind wafting across his feet;\nhe put up his hand to lift his head a little and press his left temple,\nand then\u2014 The bell had only tolled for a quarter of an hour. As soon as\nit stopped the same men who had taken Jan up came again and found him\ndead, lying in a cramped position on his side, and one leg still\nstretched out beneath the now silent bell.[51]\n\nFootnote 51:\n\n  If any one cares to know what became of the picture, he may be\n  interested to hear that it hangs now over the altar of a private\n  oratory in the same city where it was painted. The Greek merchant took\n  it to Constantinople, where it remained in his family till the siege,\n  twenty-eight years later. It was then given by him for safe keeping to\n  his Venetian friend and transferred to Venice, whence the Greek\n  himself, having become a resident of that place, took it back to\n  Bruges and offered it to the canon, on condition of no further mention\n  being made of the circumstances connected with it. The offer was\n  gratefully accepted, and it remained till the priest\u2019s death in his\n  private collection, the Greek having declared that, what with having\n  paid no price for it and its being a Scriptural subject, he preferred\n  that it should in some way belong to the church rather than to the\n  world. At the canon\u2019s death it was sold to a dealer, who sold it again\n  for a high price to an Italian collector, whose descendants, in \u201chard\n  times,\u201d parted with it to a rich Englishman. It happened, strangely\n  enough, that it returned to the native city of its unlucky author by\n  an intermarriage between the family of the English connoisseur and\n  that of a passionate lover of art in Bruges, and this time it was\n  transferred as a _gift_. It has been freely shown to any and every one\n  who asked to see it, and the story attached to it made it one of the\n  \u201csights\u201d of the old city.\n\n\n\n\n                         WILD ROSES BY THE SEA.\n\n\n    Untrimmed, uncared for, filling all the ways\n      That stretch between the shadow of the pine\n      And sea-washed rock where in the soft sunshine\n    The sea breaks white through all the long June days,\n\n    The fair wild roses, flushed like Eastern skies\n      When sinks the sun to rest in radiance calm,\n      Their pink bloom lift amid the sweet-bay\u2019s balm\n    And shine a welcome true to loving eyes.\n\n    Sweet June\u2019s rich gladness in the rosy flush,\n      As if rejoicing with our human souls,\n      While solemn melody from wave-beat rolls,\n    Whose endless anthem knows not any hush:\n\n    And ever answering from the pines sweep down\n      The wailing chords the wandering wind doth wake\u2014\n      Sad undertones that through June\u2019s singing break,\n    But cannot dim her roses\u2019 radiant crown,\n\n    Beyond whose jewelled zone spreads on and on\n      The long, low level of the endless sea,\n      Blue with the shadow of infinity\n    From cloudless skies, in sparkling light, dropped down;\n\n    With here and there a sail, in shade and light,\n      Wind-seeking, bearing careless o\u2019er the crest\n      Of summer waves the whiteness of its breast\u2014\n    A moment\u2019s dazzling vision on our sight:\n\n    Earth, air, and sea, with mirth unsullied filled,\n      With happy sunshine from June\u2019s roses flushed.\n      We hold our rose-leaves all to-day uncrushed,\n    Our cup of spring-time joyousness unspilled.\n\n    But spring-time passes, rosy petals all\n      Drop down and mingle with earth\u2019s earlier dead,\n      Though faithful sweet-bay still breathes balm o\u2019erhead,\n    And ocean\u2019s anthem e\u2019er doth rise and fall.\n\n    Almost unfelt the summer hours die,\n      Green leaves grow russet on the salty shore,\n      The crimson vines droop rocky crevice o\u2019er,\n    And wild ducks\u2019 marshalled columns southward fly.\n\n    Low asters gleam with delicate light amid\n      The massive sunshine of the golden-rod;\n      A stray Houstonia shines above the sod\n    And lifts to gold-spun skies its pale blue lid.\n\n    The autumn\u2019s glory lavishly is spread,\n      But summer dieth, loving sung to sleep\n      By western wind and murmur of the deep,\n    The softened sunshine on her gently shed.\n\n    Where are our roses?\u2014that rare gift of June\n      That filled to perfectness our human life,\n      That hushed with silent touch all earthly strife,\n    That voiceless sang to keep our hearts in tune.\n\n    Lo! crowning each rich, sun-browned stem\n      Where once its rose the summer\u2019s sunrise flushed,\n      Where shone our coronal of joy, now crushed,\n    Stands, round and firm, a deeper-tinted gem.\n\n    Rich summer faileth, and true-hearted June,\n      For whom birds sang, and perfect blessedness\n      Filled every grass-blade with a sense of bliss,\n    Tells o\u2019er her beads for one to die so soon.\n\n    Her rosary strung around the rose-crowned shore,\n      Our pure June gladness, gathered into prayers,\n      The sweet-bay\u2019s incense ever upward bears,\n    While we, 'mid loss, seem richer than before!\n\n\n\n\n                       DIVORCE, AND DIVORCE LAWS.\n\n\n\n\nOf the many evils now arrayed against society, none is greater than that\nthreatened by the frequency and facility with which divorces are\nobtained. This bane of our day, if not plucked up by the roots, will\ninevitably bring on the country disasters tenfold greater than the\nbitterest political strifes. Already its incursions into our midst have\ncast a blight on our morals, have infected all classes of society, have\nrudely shaken our best institutions, and, if not checked, will prove a\ngreater scourge than in our apathy we dream of. Yet it continues to grow\namong us day by day; it rears its head higher and higher each moment; it\nstrikes deeper root on all sides; its hideous mien is ever becoming more\nfamiliar to us; some even smile over its attendant disclosures of\ndepravity as pleasant tidbits of scandal with which the morning papers\nagreeably enliven the breakfast-table, while few reflect over the awful\nmagnitude of the danger with which it is fraught. So dulled, indeed, has\nbecome the public conscience in this respect, so slow its apprehension\nof the mighty evil pressing on us, that scarcely has a warning voice\nbeen lifted against this social hydra, which goes on tightening its\ncoils more closely around us every moment. It is not alone our crowded\ncities that are poisoned by its breath, but it has invaded the stillness\nof hillside and hamlet, and no part of the land is a stranger to its\npresence.\n\nIn olden times a special act of Parliament was required in England to\nlegalize a remarriage during the life-time of husbands and wives, but so\ntedious and expensive was the proceeding that few cared to avail\nthemselves of the privilege; whereas of late days and in our land so\nsimple and easy has become the severance of the marriage-knot that the\nmechanic as well as the millionaire figures before courts and referees,\nand multitudes now throng this new high-road to social ruin.\n\nChief among the evils resulting from the laxity of our divorce laws is\ntheir active warfare against society. The family, as known among us, is\na creation of the church wrought out through the indissolubility and\nsacredness of marriage. It is the nursery of society, the hope of the\nstate, and the cradle of its destinies. While it remains pure and\nintact, so long will our sound social institutions flourish, so long\nwill a healthy public sentiment live among us, ready to rebuke the\nshortcomings of the powerful and to lighten the burdens of the poor, to\nfrown upon official corruption and to encourage disinterested public\naction. Indeed, this is a point we need scarcely insist upon. All\nmoralists and sociologists allow that the family is the parent of\nsociety, as the seed is of the crop and the acorn of the oak. They agree\nthat with its extinction we are at once driven on the breakers of\nsocialism, communism, and free-love\u2014in a word, that society ceases to\nexist. Now, divorce is the entering-wedge which the law supplies for the\nruin of the family; it is as the priming to a loaded gun. Once give the\nworld to understand that marriage is but a simple compact by which two\npersons of opposite sexes agree to live together conditionally for a\ntime, and the permanency of the family is destroyed; the sacredness of\nconjugal love is degraded before the law into mere sexual desire; that\ninstitution which Christ blessed and declared to symbolize his own union\nwith the church becomes at the best a system of stirpiculture, and\nnuptial altars are converted into shambles of licentiousness. Let the\ncause be what it may bestowing on either party to the marriage contract\nthe right to annul it, and the cohesion of family ties is fatally\nweakened. This fact our court records ominously demonstrate every day.\nApplications for divorce, based on the special enactments of each State,\nare constantly filed, in which release from marriage is sought in\naccordance with the provisions of the law. In Indiana, for instance,\nmere incompatibility of temper is made the ground of petition; and in\nonly very few cases do we find adultery or grossly cruel treatment\nalleged as a reason. The easier conditions of the State law are\nnaturally enough invoked, whatever may be the true inner grounds of\ndisagreement. The law of the State offers a means of escape from an\nonerous condition, and, either through the perverse temper of the\nlitigants or the legal skill of counsel, the circumstances of the case\nare readily adapted to the requirements of the law. Thus the law in\nreality supplies to those who are weary of wedlock the means of escaping\nfrom it, while apparently striving to hedge in its interests. This fact\nwill for ever and essentially stultify divorce laws. No matter how\ningeniously framed they may be, how buttressed with conditions and\nexactions of proof, such are the peculiar relations of married life\nthat, given on the side of the law the possibility, and on the side of\nthe husband or wife the desire of escaping from a yoke that has become\ngalling, and mere legal restrictions melt as wax before the sun.\n\nAs has just been said, the court records constantly prove this. Let us\nexamine the facts in New York State, where adultery is the only\nrecognized ground on which absolute divorce can be procured. A husband\ndesires to free himself from married thraldom. He consults a convenient\nfriend or an accommodating lawyer. (Happily, there are not many such,\nbut we all know that one can work an infinity of mischief.) A conspiracy\nis entered into against the wife; detectives are set on her track; her\nincomings and outgoings are narrowly watched; her innocent visits are\npainted over with the color of criminality; her letters are intercepted;\nshe is lured into the paths of temptation; and such proof, devised with\ndevilish cunning, is soon obtained as brands that woman with the most\ninfamous of crimes. The picture is not of the imagination; the\nrevelations of the law attest its terrible reality every day, and so\ndefiant of public opinion have some discreditable practitioners become\nthat they take no pains to cover up the tracks of their infamy. Indeed,\nit was with something like surprise that a short time ago a lawyer in\nNew York City listened to the scathing words which debarred him from\nfuture practice in our courts, because of his participation in a\nconspiracy to prove an innocent woman an adulteress.\n\nCircumstantial evidence is all that the law requires in these cases. As\na rule, indeed, none other can be furnished. Now, this evidence,\nproposing to establish what is after all but the semblance of crime,\nsince the facts necessarily elude ocular proof, is such that by asking\nfor it the law seems to invite those who are desirous of so doing to\nweave around innocence itself a web of circumstances calculated to\nimmesh it in the appearance of guilt. Thus the law defeats its own\nintent and places a premium on sin. It aggravates the evil it endeavors\nto estop. Like the smitten eagle, it is forced to\u2014\n\n    \u201cView its own feathers on the fatal dart\n    Which winged the shaft that quivers in its heart.\n    Keen are its pangs, but keener far to feel\n    _It nursed the pinion that impelled the steel_.\u201d\n\nTwo hundred divorces _a vinculo_, obtained in the State of New York in\nthe course of a single year, give point to these remarks. And in most of\nthese cases, it must be remembered, the defendants denied the charge and\nwere convicted only by such evidence as, though necessarily deemed\nsufficient by the court or referee, is essentially and of its nature\nsuch that it might have been manufactured. But if these attempts on the\npart of husbands to take advantage of the laxity of our divorce laws by\nblasting the character of their wives excite our honest indignation and\ndisgust, infinitely more heinous must appear the conduct of some wives\nin their efforts to procure evidence against their husbands. Our readers\nmust here pardon a few details which the cause of truth compels us to\nset down, but which we will couch in as few and modest words as\npossible. What we are about to state proves the truth of the holy\nproverb that when woman falls \u201cher feet go down into death, and her\nsteps go in as far as hell\u201d (Prov. v. 5). There is a fashionable\nphysiology which denies the physical possibility of absolute continence\nwithout serious impairment of health. The easy votaries of sensuality do\nnot hesitate to uphold this odious doctrine in so-called scientific\ntreatises, and to proclaim with Dr. Draper that \u201cpublic celibacy is\nprivate wickedness.\u201d We call this fashionable physiology; for the mass\nof intelligent non-Catholics make open avowal of it. Indeed, the\ndoctrine is essentially non-Catholic, and has been acted upon by all\nrebels against the church from Luther to Loyson. Swedenborg condemns\ncelibacy as a crime against nature. From being a purely religious\ndoctrine, however, it has recently come to be regarded as a scientific\ntenet. Pseudo-science now shelters it under its \u00e6gis, and it is as much\nthe vogue to believe in it as it is to accept the other views of\nso-called advanced modern scientists. It is this very notion which\nsupplies to many a recalcitrant wife the weapon with which she has\nsucceeded in breaking down the law and bringing irretrievable ruin on\nher family. If, as the writer has taken pains to assure himself, the\ninner history of our most notorious and disgraceful divorce cases could\nbe read in the light of broad day, the facts would appears as follows:\n\nA faithless wife, impressed with the doctrine just stated, takes such\nsteps as will, in her belief, compel her husband to compromise himself.\nHe then is watched, snares are set about his feet, he is encompassed by\nenemies, and, alas! sharing as he does the views entertained by his\nwife, he soon furnishes such evidences of wrong-doing as justify a\nrecourse to legal proceedings. We have stated the case briefly, but at\nsufficient length to indicate the lowness of the depths to which human\nnature, deprived of grace, can sink, and how ingeniously the law has\nconstructed a pitfall for itself. One author says that \u201csuch stratagems\nare of frequent occurrence,\u201d and the mournful testimony of our tribunals\nis overwhelming in proof of the appalling frequency with which this\nrepulsive drama is enacted. But to wade through the putrescent mass of\nevidence were to make the cheek grow crimson and burn, so that a scant\nallusion to it is all that decency can permit. What we especially desire\nto impress upon our readers is the fact that the imagination is here\npowerless to compete with the reality, and that human ingenuity has\nexhausted itself in the contrivance of the most abominable devices in\nits successful efforts to overreach a stupid law. But it is not alone in\nthus inviting infraction of its provisions that the law of New York\nState is weak and faulty; it is, in addition, guilty of contradicting\nitself in a matter of vital importance. Marriage is either a contract\nfor life or can be limited by previous mutual consent. Now, the law\ndenounces such limitation as immoral and strictly forbids it. But does\nit therefore recognize marriage as in reality a contract for life? We\nemphatically answer in the negative, and for the following reason: It is\nof the nature of a contract that all its essential terms and conditions\nbe such as to come within the jurisdiction of the authority appointed\nfor the purpose of directing its fulfilment. But if the authority be so\ncrippled as not to be able to take cognizance of conditions admitted to\nbe essential to the proper fulfilment of the contract, the latter must\nbe regarded as null and void, or binding only _in foro interno_. All\noutside authority, all outside jurisdiction over it, is at an end. This\nis precisely what happens in civil marriage. Ostensibly the law\nrecognizes it as a contract for life; indeed, openly proclaims it to be\nso; even provides a penalty for its violation as such; and yet, by\nadmitting its dissolubility on certain conditions, leaves it in reality\nas much the subject-matter of temporary stipulation as a lease or a\nbusiness copartnership, and, in addition, baits it with the temptation\nto commit an enormous crime. What is there to prevent two persons from\nentering into a civil marriage with the understanding that they should\nlive together for a certain time, be as other married persons before the\nlaw, sharing its protection and enjoying its privileges, and then\nseparate by complying with the conditions on which the law allows a\nseparation? The case is entirely possible\u2014has, indeed, occurred time and\nagain\u2014so that we are forced to admit that among us the law virtually\ntreats marriage as a temporary partnership, however much it may insist\nupon its being regarded as a life-long contract, and is thus guilty of\nthe inconsistency of declaring a certain thing to be what it in reality\ntreats as quite another.\n\nNor can it be contended, as against this argument, that the law will not\ngrant a divorce where connivance is attempted; for the case, typical of\nthousands, supposes that neither party desires to reveal such\nconnivance. Nor is it of any avail to affirm that the party proved to be\nguilty is debarred the right of contracting a new marriage. Technically\nthe law so reads, but practically it is powerless to enforce its\nprovision. In such a case, indeed, it may be said that love laughs law\nto scorn. Its hope to punish a transgressor of the sort is as futile as\nthe\n\n    \u201cDesire of the moth for the star.\u201d\n\nIt is proper to assume that the purpose of the law is to punish the\ncriminal partner and to restore to the injured one privileges which\nought not to be forfeited because of another\u2019s guilt. These two objects\nrepresent the policy and expediency of the law; and in view of its\nentire failure to work them out wisely and effectually, we will show\nthat the law is neither politic nor expedient. We will grant, indeed,\nthat the law is competent, in all cases coming under its notice, both to\npunish the wrong-doer and partially to redress the wrong; but what is\nthe use, if, instead of effectually repressing the wrong, it tends\nrather to encourage its commission? And such is indeed the anomalous\ncondition of the law, both as it reads and as it works. The easier and\nmore numerous the terms on which the marriage contract can be dissolved,\nthe greater, of course, will be the number of divorces sought; but\nwhether it be for one reason or many, once given a gateway from marriage\nbonds, and none who are desirous of escape will find much trouble in\npassing through the portals which the law has flung open. The facts, as\nattested by the courts of Connecticut and Indiana, prove the truth of\nthe first part of this proposition; for nowhere are cases looking to the\nabsolute severance of the marriage tie more frequently argued, and in no\nother States are so many divorces granted. The reason obviously is\nbecause the conditions for obtaining such concessions are there easiest\nof all. Where the conditions for procuring divorce are more onerous\nfewer applications are made; and the facts, as occurring in New York\nState, verify this sum in proportion and thus prove the second part of\nour proposition.\n\nIn the State of New York adultery is the sole condition of divorce, and\njust in proportion as such a crime is less frequent than mere family\njars and broils, so are divorces less frequently sought. The proposition\nis therefore true that the permission to dissolve marriage begets a\ndemand to that effect in proportion to the ease with which it may be\nobtained. The corollary of this proposition is that, the more easily\ndivorce may be obtained, the less regard is had to the obstacles which\nmay stand in the way of its coming at our beck. Should marriage be\ndeclared to be absolutely indissoluble, and come to be viewed as such by\nthe masses, few would dream of assuming its responsibilities in the hope\nthat, should time render it irksome, they could slip the noose and again\nsoar \u201cin maiden meditation fancy free.\u201d On the other hand, they would be\ndisposed rather to approach the matter with deliberation, to take to\nheart the conditions of the contract, and seriously to study the\nsurroundings of a state which is to endure till death. It is for this\nreason that the church advises her children to ponder long and deeply\nthe consequences of the step they are about to take when proposing to\ncross this moral Rubicon. If C\u00e6sar felt that, the traditionary river\nonce crossed, fate had marked him for her own, or Cortez that, his ships\nablaze, all hope of return was gone, more still does the church insist\nthat sacramental marriage is a step that cannot be retraced. Divorce\nlaws ignore these considerations, and make light thereby of that social\ninstitution on which all others depend for their perpetuity. They forget\nthat\u2014\n\n    \u201cMarriage is a matter of more worth\n    Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.\u201d\n\nWith siren voice they lure the unwary and unreflecting to a fate fraught\nwith untold possibilities of unhappiness. The result is that persons\ntake less account of the solemn nature of the contract. It suits their\nhumor at the moment to get married, and little they reck of the future.\n_Carpe diem._ The rosy present bounds the view, and there is no thought\nof to-morrow. Time enough for the disillusioned groom to wail:\n\n    _Miseri quibus intentata nites_\u2014\n\nwhen \u201cmarriage vows have proved as false as dicers\u2019 oaths,\u201d and bitter\nhate succeeded the short-lived joys of the honeymoon. And why should it\nbe otherwise? Is not the potent panacea of matrimonial ills ever within\nken and reach? What need is there to cloud the golden prospect with\nthoughts of possible future wrangles and rancor, and in advance study to\navert or mitigate them, since, should they come along, a benignant law\nis at hand to end them? We are convinced on the best of grounds that the\nfrequency of divorce suits has its root in the neglect of duly\nconsidering the conditions essential to the happiness of married life.\nWere Dante\u2019s words written over marriage portals:\n\n    _Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch\u2019intrate,_\n\na deal of curious prying, at least, would precede the decisive steps and\nfew would rashly fly to a \u201cbourn whence no traveller returns.\u201d But when\nthe law points to an easy escape from the consequences of a heedless\nstep, what necessity can there be for heeding? Plenty of prior\ndeliberation and a close scrutiny of its obligations would not have\nfailed to render marriage tolerable, at least, for many who now fret and\nfume 'neath its galling yoke because they had flown to it in a wanton\nhour as to a flower to gather sweets from. _Festina lente_\u2014or, as Sir\nThomas Browne quaintly translates it, \u201cCelerity should be contempered\nwith cunctation\u201d\u2014would be a valuable maxim to hold up to the giddy gaze\nof our modern youth who woo and wed with more sentimental sighs than\nsober sense; better, by all means, than the cynical \u201cDon\u2019t\u201d of Douglas\nJerrold. The knowledge that what God hath joined together no human\nauthority must put asunder, alone can stop those unhallowed unions which\ncurse society by the filthy disclosures they occasion, and blast the\nhappiness, both temporal and eternal, of so many.\n\nAt the time when this question was widely discussed in England, and so\nmany eminent authorities opposed the project of law which now rules in\nthe British realms, and which is in the main identical with our own\nState law, Lord Stowell held the following language, which goes at once\nto the kernel of the matter and shows a keen appreciation of the worst\nresults of easy divorce. He says: \u201cThe general happiness of the married\nlife is secured by its indissolubility. When people understand that they\nmust live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they\nlearn to soften, by mutual accommodation, that yoke which they know they\ncannot shake off; they become good husbands and good wives; for\nnecessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties it imposes.\u201d The\nchurch in surrounding marriage with that solemnity which it possesses in\nthe eyes of Catholics, and thus giving greater prominence to its\nindissoluble character, has thereby supplied to her children the means\nof softening a union so binding, and from the crucible of suffering\noffers to both husband and wife a purer gold. In the schedule of\nconditions essential to the procurement of the best results from\nmarriage she holds to our gaze a larger and deeper culture than current\nphilosophy dreams of\u2014a culture that appeals to the intellect through\nmoral sense, unlike that modern culture which is addressed to the\nintellect alone. It has almost passed into an axiom in political economy\nthat self must sink out of sight where the interests of many are\nconcerned; and so the church teaches that men and women, having reached\nthat period when the duties of married life ought to be assumed, should\nthenceforth devote to the service of society those labors they had\nhitherto bestowed on the prosecution of their individual aims. The\nculture proceeds from this. Tolerance of each other\u2019s shortcomings on\nthe part of husband and wife is strongly inculcated. A gentle\nforbearance of mutual peculiarities is enjoined, whereby the noble\ndisposition to forgive the countless trifles of manner, thought, and\naction which might offend a morbid or fastidious idiosyncrasy is\nfostered. Thus the Catholic wife or husband, in view of the indissoluble\nnature of marriage, is taught to round off angularities, to tolerate\noddities, to adapt individual views and feelings to special\nrequirements, and to hold all subject to that higher and holier law\nwhich tells us that self should not be consulted where duty is\nconcerned.\n\nHow many bickerings and misunderstandings, how many of the\nheart-burnings, how much of all the unhappiness that now mars and\ndisfigures married life, might be avoided if these large and liberal\nviews more generally prevailed! Petty jealousies, the offspring of our\nbaser nature; furtive suspicions, exaggeration of faults, imputation of\nwrong motives, misinterpretation of harmless actions\u2014in a word, the\nhundred-and-one incentives to disagreement which beset each day\u2019s\npath\u2014could find no room in a household harboring this pure and\nenlightened conception of marriage. We know that the will is as much the\nsubject of discipline as the intellect, and we likewise know that as it\nis tried, as temptations beset it and are repelled, as suffering is\nendured without repining, as petty torments, numerous in proportion to\ntheir smallness, are patiently borne, the whole character comes forth\nfrom the ordeal smoother, sweeter, more spiritual, and stronger, with a\nlife that is not likely to die. Marriage, rightly conceived, is a\ntraining-school where many salutary lessons are taught. Its tendency is\nto strengthen the will, to soften the heart, to remove asperities of\ncharacter, to evoke the tender and gentle in our nature, and to beget a\nhappiness all its own. Wrongly understood and blindly sought, it is full\nof perils, not, indeed, imaginary, but real with that terrible reality\nwhich court calendars daily reveal in sickening colors.\n\nThus the standard by which the Catholic Church measures marriage makes\nit yield a higher culture, more generous, large, and abiding, than can\nflow from the gross conception which represents it as a contract to be\nrescinded at will. The Catholic view promotes among the married that\nfreedom of action which loves to borrow the consciousness of doing right\nfrom the conviction that the right is freely courted and the wrong\nfreely spurned, and thus paves the way for a nobler plane of conduct.\nThat irritability which inheres so deeply in our nature is what unfits\nmost of us for companionship. It seeks to fasten on others the blame\nwhich is our own, or holds them responsible for grievances which are the\nnecessary outcome of human life. If not controlled, it either causes\nentire estrangement and forfeiture of affection, or leads those towards\nwhom it is manifested to deceptiveness and the employment of crooked\nways to reach legitimate ends. A narrow and illiberal life is the\nresult. Darkness and trickery prevail where all should be light and\nfreedom. Evil accumulates on evil, till both parties seek through\ndivorce to free themselves from a yoke that has become intolerable. The\nshrew will nag and the tyrant husband domineer because a narrow\nselfishness, bred of this unrestrained irritability, has usurped the\nplace of a large-hearted and gentle forbearance. The knowledge of these\npossibilities is the most effective armor against their actual\noccurrence; for it demonstrates in advance the necessity of patience and\na tolerant spirit; it hints at a delicate regard for the feelings of\nothers; it leads to a vivid introspection of self, and inclines to a\nmezzotint view of actions not our own; it discriminates between true\nlove, which is self-sacrificing, gentle, and forgiving, and the\ncounterfeit presentment of love, which is lurid passion, fire without\nlight. And this knowledge is best guaranteed by the conviction that\nmarriage is indissoluble. Urging this view of marriage and the study of\nthese things, the church implicitly holds that a liberal toleration of\nindividual action is essential to the happiness of married life, and\nthat the ignorance which accompanies intolerance must be dispelled ere\nthe ideal picture of married bliss can meet the gaze. Thus Christian\nfreedom goes by the golden mean, on one side of which is domestic\ntyranny and on the other the rampant license of immorality. Unlike the\ngenerality of guides, however the church possesses the means of\nenforcing her enlightened views, of imparting wise counsel, and offering\nhelpful advice in concrete cases through the Sacrament of Penance. Those\nwho have derived their notion of the confessional from the scurrilous\nwritings of Michelet, the senseless diatribes of Gavazzi, or the\neminently vulgar flings of some sensational preachers will be a little\nstartled by this proposition. But let those whose knowledge of the\ntribunal of penance has been fashioned in the school of bigotry and\nignorance consult any intelligent Catholic, husband or wife, and they\nwill find that the web of falsehood in which they have been caught is\nsuch that they should blush at their own simplicity for having become\nentangled in it and held \u201cfaster than gnats in cobwebs.\u201d They will find\nthat all those virtues which, even to the commonest understanding, shine\nclearly forth as the basis of contentment in married life, are here\ninculcated; that here on the heat and flame of distemper cool patience\nis sprinkled; that chafes are healed and rankling barbs plucked out; and\nthat magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and love brighten afresh at the\nlatticed crate of the confessional.\n\nBut notwithstanding that the church has exhausted prudence and employed\nevery means which common sense could suggest in compassing the integrity\nof marriage, she seeks not in these the _ultima ratio_ of her action. To\nher marriage is a sacrament, bestowing grace on those who approach it\nworthily, and sealing married life with a supernatural impress. This\nsacramental notion of marriage it is which elevates, purifies, and\nsanctifies the relation, enables the church to mitigate the evils with\nwhich human perversity leavens it, and gives her control where the most\nrestless plotters for the regeneration of society have acknowledged\ntheir utter powerlessness to act.\n\nDuring the controversy which marked the adoption of the Divorce Bill in\nEngland its opponents, when twitted with their inconsistency in\nrejecting the Catholic notion of marriage as a sacrament and still\ninsisting upon its inherent indissolubility, fell, through their reply,\ninto an error which, in proportion to its prevalence, has led to a\nwide-spread misconception of the grounds on which the Catholic Church\nclaims marriage to be indissoluble. A prominent writer at the time said:\n\u201cThe opinion of the Roman Church itself does not found the\nindissolubility of marriage on its character as a sacrament, but only\nconceives the obligation to be enhanced by that circumstance\u201d; and in\nconfirmation of the assertion he quotes the words of the Council of\nTrent, which are to this effect: _Matrimonium, ut natur\u00e6 officium\nconsideratur et maxime ut sacramentum, dissolvi non potest._ Now, if the\nwords _ut maxime_ be allowed to bear their proper meaning, they\ncertainly prove that the Tridentine fathers intended that the\nindissolubility of marriage should, before all and above all, rest upon\nand grow out of the sacramental character of the contract. _Ut maxime_,\nif meaning anything, means _as far as it is possible, pre-eminently_;\nand so the church regards marriage as naturally indissoluble, but\nespecially so when viewed as a sacrament. The fact proves that the\nopponents of the bill had little else to fall back on than the\nfalsely-advanced statement that the Catholic Church, the most strenuous\nadvocate of indissolubility, sought the reason of her opinion in the\nnature of the contract rather than in the character of the sacrament.\n\nBut, apart from the declaration of the Council of Trent, the whole\nhistory of the church exhibits beyond peradventure her higher estimate\nof marriage as a sacrament rather than as a contract. She holds it to\nbe, in a mystical sense, the symbol of our Lord\u2019s union with the church,\nand surely no higher character could attach to it. But this symbolic\nmeaning of marriage rests altogether on its sacramental phase, so that\nthe church views it as a sacrament supernaturally, as a contract\nnaturally, her higher regard for it being in the former sense. The\nEnglish indissolubilists, therefore, could in no manner object to the\nproposed Divorce Bill; for, denying marriage to be a sacrament, they\nsurrendered the strongest reason for proclaiming it to be indissoluble.\nIf, as even Gibbon admits, the church has lifted woman from the lowest\ndegradation into which she could be plunged, in which she was the mere\nslave of man and the toy of his passions, to her present position of\nrespect and independence by investing matrimony with the holiness of a\nsacrament; and if the church has by the same means purified home-life\nand cemented its affections, is there not danger that, by dragging down\nmarriage from its high estate, woman may again come to be regarded \u201cnot\nas a _person_,\u201d as Gibbon says, \u201cbut as a _thing_, so that, if the\noriginal title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other\nvaluables, by the use and possession of an entire year\u201d? Such was the\nlaw in pagan times, and such it may be again if we list too readily to\nthose modern renovators of society who call marriage tyranny and a\n\u201csystem of legalized prostitution.\u201d Not in vain did St. Simon, Fourier,\nLe Roux, Fanny Wright, and their co-workers inveigh against Christian\nmarriage. We are now reaping the fruits of their unholy crusade against\nit. Their labors are to-day blossoming in Oneida County as well as in\nUtah, in the general rush all round to snap uncongenial ties, and in the\nwoful spread of an evil too base to be mentioned. These form the goal to\nwhich such pestilent agitations tend; and if some well-meaning advocates\nof innovation have not kept step with the leaders, it is not because\ntheir principles restrained them, but rather because they have not quite\nbroken away from the influence of early teachings. Marriage, once\nstripped of its supernatural character, and reduced to the level of a\ncontract, becomes as much the subject-matter of speculation as political\nsystems. Reformers object to this feature of it or to that, and suggest\nendless modifications. Plato contended that there should be no such\nthing as marriage proper, and that all children should be surrendered to\nthe state. To-day, in the light which the Gospel has shed on the\nquestion, civilized states tolerate a condition akin to that which the\nAthenian philosopher advocated. And just as Plato, by the sheer force of\nhis commanding intellect, imposed his views on many both in his own time\nand subsequently, so, it is to be regretted, the skill and eloquence of\nsome modern opponents of marriage are such that they have succeeded in\nwinning hundreds to their standard.\n\nIt is a law of our nature that great intellectual force is never\nunproductive; that it triumphs over many obstacles; and, no matter what\nmay be the cause on the side of which its influence is cast, it is\nalways attended with at least partial success in the achievement of its\naims. Now, we have witnessed the most strenuous efforts of powerful\nminds enlisted in the attempt to abolish marriage. We have had eloquent\npleas for socialism, phalansterianism, etc., and it could not but be\nthat these labors were destined to bear issue of some sort. That issue\nwe are contemplating at the present moment; for these assaults on\nmarriage have lowered the general conception of its obligations, its\nsanctity, and its importance to society. They have lured to a mere\nmockery hundreds who, when scarce the marriage-kiss has impressed their\nlips, besiege our courts with petitions for divorce. The influence of\npernicious doctrines is deeper and wider than their authors imagine. It\ndoes not consist alone in the fact that they draw disciples and beget\nneophytes; but they weaken faith in what they assail, and thus engender\nthe most pitiful lot of man\u2014scepticism. This is precisely what we now\ncomplain of. Our neighbors round about us emphatically eschew the\ndoctrines of the _illuminati_, of Heine and of Prudhomme, yet they more\nor less admit that there is some reason in what has been so well said,\nso forcibly and so eloquently urged. The consequence is that their faith\nin the true order of things is shaken; they are dissatisfied; they\ndeclare the doctrine of indissolubility to be rigoristic; and,\nprovocation given, qualms are brushed aside and they hesitate not to fly\nto the ready remedy of the law. We may thus set down to the erratic\nspeculations of a few self-appointed social reconstructionists many of\nthe matrimonial miseries and scandals we now deplore. And the leaven is\nworking not alone in the United States, but in every country where the\nsame low estimate of marriage prevails, and where the law is the ready\ntool of those who desire escape from shackles of their own forging.\n\nIn England, where law machinery is more cumbersome than among us and its\nprocesses more tedious, not quite so many divorces are obtained, but\nstill the number is on the increase. The English law is much the same as\nthat which rules in New York State, and it is interesting to inquire\nwhat reason there can be for the greater percentage of divorces in New\nYork than in England. We hinted that the administration of English law\nis slower, but that fact is not sufficient to account for a difference\nso marked. All the influences already enumerated as tending to favor the\nmultiplicity of divorces are as actively at work over there as among\nourselves, and hence we must strive to find the explanation of the\ndifference in the different character of the social systems of the two\ncountries. In England society is stratified with such extreme nicety\nthat seldom, if ever, a waif is borne from one stratum to another. Lines\nare sharply drawn between classes, and the fact is well recognized; for\nthe lowly do not seek to soar, nor do the higher ever entirely lose\ntheir social grade. Hence marriages are contracted only between those\nwhose tastes by birth and education agree, whose general views are more\napt to harmonize, and whose sympathies mainly run in the same channels.\nThey come to the altar (we employ the word in its current sense) with a\nbetter understanding of what each expects from the other, with fewer\ndoubts to frighten them and stronger hopes to sustain them, and hence\nsubsequent collisions and estrangements are less frequent. In our\ncountry society has not quite passed out of its formative stage, the\nelements have not settled into their allotted planes. It still is like\nan estuary in which the conflict of opposing tides brings to the surface\nwhat had just lain at the bottom, and drives to the bottom the bead that\nhad glistened for a moment on the brimming top; in a word, social\nstratification is not yet complete among us. The result is a tendency to\nthe intermingling of incongruous forces. In the social ferment which is\ngoing on some rise suddenly from a lower depth and crystallize in their\nnew plane by marriage, some fall and remain below on the same condition.\nHere wealth is a potent escort to lead its possessors higher up than\nthey could hope to reach without the aid of this glittering talisman. A\nlittle veneer and a resolute lack of shamefacedness often enable those\nwhom suddenly-acquired riches have lifted above their former level to\nhold their new station till marriage has assured it to them and given\nthem a title to their position. But rapidly as wealth lifts in the\nsocial scale, more rapidly still does poverty drag down, and we have not\nyet fully developed, though happily we are fast coming to it, that\npublic sentiment which refuses to behold loss of caste in loss of\nwealth. Till then a lower social level is the certain bourn of those who\nhave fallen from opulence, just as a niche higher up in the social\ntemple awaits the _nouveau riche_.\n\nWe are not sticklers for the social classification of aristocratic\ncountries, but simply for that which is founded on cultivated taste,\nrefinement, and general intelligence; and we contend that where the\nsocial condition is such as to permit the barriers between vulgarity and\nrefinement to be broken down, no matter though the former may vie with\nCr\u0153sus or the latter appear in the tattered garb of Lazarus, matrimonial\nmisalliances will be the result. December and May are no more fitly\nmated than platinum and lead\u2014_i.e._, sixteen and fifty make no more\nsuitable alliance than refinement and its opposite.\n\n                    \u201cFor in companions\n    That do converse and waste the time together,\n    Whose lives do bear an equal yoke of love,\n    There must be needs a like proportion\n    Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit.\u201d\n\n    \u2014_Merchant of Venice._\n\nTill, therefore, this social ferment has settled and all the elements\nhave reached their allotted planes, there to remain, misalliances will\ncontinue to occur, and misalliances, we know, are a fruitful source of\nseparation. There may be more satisfactory and truthful explanations of\nthe fact we are endeavoring to account for, but of this we are\nconvinced: that, for whatever cause, antagonistic social conditions\noperate more frequently against happiness in married life in this\ncountry than in Europe.\n\nSpace will not allow us to pursue the discussion of this question much\nfarther, so we will devote the few remaining lines to the consideration\nof the leading objection which is constantly urged against absolute\nindissolubility, and which may consequently be taken as a strong\nargument in favor of divorce. Divorce, it is contended, favors morality;\nfor, whether law intervenes or not, passion will assert its supremacy,\nand it is better to let those depart in peace and with the sanction of\nthe law who cannot live together than have them burst their bonds\nillegally and contract new relations in despite of the law. By so\npermitting, the advocates of divorce hope to stem the torrent of evil\nwhich they say deluges some European continental nations where the\nproportion of illegitimate births is wofully excessive. The same thing,\nthey maintain, is especially true of Spain, Italy, and, in a word, of\nall Catholic countries. Wherever divorce is not sanctioned by law\ndissoluteness, they affirm, is far greater than where divorces are\ngranted. So the statistics seem to prove; and, in a spasm of virtue,\nbelievers in mere statistical figures denounce indissolubility as a\nstepping-stone to lust. We will grant the reliability of statistical\nreports for the nonce, and prove by them that, so far from immorality\nabounding in those countries where divorces are prohibited, a greater\namount of immorality really exists in divorce countries, with the added\nimmorality of a law which cloaks it. We know that passion, blind and\nimpetuous, is the reigning force which orders the actions of those who\ncontemplate emancipation from marriage bonds. Certainly they do not act\nunder the inspiration of grace. When, therefore, they break loose from\ntheir unsuiting partners, it matters little to them whether the law\napproves or disapproves of their action, provided they can act with\nimpunity. This impunity is guaranteed in most cases in countries where\ndivorce is permitted, and new marriages, having all the seemingness of\nvirtue, are contracted with the sanction of the law. In Catholic\ncountries this is not permitted; new post-marital relations are branded\nas adulterous and their issue illegitimate. Is it any wonder, then, that\nillegitimacy is more prevalent in those countries where divorce is\nunknown than where caprice or crime can sever old bonds and weld new\nones, all with the countenance of the law?\n\nThe only difference is that adultery and its consequences are called by\ntheir proper names in the former case, whereas in the latter an\nanti-Scriptural law retrieves them from stigma. And as there is in the\nhuman heart a disposition to do more frequently and more extensively\nwhat the law allows than what it prohibits, we may be sure that there\nare many more pseudo-marriages contracted in countries where divorce is\npermitted than there are adulteries where it is prohibited. Were, then,\nthe mask of the law removed, we should find in the former more infamy\nand crime than even in those Catholic countries where the record of\nmorality is lowest. There is one Catholic country in which divorce is a\nthing known only in name, and yet where even the illegitimacy which\naffects not to seek shelter behind the law is very much less than in the\nadjoining country, where divorces are frequently obtained. In Ireland\nthe courts are most rarely troubled with such applications, and yet\nillicit relations on the part of married persons are fewer than in any\ncountry of Europe. Does not this fact evidently disprove the claim that\nabsolute indissolubility is unfavorable to morality? While the Catholic\nChurch holds to view on the one hand the indissolubility of marriage,\nand on the other the precept of conjugal chastity, and while even in one\ncountry she has established a higher rate of morality under those rigid\nconditions, it is evident her wisdom in this trying matter has been\nattested by the facts.\n\nBut the attempt to bolster up divorce morality by an appeal to\nstatistics is radically wrong. It is based on the supposition that the\nend justifies the means; that it is better, for the sake of avoiding the\nscandals incident to adulterous cohabitation, to legalize it, and thus\nexhibit to the eyes of society a whitened sepulchre rather than hold to\nview the rottenness of \u201can enseamed bed.\u201d It is the duty of moralists\nand teachers of religion rather to stem the torrent of vice and pluck\nthe brand from the burning than attempt to cloak over and extenuate by\nlegal devices what is essentially and for ever wrong. There are times,\nindeed, when separation is the only hope for two unfortunates whom an\nunlucky fate had thrown in each other\u2019s way; but separation does not\nimply remarriage, and theirs it is, while reaping the fruits of an\nenforced singleness, to reflect that they are answerable for the\nconsequences of their own deliberate action, while their case may serve\nas an example to others. Let the beautiful conception of Christian\nmarriage more abound; let men and women learn to view marriage as\nsomething holy, in which the husband is the protector, the wife the\ncomforter, and we may meet with more marriages in which, while the\nhusband faithfully performs his allotted _r\u00f4le_, the wife embodies the\nbeautiful picture of her drawn by Washington Irving: \u201cAs the vine which\nhas long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and has been lifted\nby it in sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the\nthunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its\nshattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordered by Providence that woman,\nwho is the mere dependant and ornament of man in his happier hours,\nshould be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding\nherself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the\ndrooping head, and binding up the broken heart.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                     FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES.\n                         _A free translation._\n                           BY AUBREY DE VERE.\n\n\n[_The Chorus laments the Judgment of Paris._]\n\nSTROPHE.\n\n    My doom was sealed, my lot decided,\n      Not now, not now, but long ago,\n        When first the all-beauteous Dardan boy,\n    By that pernicious goddess guided,\n      Laid Ida\u2019s stateliest pinewood low,\n        And built his ships, and sailed from Troy,\n    To seek her gift\u2014the richest, rarest\u2014\n    That wife most fatal; yet the fairest.\n\n\nANTISTROPHE.\n\n    A netted deer our country lies:\n      One sinned; and all partook his ruin!\n        O fatal, fatal was the hour,\n    Fatal the contest and the prize\n      How ill adjudged for my undoing,\n        When in green Ida\u2019s mountain bower\n    That awful Three\u2014my bane\u2014contended:\n    Even then our golden reign was ended.\n\n\nEPODE.\n\n    And haply some Achaian bride\n      Even now, by far Eurotas\u2019 wave,\n        Widowed like me, like me is mourning!\n    Perhaps some mother by her side\n      Laments for those she could not save,\n        The early lost, and unreturning;\n    Raising her withered hand to tear\n    Her last thin locks of whitening hair.\n\n\n\n\n                           SIX SUNNY MONTHS.\n    BY THE AUTHOR OF \u201cTHE HOUSE OF YORKE,\u201d \u201cGRAPES AND THORNS,\u201d ETC.\n                             CHAPTER XIII.\n                          \u201cOUR LADY OF SNOW.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cTo-morrow comes the flower of the festivals,\u201d the Signora said on the\nmorning of the 4th of August. \u201cIt is our beautiful basilica\u2019s birthday,\nand the loveliest of birthdays, too\u2014just a sweet little poem.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us give ourselves up to it entirely,\u201d Isabel proposed, \u201cand see if\nwe cannot imagine ourselves back in the middle of the fourth century. I\nreally do not like to look at all these things as an outsider.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe must, then, shut the world out for two days,\u201d the Signora replied.\n\u201cI would like it, if you are agreed. I have found, indeed, that it is\nimpossible to enter into the spirit of these beautiful beliefs of the\nold time while one is having much social intercourse with people about,\neven goodish people. It reminds me of seed scattered on good but shallow\nground, which the fowls come and pick up. You think, you meditate, you\npray, you begin to find yourself impressed; glimmers of light steal in,\nand your soul is on the point of being enriched; when in comes some\nfriend, who means no harm, who has, perhaps, a faith like a dry branch\nwith one green leaf at the end, and immediately all is discord. If you\nutter what is in your mind, it is like pearls before swine; if you\nlisten in silence, and with sufficient attention to enable you to answer\nintelligently, it is more than likely that the religious impression you\nhave received will be much weakened, if not entirely effaced. One\nunderstands, in such a case, the profound wisdom of the philosophy of\nsilence, which even the pagans knew, and recollects the admonition of\nour Lord: \u201cLet your speech be yea, yea; no, no.\u201d\n\n\u201cStill, I should think,\u201d Bianca observed dreamily, \u201cthat one might be so\nsettled in that way of feeling and thinking as to influence others,\ninstead of being influenced by them.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery true, you dear little visionary!\u201d replied the Signora, pinching\nthe pretty ear so near her, from which hung a pink coral fuchsia. \u201cIf\none were a great saint, and never touched earthly things except with\nconspicuous recollection; or a great egotist, constantly impressing on\neverybody that one is a very exceptional being and cannot possibly be\napproached in the ordinary manner; or some one, like a clergyman or a\nnun, who by their very profession impress those who approach them with\nthe consciousness of different and loftier interests. But we common\nmortals are overrun by the many. You have seen the breakwater of a\nbridge, have you not, built of stone, and thrusting a sharp point up the\nstream to part the waters, that they may not rush against the broad side\nof the piers and sweep them away? Well, for one person to keep a firm\nstand against the influence of many, it is necessary to put forward, and\nkeep forward, a very hard angle of the character. However, I will not\npreach any more about it, my dear friends. I will simply say that till\nthe day after to-morrow we are in retreat. We will go up now to the\nchurch, and refresh our minds in relation to the legend, and look at\nsome of the treasures there, if you like. Then we can read the whole\nover here at our leisure. I have a kind friend there\u2014my patron with St.\nNicholas\u2014who has a superb illustrated description of the church, which\nhe has offered me any time I may wish for it. I will ask for it to-day.\nBy this means we shall be ready to assist intelligently to-morrow at the\n_festa_ of Our Lady of Snow. And, by the way, what a charmingly fresh\nthought for the season is that of snow! I call for the yeas and nays.\u201d\n\nAn unanimous yea was the reply, and they prepared themselves immediately\nto go to the church.\n\nThey had, of course, seen already all its more evident beauties; but\nsuch a temple can be studied for years without exhausting its\nattractions, and there were several of its more celebrated gems which\nthey had quite passed over. After having heard Mass, then, they went\nfirst into the Sistine Chapel to see the Tamar. This beautiful figure is\npainted in one of the pendentives of the cupola\u2014a space shaped like an\ninverted pear. She sits with her twin boys standing on the seat at\neither side of her, their lovely heads filling the rounded-out space.\nThe most exquisite charm of the figure is the transparent veil which\nfloats about the head and shoulders, and through which her face, with\nits large, drooping eyelids, is perfectly visible.\n\nFrom there they visited the grand _loggia_ to look once more at the\nmosaic story of the miraculous snow. This grand mosaic, made in the\nfourteenth century by the order of two Colonna cardinals, was once on\nthe open fa\u00e7ade of the church; but Benedict XIV., in the eighteenth\ncentury, building the new fa\u00e7ade, enclosed them in the grand _loggia_\nfrom which the popes gave benediction, and of which they form the lower\nside. In the centre of the upper half of the picture the Saviour sits\nenthroned, the right hand giving benediction, the left holding a book\nopen at the words, \u201cI am the light of the world.\u201d At either hand above\nan angel swings a censer, at either side below an angel adores. Four\nfigures\u2014the Blessed Virgin and saints\u2014stand at right and left, the\nsymbols of the four evangelists over their heads. The lower half,\nseparated by the large, round window that lights the eastern end of the\nchurch, has, on the left, two pictures\u2014one the sleeping Pope Liberius,\nthe other the sleeping Giovanni\u2014over both of whom hovers the same vision\nof the Madonna directing them to build her a church where the snow shall\nfall the next day. On the right side is Giovanni telling his dream to\nthe pope in one picture, and beside it the pope, in grand procession,\ncoming to the hill-top where, from above, the Saviour and Virgin send\ndown the snow. So quaint, so full of faith, so exquisite in meaning,\nthis visible story is one of the most eloquent sermons ever preached.\n\nOpposite the mosaic picture, and seen through the graceful arches of the\nportico, was that living picture of St. John Lateran looking down the\nlong street, the blue mountains melting far away, the nearer palm-tree,\nand the piazza with its beautiful column and statue.\n\n\u201cI have a little special treat for you this morning,\u201d the Signora said\nas they went down into the church again. \u201cIt has no special connection\nwith the Madonna delle Neve, but it will not disturb your visions of\nher. Here, however,\u201d pointing to an altar near the sacristy door, \u201cis\nthe story again, and here is buried that Giovanni Patrizio who was found\nburied under, or in front of, the grand altar.\u201d\n\nIt was the chapel of Santa Maria delle Neve, with a painting over the\naltar where the Virgin appears to Giovanni and his wife, and points them\nto a snow-capped hill.\n\nThen they went into the sacristy, where one of the canons joined them,\nand had some precious vestments brought out for them to see; among them\na cope of stuff such as one does not find any more, thick, rich, and\ndim, and threaded with gold, with the short fringe of mingled crimson\nand gold so thick as to round up almost like a cord\u2014the cope given and\nworn by St. Pius V. Almost more precious, if one could choose, was the\nchasuble given and worn by St. Charles Borromeo\u2014long, and with a slight,\ngraceful point in the back. It had been proposed, the sacristan told\nthem, to have this made a model for chasubles now on account of its\ngraceful form, but no change had yet been made.\n\n\u201cThis is worn on the _festa_ of San Carlo, though it is crimson,\u201d he\nadded, \u201cbecause it was his. Sometimes strangers exclaim, when they see\nit, that San Carlo was not a martyr.\u201d\n\nThey touched reverently the sacred relics, and kissed the fastenings\nthat those saintly hands had touched; then, with a more human\nadmiration, examined a marvellous flounce of lace given the church three\nhundred years ago by the Prince Colonna of that time\u2014a web of such\nfineness that the spiders might have woven the thread, and of such\nbeauty of design that only an artist could have imagined it.\n\nBefore leaving the church they paused in front of the closed _cancella_\nof the Borghese Chapel to look at the bas-relief over the altar, wherein\nOur Lady of Snow again repeats her story. All was still in the church.\nChoir and High Mass were over, and only here and there lingered some\n_custode_, or assistant, putting the finishing touches to the\npreparations for the _festa_ which would begin with first Vespers that\nafternoon. The pavements shone newly polished, the candlesticks were\nlike gold, the gilt bronze angels that hold the great painted candles\nstood on the marble rail of the confession, the draperies were all up.\nIn the chapel itself the benches of the choir were prepared, the altar\nglittering with its most precious ornaments, the two great hanging lamps\nat either side swinging faintly, as if impatient for the music to begin.\nAll was peaceful; and a tender shade and coolness in the air veiled the\nglittering richness of the place.\n\n\u201cI cannot tell you how mysterious that picture seems to me,\u201d Bianca\nwhispered, pointing to the square veiled case bordered with jewels, and\nsupported by gilt angels in the middle space over the altar. \u201cThe two\nveils that are to be removed in order to see it, and then the depth at\nwhich it is set, and the mere dark outline that is all one can see\ninside the golden border\u2014it all impresses me with a sense of mystery and\nawfulness. I wonder what the face really looks like, and if any one has\nseen it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, you have seen my engraving of it, my dear,\u201d the Signora said; \u201cand\nI presume that is a faithful copy, taken when the features were more\ndistinguishable. That has a noble, serious look which impresses me. And\nno wonder you look with awe at this. If it were not painted by St. Luke\neven, it is embalmed by memories not less sacred. Twelve hundred years\nago St. Gregory the Great carried this very picture in procession\nthrough the city, in a time of terrible pestilence, and set it on the\naltar of St. Peter\u2019s. It was on the open fa\u00e7ade of this church till Paul\nV. built this chapel to contain it. Amp\u00e8re says that angels have been\nheard chanting litanies about it. It is held by all here in the most\ntender veneration. I have never heard any one describe it, and do not\nknow who has seen it near. I have heard somewhere that only the chapter\nof the basilica and the Borghese family have the privilege of going up\nto it. _Madonna mia_, what a privilege it would be!\u201d she sighed, looking\nup at the closed jasper gates.\n\nThey stayed a little longer, then started to go home; but as they were\ngoing out a boy came to tell the Signora that Monsignore M\u2014\u2014 begged to\nspeak with her. The others went on, but she turned back, well content;\nfor a call from Monsignore M\u2014\u2014 always meant something pleasant. This\nprelate was no less distinguished for position than for his virtues;\nand, finding the Signora a stranger and somewhat lonely when she first\ncame to Rome, he had done her many kindnesses\u2014was, in fact, her Santa\nClaus.\n\n\u201cDo you guess what little devotion I want you to make on the eve of our\n_festa_?\u201d he asked, meeting her with the confident smile of one who\nknows he is going to confer a great pleasure.\n\n\u201cI know it is something delightful, _Monsignore mio_,\u201d she replied, \u201cbut\nI cannot say just what.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I want you to visit the antique Madonna,\u201d he said.\n\nShe looked at him, uncomprehending.\n\nHe pointed to the veiled shrine in the Borghese Chapel, near which they\nstood. \u201cDon Francesco will be here in a moment with a candle,\u201d he said.\n\u201cI prepared all, because I knew you would want to go. I could not invite\na party, you know; but you belong to the church and have a special\ndevotion to our Madonna.\u201d\n\nThe Signora could not reply. Such a swift fulfilment of her wish moved\nher too deeply for words. She kissed the hand of her kind friend, and\nlooked across the church to the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament with\nthe almost spoken thought: \u201cI am going to see your Mother.\u201d To visit\nthat sacred shrine was to her as near to seeing the Mother of God face\nto face as one could come on earth, without a miracle.\n\nPresently appeared the custodian, bearing a lighted candle and a bunch\nof keys; he opened a small door beside the chapel. They ascended a\nnarrow, winding stair, without any light except the one they carried,\nand passed a long, arched corridor where the walls almost touched their\nelbows at either side, and the vault just cleared their heads above.\nThis corridor was between the side wall of the chapel and the wall of\nthe adjoining sacristy. Another door opened, and they entered a cross\ncorridor leading to one of the balconies of the chapel\u2014one of those\nbeautiful gilded balconies the Signora had so many times wished to get\ninto. She stepped into this now, and looked down through the chapel, out\ninto the church, and across to the Sistine Chapel, the columns,\npictures, and gilded arches of the basilica set like a picture in the\ngreat arched entrance of the Borghese.\n\nGoing on then, Don Francesco opened a strong, locked door, that showed\nanother door immediately within, closing the same wall. These led into\nanother of those narrow white corridors running between the walls of the\nchapel behind the altar. Turning then into a third short corridor\nleading toward the chapel, they faced still another door, over which\nwere painted the arms and tiara of Pope Paul V., who built the chapel.\n\nThis door unlocked, they found themselves in a little chamber directly\nbehind the grand altar, with the miraculous picture, set in a box cased\nin metal, right before them. It stands a little back from the screens\nthat cover it in the chapel, and there is space enough at either side\nfor a person to slip in in front and see the picture face to face. Two\niron hooks that barred the passage were taken down, and the Signora went\nin and found herself in front of this most venerable image.\n\nThe picture is painted on panel, and, though dim, is still distinct on\nso near a view, the rich, soft colors coming out as one gazes\u2014a long,\noval face full of serious majesty, with large eyes, and a mantle\ndropping over the forehead. But this mantle is now almost hid; for the\nhead of the Mother, and of the Babe that looks up into her face, and the\noutline of their shoulders, are closely filled in with gold and gems.\nBut for this nothing but a dark square would be distinguishable from the\nchapel. The outline is so clearly made, however, as to give a perfect\nidea, when looked at from below, of a crowned woman with a crowned child\nin her arms.\n\nIf, in the presence of the picture, one can think of jewels, these are\nworth looking at. They are the gems of a cardinal and of a pope\u2014stones\nof immense value set in pure gold. Besides rubies and amethysts, in the\ncentre of the Virgin\u2019s crown is a large emerald surrounded by diamonds,\nand from the jewelled chain at her neck hangs a cross made entirely of\nlarge sapphires.\n\nThe Signora took the candle in her hand and held it before those faces,\nand the clergymen with her knelt, one at either side of her.\n\nAfter a little while they rose, the Signora kissed the floor before the\npicture, and the case that held it, and they turned away. On leaving she\nobserved that this little chamber behind the altar was quite covered\nwith frescoes. Then came the low corridors again, and the narrow stairs;\none more peep from the gilded balcony, and at length she stepped out\ninto the church again, bewildered and enchanted.\n\n\u201cI will tell them nothing about it,\u201d was her conclusion as she went\nhome. \u201cThey might feel hurt at being left out. It shall be a little\nsecret of my own.\u201d\n\nThey went to first Vespers and to the High Mass next morning, but the\nfinest part was the Vespers of the day, to which they went early, and\nwere so fortunate as to have chairs in the chapel near the altar. The\nchapter came in in procession from the basilica, singing as they came,\nand the place was soon crowded.\n\nNothing was wanting to make the scene perfect; the magnificent chapel,\nthe beautiful dress of the canons, who all wore purple silk soutanes,\nwith rich lace on those picturesque little _cotte_ of theirs, and the\nmusic\u2014each was in harmony with all the rest. Then, as the music went up,\ndown through the cupola, glowing with the colors of Cavaliere d\u2019Arpino,\nand faintly veiling the frescoes of Guido Reni, came the soft and\nloitering snow of blossoms, flowery flake by flake. They were lost one\ninstant against the white band of Carrara marble\u2014cornice, capitals,\nfigures, and flowers\u2014under the arches, then green of verd-antique, and\nred of jasper, or the colored mantle of one of Guido\u2019s saints threw them\ninto relief again. Little by little the mosaic of the pavement grew dim\nunder that exquisite snow-fall, which seemed, as it came down, to toss\non the music in mid-air.\n\nThe light up in the cupola grew red with sunset, and the chapel below\nbegan to show softest shades and pale gold lights from the candles, and\nthe pageant slowly dissolved like a bouquet that parts into flowers,\neach flower showing more beautiful separated than when massed together.\n\nGoing out into the basilica, where it seemed almost evening, so strongly\ncontrasted were the lights and shades, the Signora silently pointed out\nto her friends the long, red-gold bar of sunshine that came in at a\nwindow of the tribune and lay the whole length of the nave, looking so\nsolid one felt like stepping over or stooping to go under it, as if it\nwere an obstacle. It was her very idea of the bars of the tabernacle\nwhich the Jews bore with them.\n\n\u201cIf only the church should be lifted and borne to Paradise now, when it\nis all bathed in flowers and full of incense and music!\u201d\n\nThey lingered yet, unwilling to go. Monsignore M\u2014\u2014 came out of the\nsacristy and brought them all some of the blessed blossom-snow. People\nwere gathering it up from the floor of the chapel, and, it having fallen\nalso in the tribune, little boys were slyly vaulting over the railings,\nsnatching it up unseen by the _custodi_, and scampering out again. The\nlights went out, the _cancelle_ were closed, and finally our friends\nwere forced to go home.\n\nThey stood a moment outside the church door before descending the steps,\nthe two girls expressing their delight with feminine enthusiasm. Mr.\nVane had but one word: \u201cThere is a certain Protestant hymn that used to\nmake me feel, when I was a boy, very loath to go to heaven,\u201d he said.\n\u201cBut, remembering it now by the light of this _festa_, I think heaven\ncouldn\u2019t be better described than as a place\u2014\u2014\n\n    \u201c'Where congregations ne\u2019er break up,\n    And Sabbaths have no end.\u2019\u201d\n\nA few days later they made their little visit to Genzano, stopping one\nday in Albano on the way. It was the feast of the Holy Saviour, in which\nagain an antique and venerated picture had a prominent part. They\nreached the town just in time to see the procession go from the Duomo\nbearing the picture up to the little church of Santissimo Salvatore on\nthe hill.\n\n\u201cWhat are those military bands playing for?\u201d Mr. Vane asked, as they sat\nin the loggia of their apartment, after having rested a half-hour.\n\n\u201cThey are playing for the Lord,\u201d said the Signora.\n\nHe stared a little, but, finding her perfectly serious, said after a\nmoment: \u201cWell, I don\u2019t know why they shouldn\u2019t; only I am not used, you\nknow, to hearing fifes and drums on any but military and civil\noccasions.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is a military occasion,\u201d the Signora replied gravely. \u201cIt\ncelebrates Him who is the God of battles and the Lord of hosts. It is a\ncivil occasion, too, in honor of the King of kings, the Lawgiver of the\nuniverse, the Prince of peace.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right!\u201d he said emphatically; \u201cand I need not ask now why they\nare firing cannon.\u201d\n\nThey went out just at sunset and took their places on the steps of the\nlittle church to which the procession was to come, catching glimpses of\nit in the distance as it appeared in some turn of the ascending way.\n\nThe slope of the street just in front of them had been swept, and two\nmen were sprinkling it in a very primitive fashion. One trundled along a\ncart with a little barrel of water on it, and the other dipped in a\nsmall wooden bucket and scattered the water from side to side. He did it\nvery dexterously, however, showing practice. Nearer the steps the street\nwas paved with a mosaic of flowers, and all the houses by which the\nprocession was to pass were decorated in some way, with flowers,\npictures, and lamps to light later, some already lighted and showing\nfaintly through the gloaming. All the windows and little balconies and\nelevated door-steps near the church were filled with women and children,\nevery face turned toward the winding street up which a cross was\nglittering and a sound of music coming. A banner came in sight after the\ncross, and then a crucifix with its canopy, and then banner after\nbanner, and crucifix after crucifix, showing in air over the wall that\nwound with the street. At one turn were visible the tops of the tallest\nheads; then, a little farther on, the whole heads of men, and the\nflowing locks of the boys of the choirs; and, lastly, they came into\nfull sight near by, the inferior persons marching in lines at each side\nof the street, leaving hollow spaces where there was no banner or\ncrucifix to be carried, the clergy walking in the centre. As the picture\nof the Holy Redeemer came along, borne on the shoulders of four men, all\nthe crowd about sank on their knees. The picture was carried up the\nsteps and placed on a table set there to receive it, and there were\nprayers and hymns before dropping the curtain over it and taking it into\nthe church.\n\nThe sun went down and one large star burned in the west. It was easy to\nimagine an angel hand and wings above, and golden chains dropping down\nto a lamp of which that star was the flame. All the lamps, many-colored\nas the rainbow, were lighted in the windows, throwing their light, as\nthe twilight deepened, in a strong splash, here and there, on a leaning\nface intent and praying, on a mantle of vines, on a bit of carving, a\nrough stone balcony, or a stair climbing up into the dark. One little\narched window, with a vine over it, held a single beautiful face of a\nyoung woman, and a single lamp that shone on her black hair and eyes and\nperfect features, motionless there in prayer, till she looked like a\ncameo cut in pink carnelian.\n\nThe prayers ended, and some one drew the curtain before the lovely face\nof the picture. As he did so a chorus of exclamations burst from the\nkneeling crowd, and several women burst into tears.\n\n\u201cWhat do they say?\u201d Mr. Vane asked in surprise. \u201cWhat is the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey say, '_Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!_'\u2014Thanks, most holy Saviour,\u201d\nshe replied.\n\nHe smiled faintly and repeated after them, \u201c_Grazie, Santissimo\nSalvatore!_\u201d and it seemed that his eyes glistened in the candle-light.\n\n\u201cI am glad it touches you,\u201d the Signora said as they went to their\nlodgings. \u201cSome, even Catholics, think it superstitious; but it is no\nmore so than it is a superstition for us to kiss and weep over the\npictures of our friends.\u201d\n\nThe next morning they went up to early Mass in the pretty Capuchin\nchurch, at the head of its long avenue of overarching trees, loitering\nslowly home again when the Mass was over.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d said the Signora suddenly, spying a man with a large basket\u2014\u201cnow\nI will show you what figs are. You have not known before.\u201d\n\nShe beckoned the man and asked how many he would sell for a _soldo_. He\nreplied, \u201cTwelve.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou may give me eight dozen,\u201d she said. \u201cEach of you dear people are to\nhave two dozen and to carry them yourselves. Out with your\nhandkerchiefs! That is the fashion. Don\u2019t be scrupulous.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey don\u2019t look as if I should wish to eat two dozen,\u201d Bianca remarked\ndoubtfully. \u201cThey look to me like little bits of green apples.\u201d\n\n\u201cPlease to defer your judgment,\u201d remarked her friend; \u201cand what you do\nnot wish to eat I will take.\u201d\n\nWhen they had reached home and were seated at the breakfast-table, the\nSignora took one of the little figs, with some ceremony and much\nanticipated triumph, and, lacking a fruit-knife, peeled its green skin\noff with the handle of a tea-spoon. All their eyes were watching the\nprocess; and when it was ended, and she pushed out the little\nteaspoonful of delicious fruit for Mr. Vane to have the first, the\nothers were convinced by only seeing. It was a rich, deep red, of the\nconsistency of solid old preserved strawberries, but with the fig\nflavor.\n\nAfter breakfast was over they went out to visit the gardens of the\nCesarini palace, for which they had a permit. These are laid out and\nkept by a Swiss gardener, and are a wilderness of flowers and trees and\nfountains on the level and down the hill-side. After wandering about the\nupper part for a while they descended a slowly-winding path, bordered by\nhydrangeas in full flower, that stood shoulder-high and dropped their\ngreat balls of amethyst bloom toward the earth, and came out into a\nlittle terrace where the trees and shrubs left an open front. A long\nbench at the back, and a richly-carved antique capital of a column near\nthe wild-vine parapet, gave them seats, and before them was the whole\nverdant amphitheatre, with Lake Nemi at the bottom, and the town of Nemi\nhalf up the opposite bank, like a little white flower painted half way\nup the inside of a green cup. And down from the flower, like its white\nstem, dropped a white stream, cascade after cascade, to the lake, its\nmotion petrified in the distance.\n\nTall white cloud-shapes marched round the hill-tops and looked\nover\u2014shining shapes that seemed to hold Olympian deities within their\nfolds, \u201cimpenetrable to every ray but that of fancy.\u201d The amphitheatre\nsloped steeply in a green cone rich with orchards and vineyards, and\npressed in a waving line around the water. Opposite the little terrace\nin which they sat, as in a box at the opera, the shore made a green\nheart in the water, and from behind one curve of it a boat, tiny in the\ndistance as a black swan, slipped out and moved across the view. The\nlake lay like an emerald half-fused, its shaded greens touched in places\nwith a soft purple bloom or a silvery lustre, and catching now and then\na melting image of some cloud-cap higher than the rest. There was a\nsound of mellow thunder from some direction\u2014Jupiter Tonans driving\nthrough those driving clouds.\n\nThey sat there silently drinking in the beauty of the scene, speaking\nonly a word or two now and then, waiting till it should be noon and they\nshould hear the Angelus from Nemi. When it came, a dream of a sound,\ntouching with the outermost wave of its song the party of strangers\nacross the lake, they stood up and said the prayers together. Then,\nbidding adieu to Nemi and its lake and the beautiful garden, they went\nslowly away.\n\nThat afternoon they went back to Albano, and the next evening returned\nto Rome. They had only one other excursion to make\u2014that to Monte\nCassino. Certain affairs were calling Mr. Vane to America, either for a\nlonger or shorter stay, to go with only his daughters, or to have a\nnearer companion yet, and the end of their visit was approaching. It\nwould soon be September, and in October they must start. Besides, it was\nfound that, subject to her father\u2019s approval, Bianca had promised to\nmarry early in the spring, and some preparations must be made for the\nwedding.\n\nTO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.\n\n\n\n\n                            TO POPE PIUS IX.\n                   A JUBILEE OFFERING, JUNE 3, 1877.\n\n\nI.\n\n\n    To-day the scattered peoples of the earth\u2014\n      Haply the monarchs may not all forget\u2014\n      Pay unto thee, great Pope, their willing debt\n    Of love sincere\u2014blest debt of heavenly birth!\n    We kneel afar, a people of to-day,\n      Whose life but doubles in its hundred years\n      Thy long episcopate of many tears;\n    But none the less we love, nor ceaseless pray\n    That He who leadeth Joseph like a sheep\n      May bless thee with fair length of glorious days,\n      May give thee yet triumphant voice to raise\n    When men, with happy tears, shall vigil keep\n    Of that great feast when Christian Rome no more\n    In chains shall stand a world\u2019s awed gaze before.\n\n\nII.\n\n\n    Eudoxia\u2019s church\u2014where Michael Angelo\n      Hath Moses wrought in terrible array\u2014\n      With faith\u2019s most loving rites keeps holiday\n    In holy thought of those long years ago\n    When, 'neath its roof, the throng devout drew near\n      To see thee made a shepherd of the sheep,\n      Thy crook receive, that thou shouldst bravely keep,\n    Thy flock e\u2019er leading by the waters clear.\n    \u201cSt. Peter of the Chains\u201d\u2014prophetic name!\n      Beneath this title was thy charge begun;\n      As Peter\u2019s self thy hands his chains have won,\n    With these, his years. When shall God\u2019s angel claim\n    Thy liberty, the prison gates fling wide?\n    Christ in his vicar no more crucified!\n\n\nIII.\n\n\n    O happy senses of the Virgin Blessed\n      Standing the cross of Calvary beneath\u2014\n      So winning martyrdom without its death\u2014\n    Queen of all martyrs evermore confessed!\n    O happy Pontiff! wear\u2019st thou not to-day\n      Beneath the triple crown one wrought of thorn?\n      So crowned for love thou hast unfailing borne\n    To thy pure spouse the faithless would betray?\n    Art thou not martyr, too, by that deep woe\n      Thou sharest with our Queen Immaculate?\n      About thee rise the cries of blinded hate,\n    Thou seest afresh the wounds of Jesus flow;\n    His cross thy palm, his words sublime thine too\u2014\n    \u201cFather, forgive; they know not what they do.\u201d\n\n\nIV.\n\n\n    As said Lacordaire, of the rosary,\n      That love must ever its own speech repeat\n      That, ever murmured, groweth e\u2019er more sweet,\n    So, seeking long some gift to bring to thee\n    On this high day that keeps thy years of gold\u2014\n      Some thought that shall heart\u2019s dearest service prove\u2014\n      Find I but one e\u2019er-echoing word of love\n    That doth all else I seek most fair enfold.\n    Too great thy deeds for my poor verse to tell\n      That need the Tuscan\u2019s speech of Paradise;\n      Even to think them, tears are in my eyes\n    And sorrow stifles the _Te Deum\u2019s_ swell\u2014\n    Tears for so dear a feast seem gift unkind,\n    But love in every falling bead is shrined.\n\n\nV.\n\n\n    As, when our Lord doth rest in solemn state\n      On altar for his worship set apart,\n      And from the fulness of each faithful heart\n    The fairest flowers to him are consecrate\u2014\n    Pure lilies, that with fragrant breath pour forth\n      The speechless worship human love must give;\n      Red roses, in whose flush love seems to live\u2014\n    As, 'mid this wealth, some gift of little worth,\n    Some penance-hued, frail-blooming violet,\n      Is brought by humble soul with love as great\n      As lies within the lilies\u2019 lordlier state\u2014\n    Each cancelling so little of love\u2019s debt\u2014\n    So I, my father, 'mid thy lilies place\n    My rue, thy blessing shall make herb-of-grace.\n\n\n\n\n                THE PRESENT STATE OF JUDAISM IN AMERICA.\n\n\nJudaism, in its purity, is not a false religion. It was revealed and\nestablished by God, and nothing which comes from him can be untrue.\nJudaism, as it now exists here and in Europe and Asia, is, on the one\nhand, overladen and almost smothered by the inventions and additions of\nmen, until the original deposit of the truth is with difficulty\ndiscerned; on the other hand, it is refined and explained away until it\nhas become little better than a system of worldly morals. To-day, in\nEurope, Jews, and the descendants of Jews who have lost their ancestral\nfaith without becoming Christians, are powerful in the cabinets of\nkings, in parliaments, in the money exchanges, and in the world of\njournalism. In America, while they have as yet, perhaps with a single\nexception, taken no leading part in the political affairs of the\ncountry, they have become a power in finance, and are beginning in a\nquiet way to influence, and to some extent to control, journalism. The\nability of the race is unquestionable, and their virtues, as a race, are\nmany. They are prudent and thrifty; they are charitable to each other,\nand their charities are not always confined to their own people; they\nare seldom guilty of crime, although when a Jew does become a criminal\nhis offences are apt to leave little to be desired in the matter of\ncompleteness, audacity, and cruelty; they are excellent parents, and the\ndomestic virtues among them are cultivated to a high degree; their women\nare for the most part chaste; their men are seldom cruel creditors, even\nwhen their defaulting debtors are Gentiles. They have their faults and\nobjectionable peculiarities; among certain classes of them these\nimperfections are especially noticeable; but, as we shall show, the\nrising generation of Jews in America will probably become tolerably well\nAmericanized, and will, to some extent at least, cease to be an\nunpleasantly peculiar people.\n\nTo Catholics the study of the changes which have taken place and are now\noccurring among the Jews should be invested with peculiar interest. We\ncannot forget that the Holy Scriptures of the Jews are a portion of our\nHoly Scriptures; that Our Blessed Lady was a Jewess, and that our Divine\nLord willed to be born a Jew according to the flesh; that he made\nhimself subject to the ceremonies and rites of the Jewish law, which was\nthen the divine law, and consequently his own law; that the first drops\nof his precious blood were shed in the Jewish rite of circumcision; that\nhis chosen apostles, and among them the first pope, were all Jews; that\nthe Catholic Church at its first organization was wholly composed of\nJews; and that the first Christian martyr was a Jew.\n\nWhen Jesus Christ had finished his work on earth and had ascended into\nheaven, the Jewish law was fulfilled but not destroyed; it remained in\nfull force and effect, subject only to such modifications as God\nhimself, speaking through the infallible mouth of the church which he\nhad established, should ordain in matters of ritual, sacrifice, and\noutward observances. The code of laws given by God to Moses on Mount\nSinai, and engraved by the divine hand upon tables of stone, is as\nbinding to-day upon all of us as it was binding upon the Jews on the day\nwhen Moses came down from the mount bearing the sacred tablets in his\nhands. The devout Jew who to-day, with reverently covered head and\ncontrite heart, stands in his synagogue and listens to the reading of\nthe law, hears the same words that Jesus of Nazareth read when, as was\nhis custom, \u201che went into the synagogue and stood up for to read.\u201d True,\nhearing, he does not hear the full meaning of the divine words; seeing,\nhe does not see how they have been fulfilled; his understanding has not\nbeen opened to know that the Messias for whom he still yearns was the\nJesus whom his ancestors crucified on Calvary, and that, on the altar of\nthe church which, perhaps, stands next door to his synagogue, this same\nJesus, risen, glorified, and descended again from heaven, stands ready\nto receive and bless him.\n\nBut the Jew, ignorant of this and still clinging fast to the faith of\nhis fathers, has an infinite advantage over all the other non-Catholics\nin the world. His religion, as we have said, was revealed by God, and\ntherefore is not false in its essence, however much it may be overlaid\nand hidden by the innumerable superstitions and additions with which\nsuccessive generations of rabbis and doctors have encumbered it. It is\nnot a revolt against the Catholic faith nor a contradiction of it; for\nnot only did it exist before the Catholic Church was established, but it\nwas revealed by God, and he cannot contradict himself. The Jew errs only\nbecause he cannot or will not see that the Catholic Church is the lineal\nheir and rightful possessor of the church of which Adam was the first,\nand Caiphas the last, high-priest; and as for his sin in this hardness\nof heart and blindness of eye, God will judge him. Outside of this, and\noutside of the human additions which have been made to his creed, he\nbelieves what God spake unto Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, and his\nreligion is entitled to respect because it is of divine origin. But the\norigin of all the other non-Catholic religions in the world is human or\ndiabolical. They are revolts against the authority and teaching of the\nchurch which Jesus Christ established in the world; to the earthly and\nvisible head of which he gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven; to the\nwords of which he enjoined all men to render obedience; on which he has\nbestowed the inestimable grace of perfect unity; and which the Holy\nSpirit keeps ever in the truth. The Jew can say with truth, \u201cGod founded\nmy church\u201d; but the Protestant can only say, \u201cMartin Luther, or King\nHenry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, or John Knox, or John Wesley, or\nAlexander Campbell, or Jo Smith, or the devil founded _my_ church.\u201d\n\nJudaism, however, although divine in its origin, ceased to possess the\ndivine sanction from the moment when our Lord had completed his work on\nearth and ascended into heaven, and the Holy Ghost descended to preside\nover the organization of the church from which he has never since\ndeparted. The Jewish religion, thus deprived for ever of the divine\nsanction, was at once deprived of its divine authority and became a\nmerely human organization, subject, like all other human things, to\ncorruption, change, decay, and disintegration. These processes have been\ngoing on within it for eighteen hundred years, and they have now reached\na most advanced stage.\n\nPrior to the crucifixion and ascension of our Lord the essential unity\nin faith of the Jewish people had been preserved. The lawyers, the\ndoctors, and the Pharisees had added much to the law of Moses in the way\nof laying heavy burdens on the people; they took tithes of annise and\ncummin; they made broad the edges of their phylacteries, and they were\nfamous for making long extempore prayers, in which latter respect they\nresembled too closely some of our esteemed Protestant brethren. But the\nessential and divinely-given articles of the Jewish faith remained\nunimpaired, and in these essentials the unity of the people was\ncomplete. The process of change and disintegration commenced immediately\nafter the establishment of the Christian Church and what may be called\nthe formal transfer to her of the guiding and enlightening influence of\nthe Holy Spirit. But for many centuries this process was slow and its\nprogress excited little or no attention. The Jews, until a very recent\nperiod in their history, were a persecuted people; and persecution tends\nto make men cling closer to that which is the cause of the persecution.\nThere were times in the history of the Jews when their only city of\nrefuge was Rome; when the popes, alone of all the sovereigns of the\nearth, stretched forth over them a protecting arm and permitted them to\ndwell in peace and security. Within the last century, or less, all this\nhas been changed: nowhere in all Europe now, save in Bulgaria and one or\ntwo other provinces, are the Jews persecuted; they have obtained equal\npolitical and social rights; they are cabinet ministers, premiers,\nmembers of parliament, eminent journalists, and autocratic bankers. With\nthis prosperity have come the marked evidences of that disintegration in\nmatters of faith to which allusion has been made. And here in America,\nwhere the Jews have been always free, these changes have now become more\nsignal and wide-spread than in any other country.\n\nTo show how this has come about, it will be necessary, in the first\nplace, to explain briefly the nature of the additions which have been\nmade by the Jewish doctors to the divine law; the effect of these human\nedicts and precepts upon the minds of those Jews who retain their faith;\nand their contrary effect, upon other minds, in promoting and\ndisseminating the spirit of infidelity which is now so widely prevalent\namong the Hebrews. The strictly \u201corthodox\u201d Jew to-day is more burdened\nthan were ever any of his ancestors by practically endless rules,\nobservances, rites, and ceremonies, while his \u201creformed\u201d or\n\u201cultra-reformed\u201d brother has not only shaken himself free from all, or\nnearly all, of these human inventions, but has emancipated himself also\nfrom the letter and spirit of the law of Moses and from the bonds of the\nfaith.\n\nThe books of the Jewish law as they now exist are the Old Testament, as\nwe call it; the \u201cMishna,\u201d or Second Law; and the \u201cGemara,\u201d or supplement\nto the \u201cMishna.\u201d These two latter books, taken together, form the\n\u201cTalmud.\u201d But the \u201cMishna\u201d is the explanation of the Old Testament; the\n\u201cGemara\u201d is the explanation of the \u201cMishna\u201d; and there remains behind or\nabove all these the mystical and mysterious \u201cCabala,\u201d which contains\nwithin itself the sum and essence of all human wisdom, and of such\nportions of divine wisdom as men are permitted to know. The \u201cCabala,\u201d\nproperly speaking, is not a book, and has never been wholly committed to\nwriting. The \u201cCabala\u201d\u2014and the meaning of the word is the \u201ctradition\u201d\u2014is\na divine, sublime, secret, and infinite science, treating of the\ncreation of the universe, of the esoteric meaning and significance of\nthe Mosaic laws, and of the secrets of God. No trace of its origin is to\nbe found. Moses, David, Solomon, and the prophets are said to have been\nmasters of it. It was taught to successive generations, but with the\nutmost secrecy and only to a select few, who were deemed worthy to\nreceive this priceless knowledge. Those portions of it which are written\nare brief, obscure, and full of abbreviations and initials, to be\nunderstood only by the initiated. They resemble the manuals of\nFreemasonry\u2014pregnant with meaning to the members of the craft, but\nunintelligible to all who have not the key of the cipher. He who is a\nperfect master of the \u201cCabala\u201d is so wise and potent that he not only\ncan work wonders, but may exercise almost creative powers. Nay, even an\nimperfect and surreptitiously-obtained knowledge of its mysteries\nenables one to perform miracles. He who can place certain letters in a\ncertain way, and pronounce them in a certain manner, may suspend the\noperation of the laws of nature and command the angels of God to do his\nwill. The Cabalists, however, claim that seldom, if ever, has their\ndivine science been used by unworthy men or prostituted to selfish\npurposes. The penalty for such a sin is eternal death; it is written in\none of their books that \u201che who abuses the crown perisheth,\u201d and this is\nunderstood to refer to those who possess themselves of this knowledge\nand then use it for selfish purposes. The true Cabalists study their\nscience not for gain, but for the sake of obtaining profound knowledge.\nThey apply their rules to the letters and words of the Mosaic law, and\nascertain thereby its hidden significance, drawing from every word or\nsentence an esoteric meaning, often full of sublime intelligence, and as\noften pregnant only with absurdity.\n\nEmanuel Swedenborg seems to have been an unfledged Cabalist; it is\nprobable that he became in some manner acquainted with a few of the\noutward formulas of the Cabala, and that he based on these his wearisome\ntreatises upon the secret meaning of the Scriptures. Certain it is that\nnothing which Swedenborg imagined is not to be found in the Cabala.\nFortunately, a knowledge of the Cabala is not necessary for salvation;\non the contrary, knowledge of it is a special perfection which every one\nis not able to attain, and for the want of which no one is to be blamed.\n\nThe \u201cMishna\u201d contains the oral or traditional laws transmitted from\nMoses, through a line of which the personality of every member is known,\nto the Rabbi Jochanan, who lived at Jerusalem at the time of the\ndestruction of the second Temple. It was compiled by Rabbi Jehuda Hanasi\nin the latter half of the second century. The \u201cGemara,\u201d or supplement to\nthe \u201cMishna,\u201d is a wonderful book, containing thirty-six treatises upon\nhistory, biography, astronomy, medicine, and ethics, interspersed with\nlegends, aphorisms, parables, sermons, and rules of practical wisdom.\nThe oral or traditional laws in the \u201cMishna\u201d are claimed to be of divine\nauthority; and the passages in both these books which seem to be absurd\nin the letter have a secret meaning understood best, if not exclusively,\nby the Cabalists. The morality taught in these writings is not to be\ndespised. For example, it is laid down that men should not use flattery\nor deceit in business affairs; they should not be boisterous in their\nmirth nor permit themselves to sink into abject melancholy, but should\nbe reasonably and gratefully cheerful; they should be neither greedy of\ngain, nor slothful in business, nor over-righteous in fasting and\npenance; all that they do they should do for the glory of God; they\nshould love every Israelite as themselves, and they should be kind and\ncharitable to the stranger; they must abstain from inward and silent\nhate, and if aggrieved by a neighbor they should make it known to him,\naffectionately asking him to redress the wrong; they should be\nespecially solicitous to comfort, aid, and protect the widow and the\norphan, not merely if these be poor, but because they have suffered and\ntheir hearts are laden with grief. There are three mortal sins\u2014idolatry,\nfornication, and bloodshed; but calumny is equal to all three. Every one\nwho professes the true faith must believe that there is a Being whose\nexistence is inherent, absolute, and unconditional within himself; who\nhas no cause or origin, and like whom there is no other; who is the\nfirst producer of all things; in whom all creatures find the support of\ntheir existence, while he derives no support from them; and that \u201cthis\nBeing is by men called God\u2014blessed be he!\u201d There are six fundamental\nprinciples of the faith\u2014the creation of all things by God out of\nnothing; the pre-eminence of Moses as a prophet and lawgiver\u2014a\npre-eminence so great that there never has been and never can be another\nequal to him; the unalterableness of the law which he gave; the dogma\nthat the proper observance of any one of the commandments of the law\nwill lead to perfection; the resurrection of the dead; and the coming of\nthe Messias. But upon this excellent foundation has been built up that\nstructure of ceremony, ritual, observance, and false and narrow\nphilosophy which has become unbearable to so many of the Jews in this\ncountry and in Europe, and from the yoke of which too many have escaped\nby throwing aside all faith, while others have contented themselves with\ntaking refuge in the half-way houses of \u201creform.\u201d\n\nIt is difficult to estimate with accuracy the number of Jews in the\nUnited States. But the census of 1870 affords us some valuable data upon\nwhich a calculation may be based. In 1850 there were 36 Jewish\nsynagogues in the United States, with sittings for 18,371 persons, and\nhaving a value of $418,600. In 1860 there were 77 synagogues, with\nsittings for 34,412 persons and a value of $1,135,300. In 1870 no less\nthan 189 Jewish \u201corganizations\u201d were reported; there were 152\nsynagogues, seating 73,265 persons and valued at $5,155,234. Now in the\ncity of New York there are 26 synagogues, and the Jewish population of\nthe metropolis is not less than 75,000. This would give an average of\nsome three thousand souls to each synagogue; and if we took this average\nas a basis of calculation, we should have a Jewish population in the\nwhole of the United States amounting to 456,000 souls. But we have\nreason to believe that this is much less than the actual number. We have\nreceived from two high authorities estimates of the Jewish population in\nthe republic; both are avowedly only estimates, but they have been made\nwith care. One of them places the number of Jews in the United States at\n\u201cone in thirty of the whole population,\u201d which would give a total of\n1,600,000 souls; the other reports the number to be \u201calmost exactly\n1,000,000 souls.\u201d\n\nAccording to the census of 1870, there were no Jewish synagogues or\nother Hebrew organizations in Arizona, Dakota, Delaware, Florida, Idaho,\nMinnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New\nMexico, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington Territory, or Wyoming. But, in\npoint of fact, there are many Jews in all, or nearly all, these States\nand Territories. The following table will show the number of Jewish\norganizations in the United States, the number of their synagogues, with\ntheir sittings and their value, according to the census of 1870:\n\n                      Organizations.   Synagogues.  Sittings.     Value.\n Alabama                           2             2      1,650    $30,000\n Arkansas                          1             1        300      6,500\n California                        7             7      3,600    314,600\n Colorado                          1             \u2014          \u2014          \u2014\n Connecticut                       5             3      1,850    105,000\n Dist. of Columbia                 2             1        800     18,000\n Georgia                           6             5      1,400     52,700\n Illinois                         10             9      3,950    271,500\n Indiana                           5             4      1,900    113,000\n Iowa                              5             1        150      1,900\n Kansas                            2             1        300      1,500\n Kentucky                          3             3      1,500    134,000\n Louisiana                         5             5      2,200     75,000\n Maine                            23            23      7,315     36,400\n Maryland                          5             4      2,750    650,000\n Massachusetts                     5             2      1,500     33,000\n Michigan                          5             3      1,300     51,000\n Missouri                          4             4      2,100    217,100\n New Jersey                        1             1        300      8,000\n New York                         47            33     21,400  1,831,950\n North Carolina                    1             1        200        500\n Ohio                              7             7      4,000    360,584\n Pennsylvania                     15            14      7,750    681,000\n Rhode Island                      1             \u2014          \u2014          \u2014\n South Carolina                    3             3        900     91,200\n Tennessee                         4             4      1,100     21,000\n Texas                             1             1        400      6,000\n Vermont                           8             7      1,890     35,300\n West Virginia                     1             \u2014          \u2014          \u2014\n Wisconsin                         4             3        750      8,500\n\n Totals                          189           152     73,265 $5,155,234\n\nA careful examination of this table discloses some remarkable contrasts\nwhich are not without their significance. While the synagogues in North\nCarolina, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, and some other States are small and\ncheap structures, costing only from $500 to $2,800 or $3,000 each, those\nin Georgia have cost, or are valued at, an average of $10,500; in\nAlabama and Maine, $15,000; in Illinois, $30,000; in Connecticut,\n$35,000; in California, $45,000; in Pennsylvania, $49,000; in Ohio,\n$51,500; in Missouri, $54,000; in New York, $60,000; and in Maryland,\n$162,000. These instances exemplify to some extent the comparative\nwealth and religious zeal of the children of Israel in the different\nStates named, and many of our readers, we suppose, will learn with\nsurprise that there are far more Jews in Maine than in all the other New\nEngland States put together; and that the Jews of Maryland are\napparently very much more wealthy and zealous than their co-religionists\nin any other part of the republic. But we must now trace the history of\nthe settlement and progress of the Jews in this country, and set forth\nthe outer as well as inner causes which have tended to work changes in\nthem: to Americanize them to a great extent; to remove or soften the\nprejudices formerly cherished against them; and to weaken, modify, or\ndestroy, in a degree which cannot yet be accurately determined, their\nown religious faith.\n\nJewish emigration to this country began at a very early period in its\nhistory, but only within the last thirty years has this emigration\nassumed perceptible dimensions. The Jews who came to the United States\nprior to 1848 were for the most part members of a low class; they were\nchiefly of Polish, Russian, Portuguese, or Spanish birth; they were\neither poor or pretended to be poor; they were peddlers, dealers in old\nclothes, pawnbrokers, money-changers in a small way, and petty\nmerchants. From all social intercourse with the rest of the community\nthey were cut off; they did not seek that which probably would have been\ndenied them had they asked for it; the traditional prejudice against the\nJews which exists so generally among the Gentiles was not diminished by\nthe appearance, the actions, and the general reputation of these\nchildren of Israel. They were supposed to be exclusively devoted to\ntrade and to money-making, and to be quite devoid of any scruples as to\nthe means by which they might get the better of the person to whom they\nsold or of whom they bought. A Hebrew writer of some note many years ago\nremarked that the Jews, as a race of people, were more widely and\ngenerally known and less generally appreciated than any other class upon\nthe earth; that the peculiarities which have marked them as objects of\ndislike were by no means original in their character, but were the\nfruits of centuries of oppression and degradation; and that they needed\nonly a few years of existence in a free country, where equal rights\nwould be accorded to them, and where they might in peace and security\nmanifest the virtues which were in them, in order to win for themselves\nnot only the toleration but the active esteem and respect of their\nfellow-citizens. The truth of this remark has been amply substantiated\nby what has occurred in England, France, Germany, and other portions of\nEurope; while in this country the Jews have succeeded in Americanizing\nthemselves to a very great extent, and in obliterating in a marked\ndegree the peculiarities which formerly served to point them out as a\nwholly separate and foreign people. That this process has been\naccompanied by the partial loss of their religious faith is\nunquestionably true, but it is not clear whether they have become\nAmericanized because they have to this extent lost their faith, or\nwhether they have lost their faith because they have become\nAmericanized.\n\nThe Jews in America at the present moment are divided into five\nclasses\u2014the \u201cRadical Orthodox,\u201d the \u201cOrthodox,\u201d the \u201cConservative\nReformed,\u201d the \u201cReformed,\u201d and the \u201cRadical Reformed.\u201d There is a wide\ngulf between the first and the last of these classes; but the shades of\ndifference between a Radical Orthodox Jew and an Orthodox Jew, or\nbetween a Conservative Reformed Jew and a Reformed Jew, are somewhat\ndifficult to define. The Radical Orthodox Jews are few in number, and\nare said by their co-religionists to be daily growing less. They are\nchiefly of Polish, Austrian, or Hungarian birth; they for the most part\nare in humble and obscure walks of life; they form no associations with\nGentiles; they accept as the rule of their life the Mosaic law\ninterpreted by the \u201cTalmud\u201d and the \u201cCabala\u201d; they do not welcome\nGentiles, or even Jews of later views, to their synagogues. We believe\nthere is but one synagogue in New York belonging to this school of Jews,\nand in which one may witness Jewish worship as it was performed a\nthousand years ago. The children of the Radical Orthodox Jews\u2014especially\nthe male children\u2014do not adhere closely to the faith and ritual of their\nfathers; and some of the fathers themselves, as they become rich in this\nworld\u2019s goods, manifest a disposition to affiliate themselves with one\nor other of the less rigorous sects. Some of them are content to join\nthe ranks of the Orthodox Jews, who hold most firmly to all matters of\ndogma, and to all the essential rules of life laid down by the law of\nMoses, but who at the same time dispense themselves from the strict\nobservance of a certain number of the more onerous observances and\nregulations enjoined by the rabbinical writers.\n\nThe line of demarcation between the Orthodox Jews and the Conservative\nReformed Jews is vague and undetermined; but the Reformed Jews are very\nmuch advanced. They hold themselves bound no longer to obey the\nceremonial and dietary laws laid down by Moses and his successors, and\ntheir faith in the predictions of the prophets has almost wholly faded\naway. The higher class of the Hebrew community for the most part belong\nto the Reformed sect; but these congregations are also largely composed\nof the well-to-do middle-class Jews. Nearly all of the Jews of American\nbirth are found in the ranks of this sect or in the one of which we have\nyet to speak; and very many of the German and English Jews resident here\nare also members of the Reformed synagogues. They openly avow their\ndesire and ambition to become thoroughly Americanized, and to cease in\nall respects to be regarded as an alien and foreign people. They still\nretain their belief in God, but this belief is in too many cases vague\nand ill-defined. The expectation of the coming of the Messias in any\nliteral sense has, with rare exceptions, ceased to be entertained among\nthem. They will not confess that the prophecies of his coming were\nfulfilled in Jesus Christ, and their philosophy has led them to the\nconclusion that these prophecies do not now remain to be fulfilled, save\nin a metaphorical sense. The Messias is indeed to come\u2014but not as an\nindividual. Humanity as a race, elevated, happy, prosperous, blessed\nwith long life, health, and earthly comfort, is the Messias; the\nprophets saw him and were glad, but it was reserved for the children of\nthis generation to discover what was the hidden and real meaning of\ntheir predictions concerning him.\n\nA learned Jewish scholar has thus expressed this phase of Jewish\nthought: \u201cThe majority of intelligent Israelites have long since\nabandoned the wish of building up an independent national existence of\ntheir own. The achievement of higher conditions of human life they are\ndisposed to regard as the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, and the\nfurthering of this end, in intimate union with their fellow-men, as the\nhighest dictate of their religion.\u201d These are weighty words; and there\nis abundant reason to believe that they truthfully represent the\ndominant tone of thought among the American Jews. The latest sect among\nthem\u2014the Radical Reformed Jews\u2014go to the root of the matter and have the\nfull courage of their opinions. They have the goodness to admit that\nthere is, or may be, a God, but they deny that he has ever revealed\nhimself to man save by the law of nature, and that God is himself\nnature. In other words, these Jews have become Pantheists. Benedict de\nSpinoza was excommunicated and denounced by the forefathers of those who\nnow revere and extol him. The most eloquent and gifted, if not the most\nlearned, of the Jewish rabbis in America has become the leader of this\nsect, and has left the magnificent synagogue which was built for him,\nonly to draw after him into new paths a large proportion of his former\ncongregation. They are extremely wise in their own conceit; they prate\nof the necessity of doubting all things; they deride the rites and\npractices of external religion; they say they worship God, but inasmuch\nas God, as they insist, is only nature, and nature is part of\nthemselves, in worshipping God they worship themselves. We are told that\nmany of those Jews who still maintain their connection with the\nConservative Reformed or Reformed congregations are by conviction in\nfull sympathy with the Radical Reformers. The laity are far in advance\nof the rabbis of each sect. The rabbis are for the most part men of\nforeign birth and foreign education; there are, we believe, not a dozen\nrabbis of American birth in the whole Union. The almost universal\ntendency of thought and practice among the younger Jews is in the\ndirection of that phase of infidelity of which we have spoken; and the\nelder members of the race take little care to counteract in any\neffectual manner this apostasy. The education of Jewish children in this\ncountry is left pretty much to take care of itself. There are few, if\nany, Jewish schools, and none at all of a high character. The Jewish\nchildren for the most part attend the public schools, where they either\nare taught no religion at all or listen to such vague and disjointed\nutterances concerning the truths of Christianity as the caprice or the\nprejudices of the teacher may lead him to pronounce. In some instances\nthe children of well-to-do Hebrews among us are sent to receive their\neducation in Unitarian academies; in others the sons of wealthy American\nJews are educated in the German universities, from whence they return\nfull-blown infidels. Intermarriages between Jews and nominal Christians\nare not rare; and the children of these unions are, as a rule, educated\nin the religion of the mother\u2014if she happens to possess any.\n\nWe have said that the Jewish laity is in advance of the rabbis in the\nmatter of what is called \u201creform,\u201d but which is too generally nothing\nbut destruction. The position of the rabbis is a peculiar one. They are\nnot priests, for they no longer offer sacrifice. They are not even the\nsons of priests; the hereditary character of their office has long since\nbeen lost; they are rabbis, or, in other phrase, teachers, not by\nhereditary descent nor by divine selection or consecration, but merely\nby their own choice and the good-will of their neighbors or friends. The\nlast high-priest of the Jewish Church who had any divine sanction for\nthe title which he bore was Caiphas, and his office was taken away from\nhim, in the sight of God and in truth, on the day of Pentecost, when the\nHoly Ghost descended to dwell until the end of time with the Christian\nChurch. Since that day there have been no priests of God upon the earth,\nsave the priests of the Catholic Church; and consequently since that day\nthere have been no true Jewish priests. The altars of the Jews have\ncrumbled away; their sacrifices have ceased; the sons of the tribes of\nAaron and Levi have abandoned even the pretence of belonging to a\npriestly order. In the place of the priests have come the rabbis, who\nare mere ministers or teachers. They are to the Jews what the Baptist,\nMethodist, Presbyterian, and other Protestant ministers are to the\nrespective Protestant sects. They are a little less than some of the\nProtestant ministers claim to be; for some of these do set up in an\nuncertain way a vague and altogether fallacious pretence to the\npossession of \u201corders\u201d and to having been empowered to perform priestly\nfunctions. The rabbis make no such pretence, and their position, such as\nit is, is confessedly invested with only purely human sanction. They are\nteachers, but do not claim that they have a divine authority to teach.\nThey are subject to the will and caprice of the congregation to which\nthey are attached; they are like school-teachers, whose tenure of office\ndepends upon the pleasure of the school commissioners. Some of them have\nsought to put themselves at the head of the reform movement, and have\nsucceeded, but only on the condition that they should keep pace with the\nadvance of the laity. The younger German rabbis have been most prominent\nin this respect. They have effected an organization among themselves, as\nwell here as in Germany, and have managed to act together with something\napproaching to unanimity. Destitute, however, of any rule of faith and\npractice higher than their own will and whim, and having no central or\nsupreme authority to which they can appeal, they lack the essential bond\nof unity, and some of them are constantly wandering off in one direction\nor the other. They began their work of reform by modernizing the ritual\nof the synagogue, and eliminating from it, little by little, those\nportions of it which, directly or indirectly, assert the dogmas that are\ninconveniently opposed to the new ideas whereof they are enamored. Among\nthe regular prayers of the synagogue, for instance, were supplications\nfor the bringing back of the chosen people to the land of their fathers,\nthe restoration of the throne of David, and the coming of the Messias.\nThe new philosophy, as we have shown, teaches that the Messias is not to\ncome in any literal sense; that inasmuch as modern progress is best\nsubserved by democratic or republican institutions, the establishment of\na monarchy of any kind is not to be desired or prayed for; and that the\nreturn of the Jews as a nation to Palestine is not to be wished, even if\nit were feasible.\n\nIt became advisable, therefore, to reconcile theory with practice, and\nto cease pretending to pray for that which was either impossible or\nundesirable. If it were absurd to believe any longer that the Messias\nwas to come as a personal king and redeemer, to lead back his people to\nthe Promised Land, and to elevate them as the rulers and princes of the\nearth, then it was something worse than absurd to continue the\nrepetition of the prayers imploring the hastening of his coming. If the\nBooks of the Law and of the Prophets are not the veritable word of God;\nif they contain merely ingenious and beautiful myths, symbolical poetry,\nand a code of moral and dietary rules which, in some respects at least,\nare no longer either necessary or advisable to be obeyed, it is\ndishonest to pretend to regard these writings with devout reverence, and\nto insist upon any one governing himself by them. By this course of\nreasoning the German rabbis, often pushed further than they cared to go\nby the laity who were behind them, sapped the foundations of faith among\nthe common people of the Jews, and prepared them for the downward path\nwhich so many of them are now treading.\n\nHaving thus reviewed the present state of Judaism in America, we may ask\nourselves what is likely to be the future of what was once the church of\nGod, but has now fallen to the level of a mere sect. It is clear that\nthe Jews, here as in the Old World, and more rapidly here than in the\nOld World, are losing the faith of their fathers. Judaism, divine in its\norigin, but no longer invested with the divine sanction nor inspired or\nguided by the Holy Ghost, is undergoing the same process of\ndisintegration and decay which the Protestant sects are suffering.\nJudaism, now wholly human, like Protestantism, is leading its adherents\nto infidelity. Every day, as Protestants see this, the devout and pious\namong them turn to the one church which Jesus Christ established in the\nworld, and in her bosom find refuge, peace, and salvation. The number of\nconversions from Protestantism to the holy Roman Catholic Church, here\nand in Great Britain, is continually on the increase. But nothing is\nmore rare than the conversion of a Jew. They are rapidly parting with\ntheir own faith, but very seldom do they embrace any form of\nChristianity in its stead. In a few years the great majority of Jews in\nthe United States will probably have ceased to be Jews, save only in\nname. But how many of them will become Catholics? All roads lead to\nRome; but very few Jews have made that journey. A Jew who becomes a\nCatholic is a most excellent Catholic; he seems to desire, by the fervor\nof his faith and the burning zeal of his charity, to make some\nreparation for the sins of his people. Jews should be the best Catholics\nin the world; and God has told us, through the mouths of Jewish\nprophets, that the time will come when they will be all that they should\nbe. The word of God is sure and cannot fail. He has told us that the day\nis coming when the Jews shall ask him, \u201cWhat are those wounds in the\nmidst of thy hands?\u201d and when he shall reply, \u201cWith these was I wounded\nin the house of them that I love.\u201d In that day he \u201cwill pour out upon\nthe house of David the spirit of grace and the spirit of prayers; and\nthey shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn\nfor him as one mourneth for an only son, and shall grieve over him as\nthe manner is to grieve for the death of the first-born.\u201d In that\nglorious day God has promised that he will destroy the names of idols\nout of the earth, so that they shall be remembered no more; and that he\nwill take away the false prophets and the unclean spirit out of the\nearth. He will bring back the captivity of Juda and the captivity of\nJerusalem, and \u201cwill build them as from the beginning\u201d; he will cleanse\nthem from all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned against him and\ndespised him; and he will so crown them with blessings that all the\nworld shall be amazed thereby. \u201cIt shall be to me a name, and a joy, and\na praise, and a gladness before all the nations of the earth that shall\nhear of all the good things which I will do to them.\u201d \u201cBehold, the days\ncome, saith the Lord, that I will perform the good word that I have\nspoken to the house of Israel and to the house of Juda.\u201d When the Jews\nbecome Catholic Christians, Jerusalem shall \u201cbe called by a new name,\nwhich the mouth of the Lord shall name,\u201d and the Jews shall become \u201ca\ncrown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of\nGod.\u201d Then they shall no more be called forsaken, and their land shall\nbe no more called desolate; \u201cbut thou shalt be called 'my pleasure in\nher,\u2019 and thy land inhabited.\u201d Then shall the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass\nbe celebrated by Jewish hands in the Holy City where Jesus Christ first\noffered up the ever-living Sacrifice, and then shall the Jews eat the\nheavenly Bread and drink the sacred Blood which have so long been given\nto us Gentiles and rejected by them. \u201cThe Lord has sworn by his right\nhand and by the arm of his strength: Surely I will no longer give thy\ncorn to be meat for thy enemies, and the sons of the stranger shall not\ndrink thy wine for which thou hast labored; for they that gather it\nshall eat it, and they that have brought it together shall drink it in\nmy holy courts.\u201d Wonderful are these words; full are they of a meaning\nat once mystical and clear. The Jews, in God\u2019s own time, will become\nCatholic Christians, and, united with the whole body of the faithful on\nearth, they shall eat the divine Bread which is the life of the world.\nThe abandonment of their traditional faith will continue to lead them\nmore and more to the abandonment of all their distinctive national\npeculiarities and practices, and they will become merged in the great\nbody of the children of men. Then such of them as God may choose will\nhave given to them the grace of faith, and as individuals, and not as a\nnation, will they become Catholic Christians. We know that in the vision\nof St. John the Apostle he saw one hundred and forty-four thousand of\nthe children of Israel, of every tribe twelve thousand, who had come out\nof great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the\nblood of the Lamb. We are certain, then, that before the end of the\nworld at least this number of Jews will have been converted. It may be\nthat the number represents only those who belonged to the church while\nit was yet mainly composed of Jews. If so, let us hope that those of the\nonce chosen people who yet remain may be found, or at least many of\nthem, in that great multitude which no man can number, of all nations,\nand tribes, and peoples, and tongues, which St. John also saw, standing\nbefore the throne and in the sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes\nand palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice \u201cSalvation to our God\nwho sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n              LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.\n                            FROM THE FRENCH.\n                              CONCLUSION.\n\n\nJULY 30.\n\nThis morning I was in a sort of mortal sadness. I opened the \u201cBook of\nthose who suffer\u201d at these words: \u201cYou have willed, O my God! to\nseparate me from her to whom I have so often said that I should wish to\ndie the same day as she. This desire has not been granted, and thou hast\ncondemned me to survive.\n\n\u201c_She_ is at rest; and never have I more fully realized than in this my\nexceeding grief the meaning of that beautiful Christian word,\n_quies_\u2014rest.\u201d\n\nI said this with all my heart, and I have comprehended.... O Kate! I\nloved you too much for this world. Bless me from on high, and visit me\nwith Picciola. It seems to me that the divine Goodness must permit that.\n\n\nAUGUST 2.\n\n\u201cThe present war is the natural and necessary consequence of the great\napostasy of the sixteenth century and the principles of the Revolution!\u201d\nO my God! if this might be a holy war! But I fear; for France is so\nguilty! Prayers are being offered in all the dioceses; the emperor has\nput himself at the head of the army. May God save us! We needed a St.\nLouis, if we were to deserve victory. Do you remember, Kate, how much we\nadmired these words of Bossuet? \u201cWar is often a salutary bath, in which\nnations bathe and are regenerated.\u201d Oh! how you must pray, all our kind\nfriends in heaven.\n\n\nAUGUST 4.\n\nAm\u00e9lie has bidden us adieu; she is a charming creature. Her mother will\nnot accompany her. She fears her own weakness; and she is a veritable\nSpartan.\n\nOn the 2d of August took place a first engagement at Saarbr\u00fcck; our\ntroops were victorious. May this success augur well! They say that there\nis a terrible effervescence in minds. Our Bretonnes are praying that\ntheir sons may soon return.\n\nArrival of our Parisians! Alix and Margaret have all the grace of the\ntwins; my godson is magnificent. I like to feel that we are together in\nthese troubled times. How I pity mothers!\n\n\nAUGUST 7.\n\nTerror, anguish, defeat\u2014these are the synonyms of this date. Two days\nago we were beaten at Wissembourg; yesterday at Forbach. We are waiting\nfor news. Our reverses are a chastisement; the French government is\nwithdrawing its troops from Rome. Is it, then, to secure success that\nFrance abandons the Pope? Oh! it is not France which acts thus; she is\ntoo profoundly Catholic for that; but she will be none the less certain\nto undergo the penalty for this cowardice. Kate, pray for France! The\nPrussians are upon our soil, and civil war is also feared.\n\n\nAUGUST 13.\n\nHorrible details are received of the battle of Reichshoffen. Marshal\nMacMahon behaved with admirable heroism. He would not quit the field of\nbattle after witnessing this odious butchery\u201440,000 against 150,000!\nLord, O Lord! have pity. There must have been some treason there. The\ncuirassiers and chasseurs of MacMahon sacrificed themselves to\nfacilitate the retreat. The newspapers make one weep. Kate, what is said\nin heaven?\n\nMy Guy is charmingly beautiful; and when he is twenty years old an\nenemy\u2019s cannon-ball will have the right to carry him off!\n\n\nAUGUST 21.\n\nDear Kate, I bless God for having placed you in the peace of eternity\nbefore these murderous struggles, in which your heart would so often\nhave been wounded! Ah! it seems to me that it is a great favor to be\ntaken from this earth before the calamities which are impending.\n\nA subscription has been set on foot, in order that all France shall\noffer a sword of honor to MacMahon. Marshal Leb\u0153uf, General-in-Chief, is\nreplaced by Marshal Bazaine; the army is falling back on Chalons. There\nwere brilliant affairs on the 14th, 15th, and 16th. But what agitation\nin the country! The republicans consider the moment favorably for their\ntriumph, and Ren\u00e9 declares that the Prussians of France are still more\nto be dreaded than the Prussians of Germany. Montaigne said: \u201cThere are\ntriumphant defeats which equal the finest victories.\u201d Our troops are\nsublime. Fresh levies are being made, companies of _francs-tireurs_ are\norganized; will France be saved? Catholic La Vend\u00e9e is rising _en\nmasse_.\n\n\nAUGUST 24.\n\nThe Prussians are at Saint-Dizier. It is said that in the partial\nengagements the losses are considerable on both sides. The enemy is\nbombarding Strasbourg. Read heart-rending details. _Povera Francia!_\nThey say that two sons of Count Bismarck are dead; it is the justice of\nGod passing by! Oh! when we think of so many families who are suffering\nfrom the disasters of invasion, who see their homes invaded and their\ndays in peril, how ardent are our prayers!\n\nThat which I dreaded is come upon us. Ren\u00e9 and his brothers are going! O\nmy God! guard them from danger. I love France too well to hinder Ren\u00e9\nfrom defending her. The fear of afflicting me held him back. God aid us\nand have at the English! as our Breton ancestors used to say. The\nEnglish of to-day are the Prussians.\n\nThey leave us, five brothers, all valiant and strong, courageous as\nlions. Ah! if they should not return. I believe in presentiments, and\nsomething tells me that all hope of happiness is at an end for me. \u201cGive\nall to God,\u201d a saintly priest wrote to me. _Fiat!_ Take all, my God, but\nleave me thy love!\n\nDo you remember, Kate, my mother\u2019s stories of the heroism of our\ngrandfather? Do you remember that Georgina whose name I received, who\nsaid to her brother, \u201cGo and fight without thinking of me. God and his\nangels will guard me; think of your country!\u201d\n\nCould I be less courageous than she? Pray for me, holy soul in heaven!\nWhat shall I do without him?\n\n\nAUGUST 26.\n\nLevies are being raised _en masse_. Men will not be wanting, but\nsoldiers cannot be made at a moment\u2019s notice, especially in our days. It\nis said that Bazaine is blockaded in Metz with 70,000 men, and that he\nhas before him 200,000 Prussians. MacMahon is going to his relief with\nan equal number of heroes. The French have burnt the camp at Chalons.\nWhat will be the issue of this frightful struggle? The ministry which\nhas caused all our misfortunes has resigned; a clear understanding is\nmost important, and time passes away in useless discussions. General\nTrochu, a Breton, is Governor of Paris.\n\nTo-day we shall be left alone....\n\n\nAUGUST 29.\n\nIt is over. Ren\u00e9 has taken with him all my heart, and I feel a strange\nsense of suffering. My mother has been sublime. O these adieux, these\nlast embraces! Who would have said that we should come to this?\n\nProtect them, ye holy angels! Bring them back to us soon with the return\nof peace! There are wounded everywhere; my mother has asked for ten, to\nwhom we shall attend ourselves. It is terrible to see these mutilations.\nO war! how I hate it.\n\nThe army of Prince Frederick Charles is marching upon Paris; there are\nno official tidings of our soldiers. Phalsbourg, Toul, Metz, Strasbourg\nare all undergoing the horrors of bombardment. Where shall we go? Prayer\nalone will save us. There is much patriotic eagerness in the\npopulations; the loan of 750,000,000 has been covered with astonishing\nrapidity. What will become of the capital? What chastisement will visit\nit for having erected a statue to Voltaire?\n\nA visit\u2014the Comtesse de G\u2014\u2014 and her two daughters, friends of Lucy. What\na difference between the two sisters! The younger calm, gentle, and\nplacid, like a beautiful lake, seraphic and tender; the elder ardent and\nenthusiastic to exaggeration, impassioned for the cause of good, peace,\nand right, but like a volcano.\n\nKate, tell me that you pray for us, and that God will have pity upon his\npeople!\n\n\nAUGUST 31.\n\nA letter from Ren\u00e9! Alas! his presence was so sweet to me. Gertrude and\nI do not quit the chapel, except for the wounded. Mary and Ellen,\nMarguerite and Alix, multiply their prayers. Arthur has made his mother\ngive him a Zouave\u2019s uniform; thus equipped, he drills the children at\nthe school. You should hear him say how he wants to join his father and\nfight with him. Our savage enemies commit revolting atrocities. How\ntruly are they the sons of the Teutons!\n\nBerthe\u2019s family is in Switzerland.\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 4.\n\nLord, save us; we perish!\n\nThe public journals speak in an ambiguous manner of triumphs with\nrespect to which a terrible silence had been observed in official\nquarters; a great battle was imminent.... The day is come, and its\nevents are brought to light. _Povera Francia!_ The emperor and 40,000\nFrench prisoners, MacMahon grievously wounded, and a capitulation\u2014it is\nhorrible! My God! hast thou abandoned France? The public consternation\ncannot be described. It was said yesterday that, owing to a crypt whose\nexistence was generally unknown, the women and children had been able to\nquit Strasbourg, so valiantly defended by General Uhrich. The enemy aims\nhis murderous projectiles especially at the cathedral\u2014that unequalled\nmarvel in stone. Horrible! horrible! It seems as if hell had vomited\ninnumerable legions of monsters upon France. There were 550,000 in this\nlast three days\u2019 battle. How will all this end? \u201cArise, O Lord! and\ndeliver thy people, for the time to show mercy is come!\u201d[52]\n\nFootnote 52:\n\n  Ps. ci.\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 6.\n\nThe republic is proclaimed. Paris is in a state of delirium. Did not\nJoseph de Maistre say: \u201cThe French Revolution has been satanic; if the\ncounter-revolution is not divine, it will be a nullity\u201d? Read the\n_Univers_ yesterday\u2014so Christian, so right-thinking. Louis Veuillot\ncalls Prussia the _Sin of Europe_. Will the republic save us? The enemy\nis at Soissons. We see now the result of twenty years of despotism....\n\u201cMacMahon is dead!\u201d said a workman on the boulevards with a journal in\nhis hand. At these words arose a general cry: \u201cHonor to MacMahon!\u201d This\nreport is contradicted, and Mme. la Mar\u00e9chale set out yesterday to join\nher husband. O this wound! What Frenchman would not give his life to\nheal it? No army left! Bazaine is still blockaded in Metz, bombarded by\nthe Prussians. MacMahon had done wonders, but was unable to effect his\njunction with Bazaine. He was thrown back by the enemy upon Sedan, and a\nbridge not having been destroyed, notwithstanding his orders, he was\nsurrounded by a network of the enemy; grievously wounded, he placed the\ncommand in the hands of General Wimpffen, who capitulated. MacMahon\nwould never have done this\u2014never! Without a miracle, France is lost. It\nseems as if one were suffering a bad dream in reading that, owing to our\nwoods, the enemy slaughter us without mercy, whilst our blows fall on\nemptiness, and that on the fatal day which annihilated our army our\nartillery was for a quarter of an hour playing upon a regiment of French\ncuirassiers.... The _Angelus_ is ringing. O Angelic Salutation! with\nwhat anguish Christian hearts yesterday repeated you, on this beginning\nof a new era of which no one can tell the form or the duration.\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 7.\n\nA line from Adrien to reassure us all. Alas! who does not tremble at\nthis hour? Kate, protect us! Some members of the Left have, themselves\nalone, made the republic and seized the reins of government. Can the\nenemies of God regenerate a people? \u201cThe Keeper of Israel neither\nslumbers nor sleeps.\u201d Napoleon I. (Louis Veuillot, the valiant heart,\ntells us) used to say that the general who dared speak of capitulation\nought to be shot; what, then, would be the deserts of him who\nsurrenders? Poor France, humiliated, vanquished, deprived of her noblest\nchildren!\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 8.\n\nOn this festival of your nativity, O Our Lady of Victories! succor us.\nNo courier from Paris, which must be invested. The _Garde Nationale_ is\nbeing organized; the scheme is to oppose the whole of France to these\nVandals of the nineteenth century\u2014barbarous hordes who seem to be\nimpelled by some irresistible force into the heart of our unhappy\ncountry. How French I feel myself in these days of sorrow! Dear Kate, is\nit true, as we believe, that all our saints of France, headed by St.\nRemi, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Joan of Arc, are prostrate at the feet\nof the Eternal to obtain the pardon which would save us?\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 11.\n\nIn the frightful catastrophe of Sedan our soldiers were in want of\nmunitions and had not eaten for four days.\n\nI send daily a long bulletin of news to my devoted Margaret. Has not\nMarcella also something to fear? Poor Italy! Poor France! We can but\nhave either a shameful peace or a pitiless war.... Laon is threatened\nwith the fate of Strasbourg. Alas! these poor cities, besieged and\nheroic. \u201cCountry of my brethren and of my friends, may the words of God\nfor thee be words of peace: 'May peace be within thy walls, and\nplenteousness within thy towers!\u2019 O my God! save thy servants who put\ntheir trust in thee!\u201d[53]\n\nFootnote 53:\n\n  Ps. cxxi.\n\nEvery man under arms, every woman at prayer! This decree makes me bless\nthe republic. And Ren\u00e9\u2014where is he?\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 13.\n\nLaon must have ceased to exist; the commander has had the citadel blown\nup. They say that Garibaldi, the insulter of Pius IX. and the king of\nvagabonds and bandits, is coming to succor France; is not this the depth\nof humiliation? \u201cHow long, O Lord! wilt thou delay to succor us? O God!\nbe thou our judge, and defend our cause against this pitiless nation;\ndeliver us from these men, who are full of injustice and deceit!\u201d\n\nThe enemy is six leagues from Paris. M. Thiers has set out for Vienna,\nSt. Petersburg, and London. The United States have offered their\nmediation. We are assured that the foreign powers desire peace, but what\nproofs do they give? Russia is preparing formidable armaments, doubtless\nfinding the present moment opportune for taking possession of\nConstantinople. The excommunicated king is adding to his crimes in\nannexing to his own the last remaining States of the church.\n\nWe are told that the republican world boasts greatly of the circular of\nJules Favre and the letter of Victor Hugo.\n\nI do not know from whence there comes to us a copy of a revelation\nannouncing that from the 20th to the 29th all will be over, and that\nFrance will be delivered by a stranger. O feast of St. Michael the\nArchangel! be to us a day of salvation. But, Lord, does France deserve\nit? Ah! she is no longer the eldest daughter of the church, since she\nconsents to the odious spoliation of Italy, and since every sort of\nhatred is let loose against religion. Do they not say that at Lyons the\nVisitandines have been driven from their convent? We deserve every\nmisfortune and disgrace. Louis Veuillot, calm in the midst of so many\nstorms, gave yesterday a beautiful article, in which he predicted the\nnear approach of the triumph of the church; and today, the splendid\nhistory of Judas Machabeus. Save us, O Lord! we who are thy people. \u201cGod\ngives to his church the flotsam of every wreck, as he gives her, sooner\nor later, the laurel of every triumph.\u201d\n\nIt is said that Paris will be destroyed. \u201cUnless the Lord keep the city,\nhe that keepeth it watcheth in vain!\u201d[54] Hope! hope! Prayer will save\nus!\n\nFootnote 54:\n\n  Ps. cxxvi.\n\nI knew yesterday that R\u00e9ne was alive. O Kate! pray for us.\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 17.\n\nO surprise! O joy!\u2014if I dared to say so.... Margaret here! Kind, dear,\nand perfect friend! she could not remain away from us during these\ntroubles. Lord William and Emmanuel have come with her. What an\nexquisite proof of affection! How we have wept together! O dear Kate,\ndear flower transplanted to heaven! your native soil, how much we have\nspoken of you. How Ren\u00e9 will be touched at hearing of this arrival! My\nmother and sisters give a festive welcome to my _belle Anglaise_, who is\nEnglish only in name, being as Catholic, as Irish, and as French as we\nare.\n\nCommunications are interrupted, or are on the point of being so. The\nline of Orleans is cut. The Paris _Journal_ is here, however, with\nfrightful accounts of the barbarity of the Prussians. Save us, my God;\nhave pity on those who are fighting _pro aris et focis_!\n\nMargaret has brought me a bit of the soil of Ireland, and some flowers\ngathered from our mother\u2019s grave.\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 19.\n\nWhat is happening to-day, twenty-four years after the Apparition of La\nSalette? We are melting away in prayers. My mother has obtained from the\nbishop the most liberal permissions for benedictions. Our good _cur\u00e9_ is\ndying ... of old age and grief. The love of their country is a robust\nplant among the Bretons.\n\nDear Kate, we speak of you with Margaret. I told her that I continue to\nwrite to you; she was touched at hearing it. How kind it is of her to\nhave quitted her home to share our anguish and our dangers! The province\nwill be invaded\u2014that is certain. No news of Ren\u00e9; but who does not feel\ncourageous at this time? Ah! assuredly, in face of the extent of our\ndisasters, selfish anxieties disappear, and the soul grows, in her\nprodigious faculty of suffering, to compassionate all the present\nmiseries, all the crushing misfortunes, all the deaths. How long, O\nLord! will thy hand be heavy upon us? O mysterious depths of the designs\nof God! O militant church! O venerated Pontiff, the purest glory of our\nage! O Rome, invaded like France! I have just read an admirable pastoral\nletter of Mgr. Freppel, the illustrious successor of Mgr. Angebault in\nthe see of Angers. He sees a reason for hope in this community of\nsorrows between the mother and the _eldest daughter_. O Pontiff!\u2014is not\nthis title become a bitter derision? The gates of hell shall not prevail\nagainst the church, and we are surely not far distant from her signal\ntriumph; but how many tears, it may be, and how many martyrdoms, before\nthat hour! Italy, France, Ireland\u2014the three countries of my heart, lands\nthat are mingled in one in my enthusiasm and love, daughters of God, and\nthe privileged ones of his heart\u2014you cannot perish; God will fight for\nyou, and we shall bless him for ever!\n\nKate, beloved sister, tell me that you hear me, that your soul touches\nmine. Be Ren\u00e9\u2019s guardian angel!\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 21.\n\nOur life is strange. Beneath all it has a wonderful serenity, a\nconfidence in God which defies everything; on the surface it is a sort\nof fever, passing from the wildest hope to the most complete\ndiscouragement. Gertrude has appointed us her _aides-de-camp_\u2014Margaret\nand myself. There is much to do around us. Our Bretonnes have need to be\nconsoled, and there are sick and dying. The good _abb\u00e9_ multiplies\nhimself with admirable self-forgetfulness; our pastor is dying, happy to\nbe called away at the present crisis.\n\nI have a letter from Ren\u00e9\u2014a kind, long, sweet letter, from which I\ncannot take away my eyes. He only speaks to me vaguely of the war, so as\nnot to increase my alarm. Every ring of the bell makes us start; the\ngallop of a horse makes us run to the windows. My mother never quits her\npsalter and rosary; Mistress Annah faithfully keeps her company when we\nare not there; Mary and Ellen, with the other dear young ones in the\nhouse, are our sunshine. The courageous Margaret talks politics with\nLucy, the _abb\u00e9_, and the doctor, organizes plans of defence, creates\nfortresses, and finally expels the enemy. Lord William was just now\nreading to us in the Paris _Journal_ of the 18th details of deep\ninterest relating to the affair of Sedan\u2014\u201cthe Waterloo of the Second\nEmpire, and the greatest disaster of modern times.\u201d\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 25.\n\nJules Favre has made an appeal to William and Bismarck. France is very\nlow. The result has been the affirmation of the exorbitant demands of\nthe conquerors. The struggle is to be pushed to extremities. Regiments\nare to be formed of National Guards. Here none are left but old men. No\nofficial news. It is said that the enemy has been repulsed at\nVersailles, that Nantes is burnt, that headquarters are at Meaux; they\nsaid yesterday at Rheims: \u201cO Clovis! why are you not there with your\nFranks?\u201d The Prussians are burning Rouen. When, then, will the terrible\nwork of these executioners of Heaven be ended? William wants Alsace and\nLorraine, Metz, Strasbourg, Toul, Verdun, and Mont Val\u00e9rien. Ah! we\nalso, we shall say with the Bishop of Orleans that which was said by\nLouisa of Prussia\u2014a magnanimous soul, to whom the life of her four sons\nwas less dear than the honor of her country; a believing and valiant\nwoman, who beheld so violent and devastating a storm pass over her\nkingdom that Prussia was on the point of being erased from the map of\nnations: \u201cI believe in God; I do not believe in force. Justice alone is\nstable. God prunes the spoiled tree. We shall see better times, if only\neach day find us better and more prepared.\u201d The son has not inherited\nthe sentiments of the mother. It is said that it was Prince Albert who\ncommanded the burning of Bazeilles; this fearful barbarity would suffice\nfor his reprobation in the memory of men. \u201cThe Hebrew people saw Deborah\nand Judith arise in the day of its affliction; Gaul, St. Genevi\u00e8ve; and\nFrance of the middle ages, Joan of Arc.\u201d[55] Who shall save modern\nFrance? Whose arm shall God raise up to avenge her? \u201cBut now thou hast\ncast us off, and put us to shame: and thou, O God! wilt not go out with\nour armies.... Arise, O Lord! Why sleepest thou?\u201d[56]\n\nFootnote 55:\n\n  Gabourd.\n\nFootnote 56:\n\n  Ps. xliii.\n\nRome is invaded by the republican troops; they leave the Pope the castle\nof Sant\u2019 Angelo and the Leonine city, with _magnificent_ assurances of\nsecurity. O the time of deliverance, the hour of salvation!\u2014soon,\ndoubtless, soon. The church cannot perish. Gentle Pontiff, Pius IX.,\nVicar of Christ and his representative, like him crucified in heart,\ngiven gall to drink, overwhelmed with insults, your powerless children\njoin their supplications to your own, and God will arise, mighty and\nterrible, to confound your enemies\u2014you who have loved justice and hated\niniquity!\n\nLetter from Ren\u00e9, hastily written in a cottage. Our Blessed Lady protect\nhis devotion! \u201cOur help is in the name of the Lord!\u201d O church of Jesus\nChrist! how happy are thy children in the midst of their distress. What\nineffable consolations in thy sacred prayers! I live in the Psalms, I\nnourish my soul with them; every feeling of the heart is there so\nmarvellously expressed, and in incomparable language.\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 27.\n\nLouis Veuillot, the intrepid defender of the Catholic faith, a few weeks\nago wrote as follows: \u201cGod will have pity on us. Justice will not exceed\nmercy. We shall not be scourged beyond the needs of our future\nwell-being; we shall find in the cup of chastisement a healthful\nbeverage. The love of their country raises hearts above vulgar\nvexations. They are willing to be ruined; they are willing to die. But\nthese abject and senseless things mingled with our tragedies, these\nintoxicating songs when the earth is being watered with generous blood,\nthese statesmen who ask for prayers and authorize blasphemy, these\nblasphemies beneath the falling thunderbolt, these assassins of the\npavement and these orators in the tribune\u2014all this revelation of the\nstupid crowd which will not be saved\u2014it is these things which keep souls\nunder the millstone, which suffocate and grind them down.\u201d How well this\ngreat mind describes the deepest sufferings of all that is still\nChristian in this nation of crusaders and martyrs! The admirable\ndemonstrations of the Bretons and Vend\u00e9ans console one for the\nirreligion of the greater number. Why has not all Europe risen to defend\nin the Pope the cause of outraged sovereignty? The sacrilege of Victor\nEmanuel has met with no resistance.\n\n\u201cBe to us, Lord, a place of defence against the enemy!\u201d We are on a\nvolcano\u2014the volcano of popular passions; if the hand of God does not\narrest them, what will become of us? Confidence! confidence! \u201cInfidel\nFrance is abased and humiliated, and is not yet willing to repent;\neucharistic France will pray, will arise, and increase in\ngreatness!\u201d[57]\n\nFootnote 57:\n\n  Louis Veuillot.\n\nO beloved soul gone hence before _me_, and who art _myself!_ offer to\nGod our prayers.\n\n\nOCTOBER 2.\n\nToul has surrendered, after a splendid resistance worthy of a better\nfate. The 29th\u2014the looked-for 29th, the feast of the glorious Protector\nof France\u2014has brought us another sorrow more: the capitulation of\nStrasbourg! O dear and beautiful cathedral, which I loved so well!\n\u201cThere is nothing left but ruins,\u201d writes one of Berthe\u2019s cousins. Why\ndoes the Lord delay to help us? Will not our other fortresses be also\nforced to give themselves up into the enemy\u2019s hands? What will become of\nFrance? William is at Versailles; he lay down, booted and spurred, in\nthe bed of the great king who so imperiously dictated laws to all\nEurope. Who will redeem us from all our humiliations?\n\nMargaret and Lord William have apprehensions which will only too soon,\nalas! be verified. La Vend\u00e9e is rising at the call of Cathelineau and of\nStofflet\u2014two illustrious names. Ah! who will merit for us that we shall\nbe saved, when the public papers lavish outrage and abuse against\neverything that is holiest in the world\u2014against the church of God, his\npriests, his pontiff, the glorious Pius IX.? Who shall restrain thine\narm, O Lord! when scarcely a voice is raised to recall to conquered\nFrance that thou art the Salvation of the nations?\n\n\nOCTOBER 7.\n\nThe gentle Bishop of Geneva used to say: \u201cAlas! we shall soon be in\neternity, and then shall we see of how small account were the affairs of\nthis world, and how little it mattered whether they were accomplished or\nnot.\u201d Adrien sends us long details. My soul is in anguish. O Kate! pray\nfor us. I went yesterday with Margaret to the cemetery; we stayed there\nlong. A splendid moonlight illumined the golden crosses surmounting the\nmarble columns beneath which our doves repose. A feeling of profound\npeace took possession of my soul in the midst of this striking\ncontrast\u2014the calm and tranquillity of this field of death with the\ntumult and agitation of actual life in our poor France.\n\n\nOCTOBER 8.\n\nThe journals give accounts, only too faithful in their details, of the\nbattle of Sedan, the catastrophe of Laon and of Strasbourg. It is\nhorrible\u2014this destruction, these savage attacks! Of how many valiant\ndefenders are we not deprived, while the enemy\u2019s forces are going to\nstrengthen the army now besieging Paris! William is at St. Germain; he\ndesires to be present at the bombardment of the brilliant capital which\ngave him so splendid a reception three years ago. To the shame of\nhumanity, Europe remains unmoved in presence of our misfortunes. America\nsends an insignificant number of volunteers. O divine Justice! wilt thou\nnot avenge us? Who shall tell the story of this sanguinary epic? Who\nshall recount this unheard-of intermingling of shameful cowardice and\nprodigies of courage, of base treason and sublime devotion, of reverses\nand successes equally impossible? Who shall tell posterity that the most\nloyal and generous of nations, the people which has been eager in its\nsuccors to every misfortune, has found no defender in the day of its\ncalamities? And who shall make known to France that her success is a\nconsequence of her repentance, that there is something greater than\nvictory, more decisive and more powerful than the most formidable\nengines of war\u2014the protection of Him who holds in his hands the\ndestinies of nations? _Deus, Deus, quid reliquisti nos?_\n\n\nOCTOBER 10.\n\nTwo melancholy, dark, and rainy days, such as always depress my soul.\nGaribaldi has arrived at Marseilles with a thousand volunteers\u2014doubtless\nthe scum of Italy. Mgr. de Saint-Brieuc summons all Bretons to the\ndefence of their country. \u201cNo, France will not die! This cry from the\nheart of forty millions will pierce heaven and awaken all the echoes of\nthe earth!\u201d Paris has provisions for two months; but after? Surely all\nFrance will rise, and, as soon as she feels herself strong enough, she\nwill meet these barbarians, to whom all has been successful hitherto!\nWhat bloodshed! What ruins! What opprobrium! Will not God raise up some\nhero from this soil which has given so much to the world? Anna Maria\nTaigi predicted that the Council would last eighteen months, that Pius\nIX. would die towards its close, and the gentle and venerated Pontiff\nwould see the dawn of a new time. Does not this mean that soon the\ntrials of the Papacy will cease? \u201cThe church cannot perish; but God has\nnot made to nations the same promises of immortality.\u201d\n\nO Kate and Mad, my two idols! I think of you. To-morrow we go to Auray,\nall together; the _abb\u00e9_ will say Mass for us there, if we can arrive\nbefore noon.\n\n\nOCTOBER 14.\n\nI have prayed much, thought much, suffered much, hoped much, loved much,\nduring these four days!\n\nA prediction, said to be from Blois, assures us of definitive success.\nAlas! we were in need of saints; this republic of lawyers makes me\nafraid. My mother quoted to us yesterday an old prophecy from the works\nof Hugues de Saint-Cher, Cardinal-Dominican of the thirteenth century:\n\u201cThere will be four sorts of persecutions in the church of God: the\nfirst, tyrants against the martyrs; the second, heretics against the\ndoctors; the third, lawyers against simple people; and, lastly,\nAntichrist against all.\u201d We are in the third. There is no _unity_; there\nis impotence, and therefore nothing succeeds.\n\nA terrible rumor which will only too soon be confirmed\u2014Orleans is\ninvaded. M. de Bismarck\u2019s plan is to ruin France in detail, in order\nthat it may for a long time be impossible to her to avenge herself. But\nvengeance belongs to God, and he will take it! The journals gave us so\nmuch hope! What a spectacle\u2014two nations slaughtering each other, and a\nland which God created so fair covered with blood and ruins! Send us, O\nLord! legions of angels; fight for the cause of civilization and right;\nsave France, and may there no longer be amongst us a single soul which\ndoes not by its worship glorify thee!\n\nThe news from Metz is reassuring in that direction\u2014Metz, which has been\nour ruin! The inhabitants are admirable in their patriotism, and engage\nto defend the city if Bazaine and the one hundred thousand men can make\nthemselves an opening. Without a miracle, however, can the aspect of\nevents undergo a change? Bitche continues to resist. O my France! must\nthou, like Ireland, also be crucified?\n\n_Evening._\u2014An enigmatic despatch, in _negro language_, announces that\nthe army of the Loire has been compelled to retire before superior\nforces, and that St. Quentin has repulsed fifteen thousand of the enemy.\nGaribaldi declares that fifteen thousand Italians will march at the\nfirst signal. The six thousand Pontifical Zouaves will form a splendid\nregiment, under the leadership of a hero, M. de Charette. Oh! how these\nwords rend my soul: _Garibaldi, Pontifical Zouaves_. What an assemblage!\nMay God pardon France! How will all this end? Phalsbourg holds out, and\nother towns; but to see the enemy always in imposing numbers, to know\nthat everywhere they make crushing requisitions, that each day brings\nfresh mourning, is a deadly sorrow! What part of our soil will remain\nunpolluted by the passage of these emissaries of death?\n\nOrleans is in the enemy\u2019s power\u2014Orleans, the key and the heart of\nFrance\u2014Orleans, the Queen of the Loire, the faithful city, the town\nsaved from Attila by St. Aignan, from the English by Joan of Arc! A\ngreat battle is imminent.\n\nOur venerated pastor suffers no more. This morning, at three o\u2019clock,\none of our farmers, who, with Mistress Annah, was sitting up with him,\ncame to let us know that he was sinking, and we reached him in time to\nreceive his last blessing. O Kate! draw us also. The words of the divine\nOffice for to-day are admirably suitable to our distress: \u201cI am the\nSalvation of my people, saith the Lord; in whatsoever affliction they\nshall be, I will hear them when they shall call upon me, and I will be\ntheir God for ever.\u201d \u201cIf I am in trouble, thou, O Lord! shalt preserve\nmy life; thou shalt stretch forth thy hand against the fury of mine\nenemies, and thy right hand shall save me!\u201d\n\n\nOCTOBER 20.\n\nO my God! if it were declared that these avenging hordes are to carry\nfire and sword through the whole of France, if our sanctuaries and our\nrelics protected us not, still would we hope in thee, whose love is\ngreater than our misdeeds, and we would bless thee for ever.\n\nNo news from Rheims.\n\n\nOCTOBER 22.\n\nTwenty thousand Prussians have invaded Chartres, the city of Mary,\nfamous for its pilgrimage and for its splendid memories. Will they not\ndefile its cathedral? Horror! The churches of Nancy are changed into\nstables. O my God! so many profanations, and still always triumph.\n\n\nOCTOBER 26.\n\nRead the circular of M. Jules Favre to the French diplomatic agents. O\nstatesman! your eyes, then, are not opened, and you perceive not that,\nchastised for our crimes, we cannot be saved but by the help of God.\n\nThey write to us from Orleans: it is lamentable! Poor, dear city! who\nshall restore it to us? O misguided France! what firm and Christian hand\nshall take thy helm and steer thee into port? At the beginning of this\ncentury, and up to the close of its first half, what noble characters,\nwhat ardent Catholics defended the cause of liberty! And now, alas! how\nthis oracle of the Holy Scriptures makes me fear: \u201cA kingdom is given\nover from one people to another, because of its injustice, violence, and\ncrimes.\u201d\n\nKate, what is said in heaven? O dearest sister, my other mother! protect\nRen\u00e9 and pray for France.\n\n\nOCTOBER 30.\n\nBazaine has surrendered; 120,000 troops, 20,000 wounded, cannon, flags,\nand Metz, the strongest of our citadels, the heroic city\u2014all is\nPrussian! It is, then, finished. It seemed as if all French hearts had\nthere their hope\u2014not the last, which can be only God. The circular of\nGambetta begins by a _sursum corda_: \u201cLift up your hearts! lift up your\nsouls!\u201d It is well, but _whither_? You say not, \u201cUp to God,\u201d nor do you\npronounce that saving name.\n\nAh! France has deserved this shame of being again vanquished, of seeing\nall her citadels fall one after another, until the day when, repentant\nand humbled, she will implore the divine aid. Sch\u00e9lestadt has also\ncapitulated.... Gertrude is ill and keeps her room. The blade has worn\nout the scabbard, the body has been broken down by the soul. O my God!\nwilt thou take from me also this elder sister\u2014this admirable saint, my\nmodel and consolation? \u201cWeep for France, dear sister,\u201d she said, \u201cnot\nfor me. I have given all to God; I do not fear. I offer for my country\nmy last sorrow\u2014that of not seeing Adrien once more....\u201d\n\nThis unexpected blow crushes me. Pray for us, Kate!\n\n\nNOVEMBER 1.\n\n\u201cHeaven is opening. O Jesus! have pity upon France.\u201d And thus she\ndied.... It is, then, true! Henceforth I must seek her in heaven with\nyou, dear Kate, and all our dear ones who have taken wing from hence.\n\nWhat an example she leaves us! Not a complaint: she owned to me that she\nhad long been suffering. What austerity of life! What renunciation of\nher own tastes! What love of poverty! \u201cShe was too near heaven to remain\nbelow,\u201d my mother says. Margaret is very unwell, because of so many\nemotions. O this life and this death; these adieux, this generosity of\nheart, these last lines traced for Adrien, for her brothers! A few\nminutes before her departure she said to me: \u201c_You will come soon._\u201d\n\nI scarcely know where I am; my soul is in a chaos of sorrows, but the\nlove of God prevails over all. I am writing this by her funeral couch.\nThree days ago she went out with us. She fatigued herself too\nunsparingly; she never shrank from trouble. Kate, welcome her and bless\nyour sister! Gain strength for me, and, if I must die without once more\nseeing Ren\u00e9, obtain that I may know how to say, _Fiat!_\n\nMourning in the family, mourning for the country\u2014for everything,\nmourning!\n\n\nNOVEMBER 7.\n\nI feel ill.... Anxiety is killing me. O Kate! O Gertrude! remember us on\nhigh. The day before her death Gertrude said: \u201cPrayers, prayers! Oh! the\n_L\u00e6tatus_ of the angels must be so beautiful.... I hear it!...\u201d Mary and\nEllen at her request sang her an Irish melody on the love of one\u2019s\ncountry. \u201cGeorgina, to pray, to suffer\u2014this is everything!\u201d\n\nWhat words! And how well I understood her at that moment, when all was\npassing away from this valiant and strong soul who had fought the good\nfight! Poor Adrien!\n\nTroops have been levied _en masse_, from twenty to forty years of age.\nThe Lamentations of Jeremias apply to us in our calamities! Who shall\nnumber the widows and the orphans? May God protect us! The sadnesses of\nthe present life complete my detachment from this world by discovering\nto me its nothingness. The details respecting Metz throw me into\nstupefaction. My mother has heroically borne the great trial; she\nherself closed the eyes, so bright, so beautiful, of her eldest\ndaughter. She insists that Lord William shall take Margaret away,\nbecause the enemy is certain to come upon us also. \u201cWell, then,\u201d says my\nfriend, \u201cwe will defend you!\u201d\n\n\nNOVEMBER 10.\n\nThe _Univers_ is here, edited at Nantes. Yesterday it contained a\nmagnificent page, vibrating with Catholic faith, addressed by Louis\nVeuillot to General Trochu. The illustrious convert of Rome has, then,\nquitted the country of his heart and is present at the agony of that\nParis whose corruptions he has so energetically denounced. I have been\nglad (if one may use the word) to find, in this believing journal, an\nexpression of the indignation of my soul against those who have dared to\ngive to that gouty fetich, Garibaldi, the rank of a French general at\nthe moment when Piedmont was consummating its sacrilegious attacks\nagainst Pius IX. There is fighting at Orleans. O Joan of Arc!\n\nKate dearest, we all suffer. What has become of all our hopes? No, they\nare not destroyed; they had heaven for their object.\n\n\nNOVEMBER 13.\n\nI dare not make a complete narrative of our disasters, and I know not\nhow to speak of anything else. \u201cRevolutionary France is no longer the\nFrance of Christ. She has kept the name, but repudiated the heart. O\nFrance, France! nation of so many centuries, of such men, and of so much\nglory, crouched beneath the boot of Flourens, before the sword of the\nPrussian.\u201d These are the words of Louis Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon\nby rioters, the dregs of the Revolution. Bismarck is said to have\nuttered the pride-inflated words that \u201cthere is nothing but Prussia in\nthe world: there is no more Europe!\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us,\u201d cries Louis Veuillot\u2014\u201clet us examine the inexorable logic\nwhich rolls us in the mire, and see by what hands it has been possible\nto lay prostrate a nation which is proud of having no more thought of\nGod! O mockery! O derision! And this is France!\u201d\n\nWe know nothing of the absent.... Uncertainty\u2014the cross of crosses!\n\n\nNOVEMBER 16.\n\nOrleans is delivered. Cathelineau, the morning of his solemn entry, went\nwith his Vend\u00e9ans to hear a Mass of thanksgiving. _In hoc Signo vinces._\nMarseilles and Lyons, the Queen of the Mediterranean and the city of\nNotre Dame de Fourvi\u00e8res, are agitated by violent intestine struggles.\n_Pazienza! Speranza!_ Oh! what need has my soul of these two sources of\nstrength to bear up beneath this hour of unutterable anguish! Ren\u00e9 and\nAdrien are wounded! \u201cRemember, my daughter, the sacrifice is short and\nthe crown eternal,\u201d my poor mother says to me, wounded to the heart like\nmyself. Where are they? The date is torn off the letter, which has been\nbrought us by an unfortunate soldier with an amputated limb, who has\nfaced a thousand dangers to come and die in his own part of the country.\nI wish to go\u2014but whither? Kate, inspire me!\n\n\nNOVEMBER 22.\n\nMy anxiety has brought on fever.... Yesterday was a great day in the\nreligious history of France. Mgr. de la Tour d\u2019Auvergne convoked the\nwhole church of France to a solemn act of faith. At one and the same\nhour, in all the sanctuaries of this nation, bent beneath the strokes of\nthe divine Justice, Mass was said to obtain pardon. O Lord! if only so\nmany prayers and tears might obtain peace. \u201cAll for God and our\ncountry!\u201d cried Cathelineau, before that altar[58] where joys so pure\nwere granted me. \u201cLet official France make her act of penitence!\u201d says\nthe Univers. Alas! it does not appear that this thought occurs to her. O\nthese dates, these memories, my whole life in my remembrance! I examined\nmyself this morning and had to acknowledge my own weakness. My God! wilt\nthou require of me this sacrifice? I would desire to submit, but my\nheart!... Dear and sweet friend, chosen for me by the best-beloved and\nmost devoted of sisters, return, return! O fatal war! I comprehend the\nwords of Rousseau: \u201cThe man who has lived longest is not he who can\nreckon up the greatest number of years, but he who has felt most what is\nlife.\u201d\n\nFootnote 58:\n\n  In the cathedral of Orleans.\n\nThere are presentiments.... My soul is crushed. Ah! these hours, these\ndays which are passing by\u2014what are they for France?\n\nThe Duke of Aosta, son of Victor Emanuel, is named King of Spain by the\nCortes. Into what hands is Europe yet to fall? The diadem of Charles V.\nand of St. Ferdinand in the family of the excommunicated King of Italy;\nthese two countries of noble memories thus fallen, and France defended\nby Garibaldi; the insulter of sanctity, the blasphemer of Jesus Christ,\nmade a French general! O blindness, O impiety of a government which\npretends to be a regenerator! And this, too, in the age in which we\nlive, in the century of Pius IX. and of the Immaculate Conception!...\nDeluges of rain for weeks past. Our unfortunate youth of France\ndecimated by misery and cold!\n\nWrote to Marcella and Lizzy\u2014two lovely, beloved, and poetic souls.[59]\n\nFootnote 59:\n\n  A few hours after tracing these lines Georgina learnt of the death of\n  Ren\u00e9. Of the five brothers, two had given their lives for France.\n  Adrien and Gertrude rejoined each other in heaven.\n\n\nNOVEMBER 26.\n\nThe Lord gave him to me; the Lord hath taken him away! Thou hast willed\nit, my God; thou hast taken back this life which was so dear to me. I\nadore thy will!\n\n\nNOVEMBER 29.\n\nIs this _dying life_ deserving of a single regret? And yet I weep! My\nGod! thou pardonest these tears\u2014thou who didst weep over us. Oh! if I\nhad at least had his last look.\n\nIt is a week ago this evening since I knew of my misfortune. O my God!\nthat unusual stir, those sinister noises, and the entrance of Raoul,\nEdouard, and Paul. Dead\u2014both dead! I would see that dear face once\nagain, to try and restore its warmth by my kisses!\n\n\nDECEMBER 1.\n\nKate, I can write no more.... A _widow_! Can you comprehend this word\nand the desolation which freezes my heart? All my soul was devoted to\nhim, placed in him. _Miserere mei, Deus!_ Friend so dear, so loving, so\nheroic, so kind, obtain for me that I may follow you to the home where\nseparation is no more. O you who stood on Calvary, Our Blessed Lady!\npray for us. Have pity upon my distress!\n\nHe is dead! The heart which loved me has ceased to beat! And if only\nFrance were saved, and my mourning might win her salvation!\n\nAnd still I must live, move about, spend myself in attendance on the\nsick, when I feel as if the heavy stone which hides him from me were\nweighing down my soul. O the destruction wrought by death! Thus one\nsingle year has taken all from me!\n\nPrayed for two hours yesterday by this newly-closed tomb. O Lord! I\nspoke to him, I understood him, I comprehended that thou requirest holy\nvictims to disarm thy justice.\n\nO France! which I loved so much.\n\n\nDECEMBER 25.\n\nMargaret leaves us suddenly. Her father-in-law is dying. God be praised\nfor having left her with us during these days of trouble!\n\nI am still weak in the inferior part of my soul, feeling every hour an\nincrease of bitterness and depression. \u201cYou will come soon!\u201d This\nfarewell of Gertrude\u2019s resounds continually in my ears. Nevertheless, if\nthe pain of a long life should be in store for me, if her words were\nsymbolic only, if I must grow old, I pray the Author of all good to\npermit that the unending mourning of my heart may overflow in tenderness\ntowards all who suffer, that I may wipe away or comfort tears\u2014I, who\nhenceforth can only live in tears.\n\nChristmas, feast of gladness, of the birth of Jesus, and of love; the\nanniversary of Edith\u2019s death!\n\n\nJANUARY 1, 1871.\n\nSpent this day in the church and cemetery. O Ren\u00e9! how I hear you still.\nI seek you now in heaven. Pray for France, and also for me, who cannot\naccustom myself to widowhood.\n\nO ye almost infinite delights enjoyed in the intimacy of that noble\nheart! can I think upon you and not die?\n\nDear Ren\u00e9, dear Kate, it is before God that I weep; it is on these pages\nconcealed from all that I write my regrets. Does God permit this, or is\nit cowardice?\n\n\nJANUARY 4.\n\nEdouard has this morning put Ren\u00e9\u2019s pocket-book into my hands. My name\nis on every page. Observed these words, which I have read a hundred\ntimes over: \u201cIf I die, comfort her, ye good angels who guided me to\nher!\u201d... Oh! it is more than I can bear\u2014emotion and regrets so deep.\n\n\nJANUARY 6.\n\n_He is at rest._ Eternal felicity of rest in God, thou art become his\ninheritance. I loved him so much, and, alas! I could not secure his\nhappiness! Just now I opened my book of _Hours_ at this Psalm: \u201c_Cantate\nDomino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit._\u201d I seemed to obtain a\nglance into heaven, and this friend, so ardently and faithfully loved,\nwas smiling upon me.... Rapid flashes of light, after which the darkness\nthickens and the loneliness grows more oppressive!\n\n\nJANUARY 13.\n\nMay God console the mothers, the widows, and the orphans!\n\nIf I had time to think of self in this chaos of nameless events, I\nshould feel myself unfortunate beyond all expression. O Lord! the\nhappiness of loving thee, of possessing thee in heaven, is well worth\nsome years of Calvary; and although mine appears to me at times so\ndifficult to climb, thou knowest that it is no more for myself that I\nweep, but that the sufferings of Ren\u00e9\u2019s country alone fill my heart. My\npoor France, so glorious whilst she still served thee, wilt thou efface\nher for ever from the book of nations, or wilt thou restore her power?\n_Fiat voluntas tua!_ Turn us to thee, O Christ! who didst die to save\nthe world, and, for the sake of so many hearts that turn to thee,\nshorten our woes!\n\n\nJANUARY 18.\n\nHeard for the first time the complete account of _his death_.... My\nbrothers are on the point of setting out again; they are of a race in\nwhich self-devotion is hereditary.\n\nO Ren\u00e9! how proud I am of you\u2014dead on the field of honor, after\nreceiving your God that morning; and dying in defence of France! Ah! I\nwould fain be a Sister of Charity, to have a right to receive the last\nsigh of our courageous defenders.\n\nOften had you said to me: \u201cIt seems to me that I should have strength to\nlove God even to suffering martyrdom!\u201d And the hour came when it would\nhave been permitted you to remain quietly at home; but your country was\nin mourning, and you went forth, a soldier for right, a soldier of God!\nAh! then I felt indeed something which broke within me....\n\nDo you, on high, remember her who loved you better than herself? Do you\ncall to mind those delightful days when heavenly love shed a ray from on\nhigh upon our love? Do you remember our conversations, in which the\nthought of eternity was always present? Ah! we both knew well that our\nhappiness was not of this world.\n\nYesterday I dressed the wounds of an unhappy victim of this war, which\nposterity will call inexplicable. What a horrible wound! The man was a\nVend\u00e9an and a Catholic. He saw tears in my eyes, and thanked me with a\nhearty and na\u00efve simplicity. He regrets his wife, whom he wants to see.\nPoor woman!\u2014or rather, happy woman; for she will see him!\n\n\nJANUARY 25.\n\nA letter from Karl, addressed to Ren\u00e9. O my God!\n\nThe enemy is approaching; France is agonizing. Ren\u00e9, Kate, Mad, pray for\nus!\n\n\nFEBRUARY 2.\n\n_Miserere nostri, Domine!_\n\nI return to these pages on a day of cruel disappointment. Paris has\ncapitulated! The Prussians occupy the forts; the army has been made\nprisoners of war. There is an armistice of twenty-two days. There were\nelections on the 8th for a constituency. How many sorrowful events have\ntaken place!\u2014the bombardment of Paris, the defeat of Chanzy at Mans, the\ncivil discords.... One must despair, were it not that God overrules all,\nand that if he punishes he is ready to pardon. The question is whether\nFrance is to be or not to be!\n\nEdouard writes. He hopes that the Prussians will not advance so far as\nto the sea. Margaret and Marcella\u2014what do they think at this time, at\nthis Gethsemani of France?\n\n\u201cO my God! I am as thou wert, falling prostrate from weakness, when\nanother had to carry thy cross!\u201d[60]\n\nFootnote 60:\n\n  The Abb\u00e9 Perreyve.\n\n    Si vous pouviez comprendre et le peu qu\u2019est la vie,\n    Et de quelle douceur cette morte est suivie![61]\n\nFootnote 61:\n\n  \u201cCould you but know how small a thing is life, and also by what\n  sweetness death is followed!\u201d\n\n\nFEBRUARY 12.\n\nPrayer and charity fill up our time. Alas! there is still room for\nregrets. Everything revives them; to-day it is a passage from Montaigne:\n\u201cWe were seeking one another, and our names were intermingled before we\nhad made acquaintance. It was a festival when I saw him for the first\ntime; we found each other all at once so bound together, so united, so\nwell-known, so obliged, that nothing was so dear to each of us as the\nother. And when I ask myself whence comes this joy, this ease, this\nrepose that I feel when I see him, it is because it is _he_ and because\nit is _I_; this is all I can say.\u201d\n\nO Ren\u00e9! it was thus that we loved, and thus our love will be eternal.\n\n\nFEBRUARY 18.\n\nThe fatherland of our soul is God! Trial is not sent only as an\nexpiation to purify us, but also to detach us from earth and raise us\nnear to God. \u201c_Jubilate Domino, omnis terra; servite Domino in\nl\u00e6titia!_\u201d O my soul! do thou serve the Lord with gladness. Lift the\nveil; behind your troubles and sorrows God is there, who counts them\nall, and whose love will change them into an unknown weight of glory!\n_Beati qui lugent!_ Heaven! heaven!\n\nI was thinking this evening of the motto of Valentine of Milan: _Plus ne\nm\u2019est rien, Rien ne m\u2019est plus[62]_. Is this sufficiently Christian?\nFrom this world\u2019s point of view, from the frivolities of life and of all\nthat charms the senses, oh! nothing is anything to me. But one\u2019s\ncountry, the church, the poor, one\u2019s family!\n\nFootnote 62:\n\n  More is naught to me; naught is aught to me more.\n\nO Jesus, who seest my tears! remember that thou hast said: \u201cAll that you\nshall ask the Father in my name, he will give you.\u201d May thy adorable\nwill be done! He who believes, hopes, and loves\u2014has he the right to\ncomplain? Can the soul whom thou dost protect call herself abandoned?\nWill the heart that is rich in thy love feel despoiled and desolate?\nDraw me to loftier heights, O Christ, my King!\n\n\nFEBRUARY 21.\n\nBelfort has capitulated! _Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem._ Must\nwe say with Dante: _Lasciate ogni speranza_? How empty and desolate\nearth appears to me! My God, show thyself; let thy power shine forth in\nour behalf! I will hope in thee against all hope. \u201cEvery soul is the\nvicar of Jesus Christ, to labor, by the sacrifice of himself, at the\nredemption of humanity. In the plan of this great work each one has a\nplace marked out from eternity, which he is free to accept or to\nrefuse.\u201d Ren\u00e9, Kate, Gertrude, you all understood this! O my God! have\npity upon France. I offer myself as a holocaust to thee. I accept every\nsacrifice; I give myself up; take with me all who have in like manner\ndevoted themselves: let not France undergo the fate of Ireland; let her\nnot be crushed by Protestantism, but leave her her faith and love.\n\n\nMARCH 1.\n\nPeace is declared, but at what a price!\u2014five milliards, Alsace, and\nMetz; the occupation of Champagne until the payment of the indemnity,\nthe entry into Paris of thirty thousand men on this very day. O the\nAlsatians! To think that henceforth they belong to the Vandals who have\nruined their territory, made a desert everywhere, brought mourning into\nevery home\u2014what infinite grief! No! the Prussian will not be their\nmaster; the heart of Alsace is too French; the yoke of the enemy may\nweigh down bodies but not souls. We have here a friend of Berthe\u2019s, a\nyoung wife and mother, who ever since this morning has been in the\nchapel, weeping in despair. Poor Alsace! Terrible alternative\u2014the\nmother-country sacrificing her more unfortunate sons to purchase the\nothers!... Where is Joan of Arc? Where are even the women of Carthage!\nLord, save us!\n\n\nMADAME DE T\u2014\u2014 TO LADY MARGARET.\n\nMARCH 20, 1871.\n\nGod be with us!\n\nDear Lady Margaret, our so dear, beautiful, and perfect Georgina has\ndeparted from us for ever!\n\nI cannot leave to any one else the sorrow of acquainting you with this\nfresh bereavement.... Shall I have strength for it? I feel as if my\nheart were enclosed in the tomb where my children rest.\n\nA pernicious fever has carried from us this most lovable creature, who\nhas been amongst us like an apparition from heaven. She is now reunited\nto him whom she so loved and mourned, and she who had \u201c_unlearnt\nhappiness_\u201d is happy now! This thought is necessary to sustain those who\nremain. You know what she was to me\u2014the most loving, devoted, and\npiously amiable of daughters; you know what she was to all\u2014an adviser, a\ncomforter, and a light. And all this in a few hours has vanished from\nus. Who shall console us for the loss of this angelic child, the very\nsight of whom was a consolation?\n\nDear friend, she thought of you; she murmured your name in her last\nprayer. God, the church, France, Ireland, and all those who loved her,\nby turns were on her lips; the voluntary victim of charity, she accepted\ndeath with gladness. You who were her sister, kind Lady Margaret, would\nthat you had been with us at that time which was at once both sweet and\ncruel! Ah! tears are not permitted to me; the place of angels is in\nheaven.\n\nDo not think of returning to us until peace is definitely established.\nAlas! only a few days since we were forming a project to go and take you\nby surprise. Henceforth I quit Brittany no more\u2014my _Campo Santo_, as my\nbeloved daughter called it.\n\nOh! how she must pray for our sorrows on high.\n\nOn the morning of the last day she twice repeated to me these beautiful\nwords of the P\u00e8re Lacordaire: \u201cHowever hard may be the separations of\nthis world, there always remains to us Him who is its author, who has\ngiven and who removes us, who never fails, in whom we shall all be one\nday reunited by the faith and charity which he has given us.\u201d\n\nAnd a few minutes before breathing the last sigh she said: \u201cMother, I\nasked that I might die for France; it was a sacrifice, because of\nleaving you. Now all regret has disappeared from my heart; I am going to\nsee Mad, Gertrude, Kate, Ren\u00e9\u2014and God!\u201d\n\nMay she call me soon also!\n\nDear and kind friend, I would comfort you, but I am powerless. Let us\nlove and pray.\n\nMy remembrances to Lord William; kisses to Emmanuel, the treasure whom\nshe so much loved, and to yourself, the expression of the maternal\naffection of my desolate heart.\n\nCOMTESSE DE T\u2014\u2014.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nMadame de T\u2014\u2014 survived this last affliction only a few months, and the\n_Campo Santo_ received yet another tomb. May these delineations of love\nso pure and Christian, and of resignation so sublime, benefit at least\nsome souls! This is the editor\u2019s sole aim.\n\nThe premature end of Lady Margaret has unfortunately only too soon\nfacilitated the sorrowful task of the friend who has been desirous of\nrevealing to loving hearts the private life of her dear Georgina, this\npoetic flower of Ireland, transplanted to the soil of this our France,\nwhich became the second country of her heart, and which she loved even\nto death.\n\n\n\n\n                   PROSE AND POETRY OF ANCIENT MUSIC.\n\n\n    The man that hath no music in himself,\n    Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds\n    Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:\n    The motions of his spirit are dull as night,\n    And his affections dark as Erebus.\n    Let no such man be trusted.\n\n    _\u2014Merchant of Venice._\n\nMusic, in its most general sense, is the art of producing melodious\nsounds, and, from its power over the passions, it is called the\nsentimental art. In the mythology of Greece it was cultivated chiefly by\nthe Muses, from whom the term _music_ is derived; but, although dear to\nall of them, it was presided over by Euterpe, who is always represented\nwith a flute in her hand. The great divinity of song and instrumental\nmusic, however, was Apollo, who is mentioned in the _Iliad_ as\ndelighting the immortal gods with the sweetness of his notes; for he was\nthe inventor of the lyre and leader of the Pierian nine, whence he is\ncalled sometimes _Cithar\u0153dus_ and sometimes _Musagetes_, in both which\ncharacters very fine statues of him have come down to us from antiquity.\nThe worship of the Muses began early in Greece, and the favorite resort\nof these divinities of intellectual pleasure was the flowery border of\nthe rills that murmured down the sides of Mount Parnassus, while their\nchaste grove and sacred fountain of Castalia was on that part of the\nParnassan range called Helicon. Here their statues were seen and\ndescribed by Pausanias, and afterwards removed by Constantine to his new\ncapital on the Bosporus.\n\nPagan authors ascribed the origin of music to fanciful occurrences, or,\nat best, to chance and natural operations. Thus, according to some, it\nwas a gift to man of this one or that of their national divinities; but,\naccording to others, the babble of running waters, the warbling notes of\nbirds, mountains that echoed, winds that sighed through the forest trees\nand\n\n    Fill the shade with a religious awe,\u2014\n\nin a word, the general song of nature inspired Apollo and the Muses, who\nwere no more than shepherds of Arcadia, to please the world with music;\nfor\n\n\n                The birds instructed man,\n    And taught him songs before his art began;\n    And while soft evening gales blew o\u2019er the plains,\n    And shook the sounding reeds, they taught the swains;\n    And thus the pipe was framed and tuneful reed.\n\n    \u2014_Lucretius._\n\nBut Christian writers believe that Adam, the first man, being endowed by\nthe Creator with every sort of knowledge, excelled in music as well as\nin the other arts and sciences. With his fall this knowledge was\nweakened, while in his descendants many things were lost and all things\nbecame obscured. That music has in some way a heavenly origin all are\nagreed\u2014even the Hindoos, who say that its effects are produced in us by\nrecalling to memory the airs of Paradise, which we heard in our state of\npre-existence; even the Greeks, whose fables are founded on the\ncorruption of primeval traditions, and whose invocation to music is:\n\n    O art divine! exalted blessing!\n    Each celestial charm expressing!\n    Kindest gift the gods bestow!\n    Sweetest good that mortals know!\n\nBut the writer in the English or, perhaps, in any other language who has\nmost poetically stated the case of music, and given us a Christian view\nof it, is Newman, in the last of his Oxford University sermons. \u201cCan it\nbe,\u201d he asks, \u201cthat those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen\nemotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful\nimpressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is\nunsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends, in itself? It is\nnot so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere;\nthey are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created\nsound; they are echoes from our Home; they are the voice of angels, or\nthe _Magnificat_ of saints, or the living laws of divine Governance, or\nthe divine Attributes; something are they besides themselves which we\ncannot compass, which we cannot utter, though mortal man\u2014and he,\nperhaps, not otherwise distinguished above his fellows\u2014has the gift of\neliciting them.\u201d\n\nThe ancients urged in favor of music three principal benefits to\nmankind: its effects in softening the manners of men, thereby promoting\ncivilization and raising a people out of the barbarous and savage state;\nits effects in exciting or repressing the passions; and its effects as a\nmedicinal power to cure diseases. Thus Polybius ascribes to the\ncultivation of this art the refinement of the inhabitants of Arcadia,\nand to the absence of such a discipline the roughness which\ncharacterized the citizens of Cyn\u00e6th\u00e6; thus Homer places a musician near\nthe person of Clytemnestra as a guard upon her chastity, and, until he\nwas away, \u00c6gistus, who then wronged her, had no power over her\naffections. The subduing influence of music was again tried with success\nmany ages after by the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay, who used to play\nupon guitars and flutes to attract the melody-loving Indians from their\nforest haunts towards the village communities which they had established\non the banks of the Parana.[63] Lycurgus regulated the music of Sparta,\nand his laws were set to measure by the celebrated musician Terpander;\nwhile Plato not only attributed an instructive virtue to music, but\nmaintained that a people\u2019s music could not be interfered with without\naltering their form of government. This civilizing influence of music is\nbeautifully illustrated by the old legend of the Greeks, that when the\nworkmen toiled on the walls of Thebes, Amphion played so sweetly on a\nlyre borrowed from Mercury that the stones did move of themselves. This,\nof course, is an allegory, to signify that by his musical talents,\npoetical numbers, and the wisdom of his counsel Amphion prevailed with a\nrude people to submit to law, live in society, and raise a defence\nagainst their neighbors.\n\nFootnote 63:\n\n  After religion there is certainly no greater means of civilization\n  than commerce; and commerce in the middle ages began with fairs, at\n  which merchants employed the seductions of minstrelsy and music to\n  draw numbers together, and thus be able to display and sell their\n  goods.\n\nSince two things greatly contribute to the effects of music, its powers\nof imitation and of association, the ancients gave it a large measure of\ninfluence over the passions. Thus Plutarch relates that Terpander\nappeased a violent sedition among the Laced\u00e6monians by the aid of his\nlyre, and that Empedocles prevented a murder by the soothing sound of\nhis flute; and the painter Theon, having brought one of his works, which\nrepresented a soldier attacking an enemy, to be exhibited on the public\nsquare, would allow the veil to be withdrawn only after his attendant\nmusicians had wrought up with military airs the crowds that gathered\nbefore it. Hence Plato wrote that a warlike air inspires courage,\nbecause it imitates the sounds and accents of a brave man, and that a\ncalm air produces tranquillity in the soul on the same principle; or, as\nBurke says, \u201cThe passions may be considerably operated upon, without\npresenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose,\nof which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful\neffects of instrumental music\u201d; for it counterfeits by sound some\nquality or state of the mind. Thus, rage is loud, anger harsh, but love\nand pity are gentle; consequently, loud and clangorous music stirs up\nthe stronger passions, while a smooth measure imitates the gentler\nemotions of the mind. The wonderful influence of martial music on the\nardor of soldiers in battle has been remarked by many writers on\nmilitary affairs, and opera-goers must confess the bad tendency of\nsensuous music. Shakspere knew it well when he wrote of the fellow\n\n    Who capers nimbly in a lady\u2019s chamber\n    To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.\n\nThe effects of music on the heads and hearts of men were so strongly\nperceived by Plato that he banished from his model republic the Lydian\nand Ionian modes, because they excited the lower instincts, but retained\nthe severe Doric and Phrygian measures on account of their manliness and\ndecency; and some of our best English poets have recorded their\ntestimony to these same effects. We subjoin a few examples, taken almost\nat random:\n\n    And ever against eating cares.\n    Lap me in soft Lydian airs.\n\n    \u2014_Milton._\n\n    Music alone with sudden charms can bind\n    The wand\u2019ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.\n\n    \u2014_Congreve._\n\n    Chiron with pleasing harp Achilles tamed,\n    And his rough manners with soft music framed.\n\n    \u2014_King._\n\n    Timotheus to his breathing flute and sounding lyre\n    Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.\n\n    \u2014_Dryden._\n\n    Now wild with fierce desire,\n    My breast is all on fire!\n    In soften\u2019d raptures now I die!\n    Can empty sound such joys impart?\n    Can music thus transport the heart\n    With melting ecstasy?\n\n    \u2014_Cunningham._\n\n    Music! the greatest good that mortals know,\n    And all of heav\u2019n we have below.\n    Music can noble hints impart,\n    Engender fury, kindle love,\n    With unsuspected eloquence can move,\n    And manage all the man with secret art.\n\n    \u2014_Addison._\n\n    When Music, heavenly maid, was young,\n    While yet in early Greece she sung,\n    The Passions oft, to hear her spell,\n    Thronged around her magic cell,\n\n    Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,\n    Possessed beyond the Muse\u2019s painting:\n    By turns they felt the glowing mind\n    Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.\n\n    \u2014_Collins._\n\n    Music the fiercest grief can charm,\n    And Fate\u2019s severest rage disarm;\n    Music can soften pain to ease,\n    And make despair and madness please;\n    Our joys below it can improve,\n    And antedate the bliss above.\n\n    \u2014_Pope._\n\nAssociation of ideas, which has so large a share in the operations of\nthe human mind, often contributes much to the effects of music; for, as\nShakspere says:\n\n    How many things by season seasoned are\n    To their right praise, and true perfection!\n\nThus, music that has been heard in an agreeable place or that was played\nby some one near and dear to us, or music that is connected with the\ntrials and triumphs of our native land, will awaken sentiments of love\nor melancholy, or sympathy or ardor, on the principle of associated\nideas. This is feelingly expressed in the 136th Psalm in the persons of\nthe captive Hebrews, in whom the sound of music which they had listened\nto in happy days would have awakened too keen an anguish.[64] In more\nmodern times we have had public illustrations of the same principle in\nthose simple melodies called _ranz des vaches_, which are such favorites\nwith the mountaineers of Switzerland, and are played upon a long trumpet\nor Alpine horn. The sound of these tunes, and the rude words set to\nthem, which are expressive of scenes of pastoral life\u2014the shingled\ncottage, the dashing waterfall, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of\nherds, and the tinkling cow-bells\u2014sometimes recalled so vividly to the\nnative in a foreign clime the memories of his own land as to produce a\ndisease called _nostalgia_, that often showed itself among the Swiss\nsoldiers in the Neapolitan service;[65] for\n\nFootnote 64:\n\n  This plaintive Psalm was turned into most musical English verse by\n  Donne, who makes it touchingly suggestive; and later, and better\n  still, by Aubrey de Vere in his beautiful drama, _Alexander the\n  Great_.\n\nFootnote 65:\n\n  A person who was present has feelingly described the deep effect\n  produced on some of our poor wounded soldiers who had been brought to\n  a church in Fredericksburg on their way North, after one of the\n  battles in the Wilderness, when some person sat down at the organ and\n  played \u201cHome, sweet Home.\u201d\n\n    There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;\n    And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased\n    With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave;\n    Some chord in unison with what we hear\n    Is touched within us, and the heart replies.\n\n    \u2014_Cowper._\n\nThe belief of the ancients that music was auxiliary to medicine is\nattested by a great number of writers. Chiron the Centaur, who educated\nAchilles, was careful to unite instructions in the healing art to those\nwhich he gave on music. Plutarch tells us that Thales of Crete delivered\nthe Spartans from a plague by the aid of his lyre; Athen\u00e6us quotes\nTheophrastus as authority that the Thebans cured epilepsy by the notes\nof a flute; Aulus Gellius says that music will rid a man of the gout;\nXenocrates employed music in the cure of maniacs; while the judicious\nGalen gravely speaks of playing the flute over the suffering parts of\nthe body; and the idea that music is the sovereign and only remedy for\nthe bite of the tarantula still lingers in Southern Italy. The Tyrrhenes\nalways hired a flute-player to perform while they flogged their slaves,\nto give them some relief under the lash; and there was usually an\narch-musician on board of the triremes\u2014in which the rowers\u2019 strength and\nendurance were more severely taxed than in smaller vessels\u2014not only to\nmark the time or cadence for each stroke of the oar, but principally to\ncheer the men by the sweetness of the melody; whence Quintilian takes\noccasion to remark that music is a gift of nature, to make us the more\npatiently to support labor and fatigue.[66]\n\nFootnote 66:\n\n  Blessed Peter Claver, Apostle of the Negroes, used to contrive that\n  the sufferers in the hospitals at Cartagena, in South America, should\n  be solaced with music; and for centuries it has been a custom at Santo\n  Spirito, in Rome, to have the magnificent organ which is set up in the\n  main ward play three times a week for the patients.\n\nAmong the nations of antiquity Egypt was long thought to be the mother\nof ancient civilization; and the Egyptians were well acquainted with\nmusic, for representations of musical instruments have been discovered\non some of their oldest monuments, such as obelisks and tombs. But they\nnever popularized music, because they thought that it had the effect of\nmaking youth effeminate; yet Strabo says that their children were\ninstructed in one, and only one, special kind of music, of which the\ngovernment approved. Like every other profession, that of musician was\nhereditary. Egyptian music was originally grave and in solemn accord\nwith the stiffness of the kindred arts, which were hampered by strict\nhieratic rules, and almost exclusively devoted to the service of\nreligion. When the country fell under the sway of the Greeks, music\nbecame of a gayer and less moral sort, being as much or more employed at\nbanquets and on other profane occasions as in the temples and beside the\nbier. The Ptolemies encouraged Greek music, and the musical contests\nintroduced into Egypt by this race of splendid princes were all of\nHellenic origin. Athen\u00e6us relates that at a grand Bacchic entertainment\ngiven by Ptolemy Philadelphus over six hundred musicians formed the\norchestra. Musical talent was hereditary in the Ptolemaic dynasty, and\nthe father of Cleopatra was surnamed _Auletes_, or the flute-player,\nfrom his excessive attachment to this instrument.\n\nWe have little knowledge of music as a science among the Hebrews, but\nthere is abundant proof of its practice. They had music on their\nfestival days, whether domestic, civil, or religious, and professional\nmusicians were attached to the royal court; but the art was\nsystematically studied in the schools of the prophets, and received its\nhighest application in the Temple, where it entered largely into divine\nworship.\n\nThe music of the Greeks has engaged the attention of many learned men,\nbut is so difficult a subject that no one understands it; and it is as\neasy to imagine how the Pyramids were raised as to conceive what Greek\nmusic was like.\n\nMusic enters largely into the mythology of Greece, and strange\nlegends\u2014some of which are pure myths, others the exaggeration of\nfacts\u2014have been made up about it. The Muses were extremely jealous of\ntheir musical talents, and whoever ventured to compete with them was\npunished. Thus the impudent Sirens or sea-nymphs lost their wings, and\nthe lovely daughters of King Pierus were changed into birds.[67] Two of\nApollo\u2019s contests are famous for their mournful ending. One was with\nMarsyas, a ranger of the woods, who, having found the flute which\nMinerva threw away because it distorted her handsome features, rashly\nchallenged the divine Apollo to a contest between this instrument and\nthe lyre, the condition of which was that the victor might do what he\nwished with the vanquished. The Muses decided in favor of their leader,\nand the miserable mortal was tied to a tree and flayed alive. A statue\nof Marsyas, bound and suffering, was generally placed by the Greeks, and\nafterwards by the Romans also, in the vestibule of their halls of\njustice, as a warning not to go into litigation hastily, and, above all,\nnot to dispute with the gods\u2014_i.e._, bring religion into court.[68]\n\nFootnote 67:\n\n  The adventure of Ulysses and the melodious Sirens was a subject early\n  seized upon by Christian art within the Discipline of the Secret to\n  convey an idea of the cross (Ulysses attached to the mast of his\n  vessel), the church (under the figure of a ship), and the seductions\n  of the world (of the flesh particularly) in this voyage of life. See\n  De Rossi's _Bulletin of Christian Arch\u00e6ology for 1863_, page 35, in\n  which a curious monument bearing on this strange _rapprochement_ is\n  described.\n\nFootnote 68:\n\n  One of these old statues having come to light in good condition while\n  the palace of Monte Citorio, designed by Pope Innocent XII. for the\n  seat of the higher tribunals of law at Rome, was being built, it was\n  appropriately placed on the landing at the head of the great stairway.\n  The Italian Deputies have doubtless removed it, as too significant of\n  _divine vengeance_.\n\nAnother triumph of Apollo was over Pan, a _dilettante_ of music and\ninventor of the reed-pipes, which he called _syrinx_ after the beautiful\nArcadian nymph whose adventure with her tuneful lover is well known from\nOvid. Midas, King of Phrygia, was chosen umpire, and, deciding in favor\nof Pan, was disgraced by having his ears changed into those of a donkey.\nPoor Midas contrived for a time to conceal his mishap by wearing day and\nnight a cap of a peculiar form;[69] but as no man is long a hero to his\nvalet, his body-servant, while trimming his hair one day, pushed up the\nbonnet a little and discovered the deformity. The secret so embarrassed\nhim that, fearing he might unwittingly divulge it, he dug a hole in the\nground beside a meandering brook and whispered therein: \u201cMidas has ass\u2019s\nears!\u201d He then filled it up and thought himself secure against himself;\nbut, alas! on the very spot a tell-tale reed grew up, which, as the\nbreezes rocked it to and fro, murmured the fatal secret, \u201cMidas has\nass\u2019s ears.\u201d While this fable may signify one of the ways by which the\nancients believed nature to have drawn man\u2019s attention to instrumental\nmusic\u2014for travellers tell us that in some parts of the world there are\nplants called vocal or singing reeds, which emit a sweet strain when\nmoved by the wind\u2014it may also be a myth to insinuate that music is a\nsort of language; and as such, says Metastasio, it has the advantage\nover poetry which a universal language would have over a particular one,\nfor music can touch all hearts in every age and country, but poetry\nspeaks only to the people of its own age and country. One of the Greek\nstories of sublimest significance, and which mysteriously enters into\nearly Christian art under the discipline of the secret, is the Orphic\nlegend. Orpheus, presented by Apollo with a lyre and instructed in its\nuse by the Muses, was able to tame with his sweet notes the wild beasts\nthat gathered around him, and to enchant even the trees and rocks of\nOlympus, which started from their places and followed the sounds that\ncharmed them:\n\n    Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage\n    But music for the time doth change his nature,\n\nFootnote 69:\n\n  We find in this story the origin of the _Phrygian cap_ which came to\n  be a symbol of slavery and degradation among the Romans, by whom the\n  Phrygians were considered a stupid people\u2014whose rulers even had\n  asinine qualities; and it never quite lost this character, but was\n  used in France up to the time of the Revolution by galley-prisoners,\n  and it is well known that an irruption of escaped convicts into Paris\n  during the Reign of Terror, carrying one of their caps at the end of a\n  pole and singing the _Marseillaise_, gave rise to the absurd custom of\n  the liberty-pole and cap now so common.\n\nas Shakspere remarks. That some animals are amenable to the influence of\nharmony is certain\u2014hence the success of the Hindoos with their deadly\ncobras; and some recent botanists are of opinion that the growth of\nflowers, and especially roses, is stimulated by music. But whatever\nslight foundation of fact there may be in the wonders of the\n_historical_ Orpheus, it fades into obscurity beside the noble\nconception of the _mythical_ Orpheus, whose history seems based on a\ntraditional knowledge of the happy state of man in Paradise when all\nthings of earth were subject to him:\n\n                          Till disproportioned Sin\n    Jarred against Nature\u2019s clime, and with harsh din\n    Broke the fair music that all creatures made\n    To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed\n    In perfect diapason, whilst they stood\n    In first obedience, and their state of good.\n\n    \u2014_Milton._\n\nMusic is mentioned with a degree of rapture in more than fifty places of\nthe _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The Laced\u00e6monians had a flute blazoned on\ntheir standards, and the military airs composed by Tyrt\u00e6us continued to\nbe played in the Spartan army until the end of the republic.\n\nThe Pythagoreans and Platonists not only supposed the soul of man to be\na substance very like a disembodied musical instrument of some sort, but\nbelieved the universe itself and all its parts to be formed on the\nprinciples of harmony; hence their not altogether imaginary music of the\nspheres which enters into their systems of philosophy:\n\n                        Look how the floor of heaven\n    Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:\n    _There\u2019s not the smallest orb which thou behold\u2019st\n    But in his motion like an angel sings,\n    Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins_:\n    Such harmony is in immortal souls;\n    But whilst this muddy vesture of decay\n    Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.\n\n    \u2014_Merchant of Venice._\n\nAnd this idea of a close connection between music and the heavenly\nbodies was still lingering in the minds of some philosophers as late as\nthe eleventh century of our era, when Psellus the younger, treating of\nmusic and astronomy, describes the former as symmetry and proportion\nitself, which reminds one of Hegel\u2019s profound and intelligible\ndefinition that \u201cmusic is architecture in time\u201d! Pythagoras especially\nis said to have regarded music as something celestial and profound, and\nto have had such an opinion of its powers over the human affections that\nhe ordered his disciples to be waked every morning, and lulled to sleep\nat night, by the dulcet notes of the lyre or the flute.[70]\n\nFootnote 70:\n\n  Dr. Burney, _History of Music_, vol. i. p. 436, has a note which bears\n  too quaintly on this part of the subject not to be reproduced. He\n  says: \u201cMaster Thomas Mace, author of a most delectable book called\n  _Musick\u2019s Monument_, would have been an excellent Pythagorean, for he\n  maintains that the mystery of the Trinity is perspicuously made plain\n  by the connection of the three harmonical concords 1, 3, 5; that music\n  and divinity are nearly allied; and that the contemplation of concord\n  and discord, of the nature of the octave and unison, will so\n  strengthen a man\u2019s faith 'that he shall never after degenerate into\n  that _gross subbeastiacal sin_ of Atheism.\u2019\u201d\n\nThe love and cultivation of music formed so much a part of the\ndiscipline of the illustrious men who sprang from the school of\nPythagoras that almost every one of them left behind him a treatise on\nthe subject. Plato, in the seventh book of his work on laws, says that\nchildren in a well-ordered commonwealth should be instructed for three\nyears in music, which reminds us of the commendable efforts made of late\nyears in Great Britain and the United States to make music a necessary\npart of popular education, in which connection the late Cardinal Wiseman\nwrote an interesting letter to the Catholic Poor-School Committee of\nLondon in 1849 about \u201cthe importance of introducing music more\neffectually into our system of education.\u201d\n\nIn the third book of Plato\u2019s _Republic_ music is treated of at\nconsiderable length with reference to education; \u201cfor whatever is\nconcerned with the art of music ought somehow to terminate with the love\nof the beautiful.\u201d But to seize the full meaning of this passage we must\nremember that, in the doctrine of the Academy, _the Good, the True, and\nthe Beautiful_ are reciprocal terms, and consequently that music should\nelevate to the contemplation of the great Godhead\u2014Goodness itself, Truth\nitself, Beauty itself.\n\nEloquence was thought by the ancients to be so intimately connected with\nmusic that the orators of Greece and Rome had a flute-player standing at\na proper distance behind them while they spoke, who kept up an undertone\nof musical sound, now swelling as the speaker rose with his theme, now\ngently falling when, as in panegyrics on the dead or in pleadings for\nmercy, he sought the chords of sorrow or sympathy in the human heart.\nMusical contests of flutes, trumpets, and other instruments were among\nthe attractions at the public games of Greece; and the profession of\nmusic was so highly honored, and often so remunerative, that many\nmusicians lived in splendor. There was Dorion the flute-player, who\nlived like a Sybarite and was a frequent guest at the table of King\nPhilip of Macedon; there was Ismenias of Thebes, who was sent on an\nembassy to Persia, and (like the late Duke of Brunswick) had a passion\nfor collecting jewels which his enormous wealth enabled him to gratify\nto the utmost. He once reproved a smart agent for not having paid as\nmuch for a pearl as it was worth, saying that it belittled him in the\njeweller\u2019s eyes not to have given, and the gem in his own eyes not to\nhave cost, its full value, and sent him back with the surplus money. The\nflute which he bought at Corinth for three talents (about $4,000) must\nhave been encrusted with precious stones. Am\u0153beus, the harper, received\nan Attic talent (about $1,000) for every appearance on the stage. But\nalthough proficients in music were highly honored and rewarded, the mere\nmakers of musical instruments enjoyed no greater esteem than did other\nartisans, and we know that the comic poets of the time often ridiculed\nthe celebrated orator Isocrates because his father had been able to give\nhim a liberal education with money made by manufacturing flutes. Not\nonly men but women also publicly exhibited their musical\naccomplishments; they belonged, however, mostly, if not exclusively, to\nthe class of _Hetairai_. Such was the famous Lamia, whose skill as a\nflute-player, hardly less than her personal charms, won the heart of\nKing Demetrius.\n\nPassing over to Italy, we can only mention the Sabines and Etruscans,\nwho early cultivated music, and from whom the Romans derived their\nknowledge of the art; the former giving them their profane, and the\nlatter their sacred, music. At a later period the genius of Greece\nbanished her ruder rivals and monopolized the art in Rome. It was a\ngeneral custom among people of rank, towards the end of the republic and\nunder the empire, to keep a private band of musicians; but in the\nearlier days of Rome music, being almost exclusively devoted to\nreligion, either in the temples or at burial rites, was under government\ncontrol; hence it was forbidden in the Twelve Tables to have more than\nten flute-players at funerals, and the _Salii_, who were priests of\nMars, were obliged, in their annual procession through the city, to\naccompany their stately tread by a sort of music made by striking their\nrods of gold on the metal shields which they carried in the hand. The\nmost important body of musicians at Rome, and the recognized officials\nof the art, were the _tibicines_, or pipers, who formed a college, and\non one occasion brought the religious affairs of the city to a\nstand-still by seceding in a body, after some real or fancied grievance,\nto the neighboring town of _Tibur_ (Tivoli).\n\nThe \u201cambubajarum collegia\u201d of Horace, and the Syrian musicians satirized\nby Juvenal, were held in contempt by the Romans as not delighting the\nsoul with exalted harmony, so much as exciting the instincts to sensual\ngratification.\n\n\n\n\n                     THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU.\n\n\n\u201cWe shall be happy to see you at Rathdangan Castle, sir,\u201d said Sir\nGeoffry Didcote. \u201cIf\u2014aw\u2014you come down on Saturday and\u2014aw\u2014stop till\nMonday, we shall\u2014aw\u2014be pleased\u201d; stroking his finely-shaven chin at each\n\u201caw.\u201d\n\nI accepted with a gratified alacrity. We had won the rubber trick by\ntrick, and, although the honors were against us, I had somehow or other\nmanaged to establish a long suit commencing with the king, and had ended\nby lugging in all the poor relations, including a miserable deuce of\ndiamonds, for which I contrived to secure as good a berth as that held\nby any member of its illustrious family. Flushed with victory, Sir\nGeoffry\u2019s hospitality spread forth its arms and enfolded me within its\nembrace. This _was_ a chance for a briefless barrister during the long\nvacation. Briefless! Why, I could not even command a nod from an\nattorney, much less that magic roll of paper whose cabalistic\ninscriptions are so readily deciphered by\u2014the pocket. The Hall of the\nFour Courts was a most delightful club-room, where all the news of the\nday was freely discussed, from Mr. Justice Keogh\u2019s latest witticism to\nthe new street-ballad by Doctor Huttle; from Baron Dowse\u2019s joke to\nSergeant Armstrong\u2019s wig. And as for Circuit, it was nothing more or\nless than a charming country excursion, where the wit and wine of the\nbar mess amply compensated for any little _ennui_ the hours occupied in\ndoing nothing during the day might have reasonably engendered. In vain I\nstrutted across \u201cThe Hall\u201d with a bagful of old French novels,\nendeavoring to appear as though absorbed in some pending case in which\nmy dormant talent would be strained to the utmost limits of its\ncapacity; in vain I caused myself to be called forth from the library as\noften as it pleased the porter to summon me for the sum of five\nshillings, with which I had retained his eminent services; in vain I\nbuttonholed country friends. But why continue? The word \u201cbriefless\u201d\nspeaks for itself; and were it not for sundry remittances from a maiden\naunt, my sole surviving relative, I should, _bon gr\u00e9 mal gr\u00e9_, have been\ncompelled to take the queen\u2019s shilling or to seek employment from the\nCorporation of Dublin in the capacity of a street scavenger.\n\nAs yet I had made but little way in society. I could not talk Wagner or\nfall foul of Tennyson. I had not brass enough for a ballad or talent for\na _scena_. Too nervous for anecdote, my modesty muffled me even in\nconversation. I was not a man\u2019s man, nor yet a _cavaliere servante_. I\ndid not hunt, fish, or shoot. In a word, I was somewhat of a dreary drug\nin Vanity Fair.\n\nWhy Sergeant Frizwig asked me to dinner I cannot determine; and why Sir\nGeoffry Didcote, after that excellent repast, took it into his head to\ninvite me to Rathdangan Castle is a mystery unto this present hour.\n\nThe vulgar question of ways and means stared me in the face and almost\nout of countenance as I walked homewards. Rathdangan was distant from\nDublin at least thirty-five miles, thirty of which could be traversed by\nrail. The cost of a conveyance from the station might or might not be a\n\u201ccrusher\u201d; and then the tips to the retainers! Luckily, my aunt had\nforwarded a remittance of five pounds upon that very morning, sixty\nshillings of which still remained firm and true; and as she invariably\nimpressed upon me, in addition to the necessity of obtaining briefs, the\nadvisability of mixing in the best society _only_, I naturally\ncalculated on a \u201ctenner\u201d upon receipt of the intelligence of my arrival\nat the Castle, inscribed upon the Didcote paper. My wardrobe was the\nnext consideration, and this was of the scantiest description. The\nevening suit might pass muster in candlelight, but once turn a jet of\ngas upon it, and the whole fabric tumbled to pieces. The grease of\ncountless dinners, the patches beneath the arms, the seams artfully\nblackened with ink, the frayed linings, would jointly and severally step\ninto the witness-box and turn evidence against me. My shirts were\nsingularly blue, and worn away from constant friction with the horny\npalms of the washerwoman, whilst the collars resembled those \u201csierras,\u201d\nor saw-edged mountains, which the observant traveller recognizes upon\nentering the dominions of his most Catholic Majesty Alfonso the Twelfth\nof Spain. My walking-suit was presentable enough, consisting as it did\nof Thomastown frieze, and my boots, although machine-made, possessed the\nredeeming influence of novelty.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll risk it,\u201d thought I. \u201cThe investment is a safe one, and the return\nwill amply repay the outlay.\u201d A new and unforeseen difficulty presented\nitself. The battered portmanteau which usually bore my \u201cfixins,\u201d whilst\nquite good enough for \u201cthe boots\u201d of provincial hotels, was utterly\nunfit to be handled by the genteel retainers at Rathdangan Castle; and\nas nothing bespeaks a certain _ton_ more than smart-looking luggage, I\nfound myself under the necessity of investing in a new valise.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s wan fit for Roosia, or Pinsylvania\u2014no less,\u201d exclaimed the\nproprietor of a description of open-air bazaar situated behind the Bank\nof Ireland, with whom I was in treaty for the desired article. \u201cIts\nlocks is as sthrong as Newgate, an\u2019 ye might dhrop it from Nelson\u2019s\npillar an\u2019 ye wudn\u2019t shake a nail in it.\u201d\n\nThis was a large black box strongly resembling a coffin, both in size\nand shape.\n\n\u201cMebbe it\u2019s a hair thrunk yer looking for? Here\u2019s wan. There\u2019s brass\nnails for ye! There\u2019s hair! Begorra, there\u2019s many a man in Merrion\nSquare that hasn\u2019t half as much.\u201d\n\nInforming him that I had no intention of emigrating just at that\nparticular moment, and that I required a small, solid leather\nportmanteau, Mr. Flynn proved himself equal to the emergency.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s solid enough, anyhow. Shure, ye\u2019d think it was Roman\ncimint\u2014sorra a less,\u201d he cried, as he administered several resounding\nwhacks to the article in question.\n\n\u201cWhat are you asking for this?\u201d I demanded.\n\n\u201cWhat am I axin\u2019 for it?\u201d Here he fixed me with his eye, as the Ancient\nMariner fixed the wedding-guest. \u201cIt\u2019s worth thirty shillin\u2019s.\u201d\n\n\u201cSay twenty,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t if ye wor to make me a lord-mayor.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot give more.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, here now: we\u2019ll shplit the differ\u2014say twinty-five.\u201d And he spat\nupon what he elegantly termed \u201cthe heel of his fist.\u201d\n\n\u201cTwenty,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cBegorra, yer a hard man! I suppose ye must have it.\u201d\n\nMy preparations being now completed, five o\u2019clock on the Saturday\nevening found me on the platform of the Amiens Street terminus.\n\n\u201cHillo, Dawkins!\u201d exclaimed Mr. Dudley Fribscombe, a brother barrister,\nwhose father (in the bacon trade) allowed him five hundred a year.\n\u201cGoing as special, eh? A hundred guineas\u2014you\u2019re coining, by Jove!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d I replied with assumed _nonchalance_, \u201cjust running down to\nRathdangan Castle to spend a few days with the Didcotes.\u201d I never felt\nbetter pleased in my life. This fellow was always sneering at the\npoverty of his briefless brothers, and as his people happened to reside\nnear Rathdangan, but were of course _un_visited, my red-hot shot told\nwith withering effect.\n\n\u201cOh! indeed,\u201d he muttered. \u201cWhat an awful swell! Going second?\u201d\n\n\u201cFirst,\u201d was my sententious reply.\n\n\u201cLet us travel together.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right.\u201d\n\nNow, my intention was to have taken a second-class ticket, but the tone\nof Fribscombe altered my mind. What a crisis in my destiny as I walked\nto the booking office! What a pivot in my fate!\n\nHad I travelled second\u2014but I will not anticipate.\n\n\u201cThe smoking-carriage is full. Let\u2019s get in here; _I_'ll tip the guard\nto let nobody else pass,\u201d said Fribscombe, carrying his idea into\nexecution.\n\nWe ensconced ourselves snugly in the pet corners, and made a great\ndisplay of luggage all over the compartment. My companion offered me a\ncigar, but I preferred my ebon meerschaum, bought of Hans Larsen himself\nat Lillehammer, and which I had colored with possibly as much delicate\nassiduity as Mr. Millais, R.A., bestows upon his delightful\nmasterpieces.\n\nWe were about to \u201cscratch,\u201d as the last bell had rung, when the door was\nsuddenly unlocked, thrown open, and a bundle of rugs bristling with\numbrella-handles, a portmanteau, and a lady attired in the newest and\npresumably most correct thing in widow\u2019s weeds were flung violently into\nthe compartment. The whistle sounded, the door was banged to, and the\ntrain glided out of the station ere we could make any move in the\ndirection of a change of seats.\n\n\u201cWhat an infernal sell!\u201d muttered Fribscombe.\n\n\u201cToo bad!\u201d I growled.\n\n\u201cThat guard is a 'do.\u2019 Half a crown thrown into the Liffy!\u201d\n\n\u201cWould she stand it, Fribscombe?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot she. If the dear departed smoked, it would remind her too forcibly\nof him; and if he didn\u2019t smoke, she\u2019d scream and call the guard.\u201d\n\nIn the meantime the object of our solicitude had shaken out her\ndraperies and snugly wrapped herself in a wolf-skin rug, the head and\nglass eyes of which reposed in her lap like the sporran of a Highlander.\nHer figure appeared to very little advantage in the heavy folds of her\nribbed-silk, crape-laden cloak; nevertheless, it betrayed a youthful\ngrace and symmetry. She kept her veil down, and from the posture she\nassumed\u2014her head pressed back against the cushion\u2014it became pretty\nevident that, if she were not _en route_ to dreamland, she wished to\nindulge in a profound meditation.\n\n\u201cThis train won\u2019t stop till we get to Skerries,\u201d said Fribscombe. \u201cI\nthink,\u201d he added _sotto voce_, \u201cthat she is asleep, and a whiff or two\nof real Havana will not awaken her.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s much better to ask her consent, and I\u2019ll do it,\u201d I whispered.\n\nShe sat directly opposite to me, facing the engine. I leaned a little\nforward.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, madam; but may I ask if you have any objection to\nour smoking? If you have the slightest feeling on the subject, I beg to\nassure you that it will be no deprivation to us to wait until we reach\nSkerries.\u201d\n\nShe raised her veil.\n\n\u201cI have no objection whatever,\u201d she said in a low, sympathetic murmur.\n\u201cI like the perfume of tobacco.\u201d And, as if smitten by some sorrowful\nremembrance, she sighed and sank back, but did not lower her veil.\n\nI mumbled some incoherent expression of thanks, scarcely knowing what I\nsaid; for my whole soul was focussed in my eyes as I gazed into one of\nthe loveliest faces that I had ever beheld.\n\n\u201cYou are not availing yourself of my permission, sir,\u201d she observed,\nalmost laughingly.\n\n\u201c'Pon my conscience! I forgot all about it,\u201d was my reply.\n\nWoman-like she felt the compliment, and woman-like she was grateful for\nit; she knew it to be genuine.\n\nSomehow or other we drifted into conversation. There are some women who\ncan trot a man\u2019s ideas out for him, walk them gently up and down,\ncanter, and, lastly, gallop them. Any little defects are concealed by\nthe excellent hand which is over him; and were he to come to auction at\nthat particular moment, he would be knocked down to the very highest\nbidder, be he ever so modest\u2014namely, himself. This young girl\u2014for she\ncould scarcely have passed her teens\u2014possessed this marvellous gift,\nand, as she deftly passed from subject to subject, I found myself,\nusually so dull, so reticent, so uninformed, discussing topic after\ntopic\u2014travel, music, the drama, literature, anything, everything\u2014with a\nfeverish facility, and offering decided opinions upon subjects even to\napproach which would have ordinarily been a matter of no little\nenterprise, doubt, and difficulty.\n\nSo deeply had I become absorbed that when Fribscombe, whose existence I\nhad totally forgotten, suddenly awakening from a cosey slumber, shouted\nin a very excited tone: \u201cI say, Dawkins, jump out, man! This is your\nstation. We\u2019re moving off,\u201d I could scarcely realize the fact of its\nproximity, and that two hours had rolled by, compressed into so many\nminutes.\n\nMy first thought was to journey onwards with my fair _vis-\u00e0-vis_\u2014I cared\nnot whither; my second, that Fribscombe would laugh me to death at the\n\u201cHall.\u201d With a sense of sorrow\u2014I might almost say of agony\u2014in my heart\nat the idea of parting from her, I seized upon my portmanteau, and just\nsucceeded in alighting without accident as the train moved rapidly away.\n\nI stood upon the platform like a person just aroused from a deep\nslumber. I was purposeless. The tide had receded, and the bleak\nbarrenness of my shore life confronted me. The fair enchantress whose\nwand had conjured up a new order of being within me had departed.\n\n\u201cYe\u2019ll have for to come inside the station, sir. I\u2019m goin\u2019 for to lock\nthe doore,\u201d observed a porter, as he significantly pointed in the\ndirection of the exit.\n\n\u201cCan I get a car over to Rathdangan Castle?\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a wan, sir. Billy Heffernan dhrew two gintlemin over there that\ncome be this thrain.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill he return here?\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a fear av him. Ketch him lavin\u2019 a house where there\u2019s such\nlashins as at the Castle! Ow! ow! sez the fox.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow am I to get across?\u201d I asked in some trepidation.\n\n\u201cShure, it\u2019s only a nice little taste av a walk\u2014nothin\u2019 less.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow far is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, now, you might _coax_ it into four mile, but, be the powers!\nit\u2019ll fight hard for five.\u201d\n\nI could not refrain from laughing at this peculiar form of expression,\nalthough there was anything but mirth in my present position. To be late\nfor dinner would be a high crime and misdemeanor, and nothing short of\n_l\u00e8se majest\u00e9_, even were I to accept the porter\u2019s _ultimatum_ and walk.\nI could scarcely reach the Castle in anything like time.\n\n\u201cDid they expect you, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cTroth, thin, they might have sint a yoke for ye. They always does for\nthe quollity.\u201d\n\nThis was not complimentary, but, like many a speech of a similar nature,\nit contained a great deal of truth in it. Could Sir Geoffry have\nforgotten all about his invitation? It had been given hurriedly as the\nwhist-table was breaking up. He had had his share of wine, if revoking\ntwice might be taken as an index. Yes, the following morning had erased\nme from the tablets of his memory. What an ass to come all this way to\nbe instructed by a common fellow in a corduroy suit. Served me right! I\nought to have known better.\n\n\u201cWhat time does the next train go up to Dublin, my man?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cWhat time?\u201d he ejaculated.\n\n\u201cYes, yes, what time?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn forty minits, if she\u2019s not late; but she\u2019s shure to be in time if\n_I\u2019m_ not here, bad cess to her!\u201d\n\nI sat down in the cheerless waiting-room, disgusted with Sir Geoffry\nDidcote, disgusted with myself, boiling with anger, and writhing with\nmortification, till the recollection of my fair travelling companion\ndescended like oil upon the troubled waters of my mind, and the desire\nto discover who she might be became overwhelming. Fool that I was not to\nhave gained even a solitary clue! She might be travelling to Belfast _en\nroute_ for Scotland, or she might have alighted at the next station. The\nlast thought induced me to question the porter.\n\n\u201cDid you see a handsome lady in weeds in the train that I travelled by?\u201d\nI asked.\n\n\u201cIs it a widdy woman ye mane?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cYoung?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014very.\u201d\n\n\u201cPurty?\u201d\n\n\u201cBeautiful!\u201d I exclaimed.\n\nHere he winked facetiously. \u201cI seen her. Me an\u2019 her is acquainted.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho is she?\u201d I eagerly asked.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s the widdy av a dacent, sober man be the name av O\u2019Hoolahan, that\ndied av the horrors av dhrink.\u201d\n\n\u201cPoor thing!\u201d I muttered half-aloud.\n\n\u201cPoor? Begorra, it\u2019s him that left her warm an\u2019 snug, wud three av the\nelegantest childer.\u201d\n\n\u201cThree children!\u201d I interposed, somewhat disconcerted. The name\nO\u2019Hoolahan was bad enough, but three little O\u2019Hoolahans!\n\n\u201cShe left this parcel wud me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen?\u201d\n\n\u201cA few minits ago, whin she got out.\u201d\n\n\u201cGot out? Where!\u201d\n\n\u201cOut av the third class, foreninst the doore there.\u201d\n\nPshaw! We had been talking of the wrong woman, and somehow I felt\nintensely pleased to think that my fair _incognita_ was _not_ the relict\nof the defunct O\u2019Hoolahan and the mother of three little O\u2019Hoolahans.\n\n\u201cWhisht!\u201d suddenly exclaimed my communicative friend. \u201cI hear a horse\u2019s\nfeet. He\u2019s tearin\u2019 along like murther\u2014a rale stepper\u201d; then turning to\nme: \u201cYer not forgotten. It\u2019s from Rathdangan. Yer sint for. It\u2019s\nHighflier, an\u2019 Jim Falvey\u2019s dhrivin\u2019 him.\u201d\n\nThese surmises proved to be correct.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve to beg your pardon, sir, for being late,\u201d said Falvey, touching\nhis hat; \u201cbut we cast a shoe at Ballinacor, and I done my best to pull\nup the lost time. Any luggage, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cThis portmanteau.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right, sir. Will you be pleased to jump in? You\u2019ll only get over at\nthe first dinner bell, if you do that same.\u201d\n\nHaving tipped the loquacious porter, I sprang into the tax-cart, and the\nnext minute Highflier was dashing at a hand gallop on the road to\nRathdangan.\n\nMr. Falvey informed me that there was the \u201choigth\u201d of company at the\nCastle; that every room was full; Lord Dundrum and Captain Buckdash had\narrived by the morning train, and the Bishop of Ballinahoo and his lady\nhad just entered the avenue as he was leaving it; the partridge were\nplenty, and a covey might be found within \u201ca few perch\u201d of the west\nwing; Master James (the Didcote heir) was expected with two of his\nbrother officers of the King\u2019s Dragoon Guards; Miss Patricia\u2019s\ncollar-bone was now as good as new, etc. We then talked horses, and he\nwas still hammering away at the pedigree of Highflier when we reached\nthe entrance gate. This was castellated and partly covered with ivy. A\nstout old lady unlocked the ponderous portals, and, as she admitted us,\ndropped a courtesy whilst she uttered the cheery words, \u201cYer welkim,\nsir.\u201d\n\nWhy do people keep gloomy-looking servants, dismal phantoms who reply to\nyour ring with a sigh, answer your query with a sob, and wait upon you\nwith a groan? Their depression is infectious, and although you may, with\na naturally lively constitution, baffle the disease for a time, sooner\nor later you are laid low by it.\n\nAccording to a time-honored maxim of the road, we kept a trot for the\navenue, and just as we whirled up to the grand entrance the sound of a\ngong reached us.\n\n\u201cJump out, sir. You\u2019ve only ten minutes; that\u2019s the second bell. There\u2019s\nsome of them in the drawing-room already,\u201d cried Falvey, as he flung my\nportmanteau to a solemn-looking domestic, who gazed at me as though he\nwere engaged in a deep mental calculation as to the length of my coffin\nand the exact quantity of linen necessary for the formation of a shroud.\nFollowing this grim apparition across a low-ceiled, wainscoted hall, in\nwhich a billiard-table of the present contrasted strangely with oaken\nfurniture of the sixteenth century, and up an old oak staircase\ndecorated with battered corselets, deeply-dented morions, halberds,\nmatchlocks, steel gloves, and broadswords, along a wainscoted passage as\ndark as Erebus, and up a spiral stone staircase the ascent of which took\nall the breath out of my body, I was finally deposited in a little stone\nchamber in one of the towers of the Castle.\n\n\u201cYour keys, please, sir,\u201d demanded my janitor.\n\n\u201cOh! never mind; thanks; I\u2019ll get out my things myself.\u201d I feared the\npenetrating gaze of this man. I shuddered as I thought of the frayed\nlinings and the inked seams.\n\n\u201cVery good, sir,\u201d uttered like a parting benediction; and with a bow\nwhich plainly said, \u201cWe shall never meet at this side of the grave\nagain,\u201d the dread apparition vanished. The old saying, \u201cMore haste, less\nspeed,\u201d never exemplified itself more unhappily than in my case. With\nthe thoughts of the last gong ringing through my brain, I vainly\nendeavored to open my portmanteau. My keys had got mixed up, and, as\nthey were nearly all of a size, I had to travel round the entire ring\nbefore I could manage to induce one to enter the keyhole. Then, when I\ncame to turn it, it got blocked and wouldn\u2019t move either backwards or\nforwards. I withdrew it, whistled it, probed it with my breast-pin,\ntugged and strained until my backbone ached again, but without effect.\nWhat was I to do? Break it open. But how? I possessed no implements.\nPerceiving a bronze figure poised upon one leg on the chimney-piece, I\nresolved upon utilizing the outstretched limb of the harlequin, and,\nhaving inserted it in the ring of the key, I finally, to my unspeakable\ndelight, succeeded in detaching the bolt.\n\nThrowing open the portmanteau, I plunged my hand into the corner where I\nhad deposited my brushes, but found that they must have shifted during\nthe journey. I tried the other corner, with similar success. I then\nprobed and groped in the lower compartment. Here was a pretty go. I must\nhave forgotten to pack them, although I could have sworn not only to\ntheir having been packed, but as to the precise spot in which I had\ndeposited them. Mechanically I drew forth my linen and laid it on the\nbed, in order to mount my studs.\n\nI was somewhat astonished to find that the breast was most elaborately\nadorned with floriated needlework.\n\nSome mistake of the laundress. I detest worked shirt-fronts, which are\nonly worn by cads and shoddy lords, so I picked out another. If number\none was embroidered, number two was done in fresco, and, in addition to\nthe vast _tumuli_ of birds, beasts, fishes, and flowers, an edging of\nlace played a prominent part. What could this mean? Surely I put up my\nown time-honored linen myself, and here were bosom decorations fit for a\nfop of the year 1815. Hastily turning out the contents of the\nportmanteau upon the floor, in order to realize my own property, what\nwere my sensations in discovering that this pile of snowy drapery did\nnot contain one single article of male apparel!\n\nThe truth flashed across me now in all its appalling reality: Heavens\nand earth! _I had taken the young widow\u2019s portmanteau for my own._\n\nI do not know what the exact sensation of fainting comes to, but this I\ndo know: that if I did not faint, I went within a pip of it. A cold\nperspiration burst out all over me, and I felt as if I was on board the\nDover and Calais boat and about to call the steward. How could I appear\nto the assembled company? With what ridicule would I be overwhelmed when\nthe true state of the case came to light! And then what would _she_\nthink? _She_ would write me down an ass\u2014a donkey unfit to be allowed to\nwander from a thistle-grove. Her key would open _my_ leathern\n\u201cconveniency,\u201d and the ghastly condition of my wardrobe would be laid\nbare, whilst I had profaned the sanctity of\u2014but it was too dreadful to\ncontemplate. How could I meet her? How could I look into that beautiful\nface again? How was I to recover my wandering wardrobe? My whole stock\nof clothes, save those I wore, were now in the possession of another,\nwhilst in exchange I had received a commodity of no value to me\nwhatever. On the contrary, my prize was worse than valueless\u2014it was\ncontraband.\n\nBang-ang-ang-ang-oong-ang! went the gong.\n\nLet it go! What were its sounds to me? If I were starving, I could not\ndescend in my present costume.\n\n\u201cSir Geoffry Didcote begs me to say, sir, that he waits on you in order\nto enter the dining-room,\u201d mournfully announced the dismal servitor.\n\n\u201cPlease say to Sir Geoffry that I don\u2019t feel quite well\u2014that I will go\ndown by and by.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank _you_, sir.\u201d This was uttered as if he wished to say: \u201cI am glad\nthat you are dying. _I_ knew how it would be\u2014you couldn\u2019t deceive _me_.\u201d\n\nThe man had scarcely time to deliver my message ere Sir Geoffry himself\npanted and puffed into my apartment.\n\n\u201cMy dear sir\u2014aw\u2014I hope\u2014aw\u2014that you are not\u2014aw\u2014ill. It would\u2014aw\u2014grieve me\nvery much\u201d\u2014here he availed himself of my mirror to adjust his spotless\nwhite choker\u2014\u201cif\u2014aw\u2014upon your\u2014aw\u2014first visit you\u2014aw\u2014became indisposed.\u201d\n\nHonesty, thought I, is the best policy, and it saves a lot of trouble;\nso I made a clean breast of it to the pompous baronet.\n\n\u201cHow very unfortunate\u2014aw\u2014for the lady! We will dispense\u2014aw\u2014with ceremony\nunder\u2014aw\u2014the peculiar, not to say delicate\u2014aw\u2014circumstances of the case,\nand Lady Didcote will\u2014aw\u2014receive you in your\u2014aw\u2014present attire. You can\ntelegraph\u2014aw\u2014for reinforcements, which\u2014aw\u2014will arrive on\u2014aw\u2014Monday\nmorning.\u201d\n\nI could not see the force of this. I might easily telegraph for\nreinforcements, but would they come? Secondly, as my visit was to\nterminate upon Monday, reinforcements were not necessary, unless they\ncould be brought up at once. I begged to be excused from attending\ntable; but this he would not listen to, and, as he informed me that I\nwas keeping dinner waiting, there was nothing for it but to descend with\nhim.\n\nI have, when a boy, been lugged into the school-room to suffer condign\npunishment; at a later period I have been forced into the presence of a\nyoung lady of whom I was deeply enamored; I have had to march up to the\npulpit in Trinity College dining-hall to repeat the long Latin grace\namid the muffled gibes of my peers; I have been placed in positions\nwhere my bashfulness has been ruthlessly tortured and my retiring\nmodesty tried by fire and water; but never did I experience the pangs of\nthe rack until the full blaze of that drawing-room burst upon my vision.\nThe apartment appeared to swim round, carrying with it the form of a\nhooked-nosed dowager in a turban, who screwed an eye-glass into the\ncorner of a wicked old eye, to have a good stare at the strange figure\nher husband had introduced into her _salon_.\n\nA confused murmur of many voices, in which \u201cWho is he?\u201d \u201cWhat is he?\u201d\n\u201cStole a portmanteau,\u201d \u201cHighway robber,\u201d \u201cPolice\u201d smote upon my ear,\nwhilst a general craning of necks in my direction announced the\ncuriosity which my appearance had naturally excited.\n\nI am aware that I bowed to something in blue drapery surmounted by a\nhead, that it placed the tips of its fingers on my arm, that I\nmechanically followed a crowd of people towards an aperture in the wall\nwhich proved to be a door, that I plunged downwards upon a chair, and\nthat then I came slowly to my senses. Having gulped down three glasses\nof sherry in rapid succession, I found myself seated beside a gaunt\nyoung lady of about five-and-thirty, so covered with pearl powder that\nshe was only partially visible to the naked eye. On my right hand sat a\nportly dowager, who viewed with some alarm my inroads upon the sherry,\nand she appeared so interested in my movements that I fully expected to\nreceive a temperance tract before the evening was half over. There were\nabout twenty at table, all stiff, solemn, and ceremonious.\n\n\u201cSo you have been robbed?\u201d snappishly remarked the young lady in blue.\n\n\u201cOh! dear, no; merely an exchange of portmanteaus.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow stupid!\u201d\n\nNow, whether this applied to me or to the fact, I was not in the\nposition to say, so I merely rejoined:\n\n\u201cVery stupid _of_ me and _for_ me.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow so?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I was the offending party.\u201d And I endeavored to make myself\nagreeable by narrating the circumstances exactly as they had occurred.\n\n\u201cAnd do you mean to say that you opened the lady\u2019s trunk, sir?\u201d demanded\nmy companion with great asperity.\n\n\u201cIn mistake, madam, I assure you.\u201d\n\nThe waspish lady waited until a portion of the ice which she was engaged\nin despatching had cleared two very shaky-looking teeth bound in gold.\n\n\u201cThere are some mistakes, sir, which no _gentleman_ should make.\u201d\n\nThis was quite enough for me. To endeavor to make terms with this foe\nwere worse than folly, explanation weakness, and concession cowardice.\nShe gained nothing, however, by her viciousness; whilst I remained upon\nthe field and prepared to bivouac, surrounded by sturdy sentinels in the\nshape of port, claret, and Madeira.\n\n\u201cThe\u2014aw\u2014guard insisted upon his taking the old lady\u2019s\u2014aw\u2014portmanteau.\u201d\nAnd Sir Geoffry was proceeding to retail his version of the story when\nLord Dundrum gaily exclaimed:\n\n\u201cOh! by Jove, we\u2019d better put the witness into the box. Let us\ncross-examine the lawyer.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith all my heart,\u201d said I; \u201cthe absurdity of the sensation will redeem\nitself by its novelty.\u201d\n\nMy story flowed joyously along, and peal upon peal of laughter greeted\nme as I described my sensations upon discovering the strange garments.\n\n\u201cSo\u2014aw\u2014the widow was\u2014aw\u2014young?\u201d\n\n\u201cAbout eighteen, Sir Geoffry.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd pretty?\u201d added his lordship.\n\nI devoutly kissed my second finger and thumb, and flung them in the\ndirection of the ceiling.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll lay five to two he never hears of his portmanteau,\u201d lisped Captain\nBuckdash.\n\n\u201cShall I be at liberty to hunt it up?\u201d said Lord Dundrum.\n\n\u201cCertainly. Are you on?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn tens?\u201d asked his lordship.\n\n\u201cPonies, if you but limit the period to one week.\u201d\n\n\u201cDone, Buckdash! I\u2019ll book it.\u201d And the peer, producing a pocket-book,\nentered the bet, the terms of which he read aloud, and which the gallant\ncaptain pronounced eminently satisfactory.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid, my lord, that you\u2019ll lose your money,\u201d I observed to Lord\nDundrum as we ascended to the drawing-room.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll give you the same bet, and that I\u2019ll get your portmanteau, without\nany interference of _yours_, in less than a week\u2014say five days.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know the lady?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou suspect who she is?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have no more idea of who she is, where she came from, or where she is\ngoing to, than the man in the moon. Will you evince your sincerity by\nbetting now?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe fact is, my lord, I cannot afford to bet.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite right,\u201d slapping me on the shoulder. \u201cNever do. It\u2019s a doosid\nbad, pleasant habit.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd might I venture to ask how you purpose proceeding towards winning\nyour money?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you. I have just ordered round a trap. I\u2019ll drive to\nBallynamuckle Station and telegraph along the whole line. If she\u2019s local\nor a county swell, we\u2019ll have her name and address to-night. If, on the\ncontrary, she is not known along the line, she will have gone on to\nBelfast. I\u2019ll set the police to work there, and put advertisements in\nall the papers on Monday morning. If Tuesday tells me nothing, I\u2019ll put\nthe wires in motion north of Belfast, and on Wednesday we\u2019ll have a\ntouch at Scotland. I feel certain, however, that we\u2019ll find her this\nside of Newry.\u201d And his lordship retired for the purpose of equipping\nhimself for the road.\n\nThis bet was a lucky chance for me. Not that I cared much whether my\nwardrobe ever turned up again or not, but I longed to discover the\nidentity of my fair acquaintance. I would at least enjoy the\nsatisfaction of learning her name, and gain some knowledge of her\nsurroundings, and then\u2014pshaw! bow over my restored baggage and utter\n_Vale, Vale, Vale_ to my three-hour dream.\n\nIn the billiard-room the menkind were assembled for pool. By a series of\nghastly flukes I managed to clear the table and divided every pool.\nCaptain Buckdash muttered something in reference to Dawson Lane, and one\nyoung fellow, whose lives were sacrificed to my ruthless cue with\nstartling rapidity, offered to back me against some formidable player in\nthe Guards, laying the odds. For the second time in this eventful day\ndid I feel myself fit for the front rank. Lord Dundrum lounged into the\nroom about eleven o\u2019clock. He indicated by a look that he wished to\nspeak to me, and, under cover of \u201csplitting a bottle,\u201d exclaimed in a\nlow tone:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all right.\u201d\n\nMy heart gave a bound.\n\n\u201cThe portmanteau is found.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt Nobberstown, the next station but one. She evidently discovered your\nmistake; for she tumbled it out. It\u2019s coming on.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd where is she?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! hang me if I know or care. My ponies are safe. _You_ can look her\nup.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she leave no message, no directions?\u201d I asked eagerly.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t know,\u201d said his lordship, as he chalked the top of his cue\npreparatory to joining in the pool.\n\nLord Dundrum was correct in saying that _I_ should take up the running\nnow. It was my business to make restitution and to deliver the white\nelephant left on my hands to its rightful owner. This task should be\nundertaken at once. I scarcely closed my eyes all night, thinking of the\n_modus operandi_; and when I came down to breakfast next morning I had\nresolved upon nothing more definite than a searching cross-examination\nof the _employ\u00e9s_ at Nobberstown Station.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll thank you for a check, Buckdash,\u201d said Lord Dundrum, as the\ngallant warrior entered the breakfast-room.\n\n\u201cFor what?\u201d asked the captain.\n\n\u201cFor Mr. Dawkins\u2019 portmanteau.\u201d\n\n\u201cWait till you get it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have it here.\u201d And as he spoke he lugged my valise from beneath the\ntable, accompanied by a roar of laughter from all assembled.\n\n\u201cA capital joke,\u201d grinned the captain.\n\n\u201cA capital joke, indeed! Hand over the coin.\u201d\n\nCaptain Buckdash turned to me.\n\n\u201cMr. Dawkins, is this your portmanteau?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is indeed,\u201d I replied.\n\n\u201cThe one which you left in the railway carriage?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am quite satisfied, Lord Dundrum. You shall have a check after\nbreakfast; in the meantime will you kindly inform us how you managed to\nlay hold of it?\u201d And he cracked an egg with a violence that almost\ncrushed in the china cup.\n\nI searched for some note or mark by which to obtain a clue to her\nidentity, but in vain; my leathern \u201cconveniency\u201d was as bald as when I\npurchased it behind the Bank of Ireland. No message had been forwarded,\nnot a line of instruction. This course appeared singular, inasmuch as it\nwas unlikely that she would make no effort to regain her property; and\nwhy lose this most legitimate opportunity? Had she no desire to place\nherself in communication with _me?_ Ah! there was that in her glance\nwhich gave this thought the lie. Heigh-ho! I was in love up to my\neyebrows and badly hit. I was obliged to come face to face with myself,\nto place my hand upon my heart, and to plead guilty. I thought of the\nelder Mr. Weller, and of his opinion respecting widows, and voted him\nvulgar. My preconceived ideas upon the subject of relicts underwent a\ntotal change, and now a bashful maiden seemed but an insipid nonentity.\nI longed to quit Rathdangan, and, excusing myself under the plea of an\nimportant professional engagement, started for Nobberstown at cockcrow.\n\nThis station consisted of simply a \u201cporter and a platform,\u201d one equally\nintelligent as the other, and of the two the platform was \u201cthe better\nman.\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a know I know,\u201d was the invariable reply to almost every query.\n\n\u201cDid the lady alight here?\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a know I know.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she give you no message?\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a know I know.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo card?\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a wan.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho handed you the portmanteau?\u201d\n\n\u201cSorra a know I know.\u201d\n\nA thought now flashed across my brain: Fribscombe! He was not the man to\nlose a chance of talking to a pretty woman. He would have told her who I\nwas, and it was through him that she had communicated. How asinine not\nto have thought of this before!\n\nChartering a jarvey, I started across the country to the family mansion\nof the Fribscombes, accompanied by the two portmanteaus.\n\n\u201cI never opened my lips to her. She dried up after you left, and pulled\ndown the shutters.\u201d This gave me a pang of the keenest delight. \u201cI got\nout at Killoughter, the next station, and she went on.\u201d\n\nOn my return to Dublin I caused advertisements to be inserted in several\nof the leading Irish papers; I also tried the second column of the\n_Times_ and the _Glasgow Herald_, but, alas! with no effect.\n\nSix months had glided away, during which she made no sign. The\nportmanteau maintained possession of a corner of my solitary apartment,\nand the image of its whilome proprietor defiantly held more than one\ncorner of my heart; indeed, I may as well candidly confess that it was\nstrongly entrenched in all four.\n\nThe summer assizes were over, and the briefless ones flitted hither and\nthither for the long vacation: some to Switzerland, with Mont Blanc in\nthe distance\u2014very much in the distance\u2014others the passes of the Tyrol,\nsunny Spain, byways in Brittany, or the Highlands of Scotland. Connemara\nfound its true believers, and Killarney its pious pilgrims. As for\nmyself, I was perforce compelled to substitute the Dodder for the Rhine,\nthe Dublin mountains for the Alps, and Sackville Street for the\nBoulevard des Italiens. My aunt had contributed the ten-pound note upon\nwhich I had hung in fond anticipation towards the building of Father\nDonnelly\u2019s new church at Shinanshone, and the letter which conveyed this\nintelligence concluded with the following: \u201cI don\u2019t see your name\nfiguring in any of the trials, good, bad, or indifferent. It\u2019s all\nMacdonogh and Armstrong. What are you about, at all at all? At this rate\nof going you\u2019ll never see a silk gown, let alone the bench. You might as\nwell be on the Hill of Howth as in the Four Courts, if you don\u2019t stir\nyourself. Let me see you cheek by jowl with Macdonogh and Armstrong\nduring the coming winter, or I\u2019ll know the reason why, and make my\nfinancial arrangements accordingly.\u201d\n\nI was seated one lovely morning in autumn gazing gloomily into the\nstreet, which was as empty as my own exchequer. Dreamy visions of the\ngolden glory of ripening corn, of blood-red poppies, of fern-shaded\ndells, of limpid pools and purple-clad mountains mocked my aching heart.\nI sighed the sigh of impecuniosity, and railed at the inconsistency of a\nfortune which gave little Bangs, who hadn\u2019t one idea to rub against\nanother, a thousand per annum, a vulgar cad like Hopkins a bagful of\nbriefs, and which left me high and dry in a front garret in Eccles\nStreet, without a red cent to come into collision with a battered\nsixpence in my somewhat cavernous pockets. Heigh-ho!\n\nAn outside car, driven at a frosty pace, smote upon the drowsy stillness\nof the street, and my gloom was somewhat speedily dispelled by the sight\nof my friend Tom Whiffler\u2019s honest and beaming face, and his expressive\nand expansive signals while yet a considerable distance from the house.\nTom is always full of money, full of health, and full of the most\nboisterous and explosive spirits.\n\n\u201cAha! you old cat on the tiles,\u201d he shouted, \u201ccome down from your coign\nof vantage. I was afraid you were out of town. Somebody said you were on\nCircuit.\u201d And standing upon the foot-board of the car, he burst forth\nwith\u2014\n\n    \u201cHail to our barrister back from the Circuit!\n    Honor and wealth to the curls of his wig!\n    Long may he live o\u2019er his forehead to jerk it,\n    Long at a witness look burly and big!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome up, for gracious sake!\u201d I cried, as I perceived heads peeping from\nbehind the partly-closed shutters of an opposite house, inhabited by a\ngenteel family, who wished their little world to imagine them in Italy,\nFrance, Spain\u2014anywhere but in Dublin\u2014during the dog-days.\n\nIn a few seconds Tom bounded into the apartment. \u201cThis is a slice of\nluck to get you, old man. Come, now, pack up your traps, and we\u2019ll have\nfour days in the County Wicklow. I shall have the car in any case, and\nour hotel bills will be mere bagatelles which we\u2019ll square up at Tib\u2019s\nEve. Lend me a couple of shirts and things; you can bring the baggage\u2014a\nchange for two\u2014and I\u2019ll do the rest. We\u2019ve twenty-five minutes to catch\nthe train.\u201d\n\nFive minutes found Tom upon one side of the car, myself upon the other,\nand, calmly reposing in the well between us, the neat little portmanteau\nof the fair unknown. I was compelled to make use of it, as Whiffler had\nno \u201cleathern conveniency,\u201d and my travelling-valise had been lent to one\nof \u201cours,\u201d and was possibly at that particular moment strapped upon the\nmurderous mound of luggage which encumbers the groaning roof of the\nAlpine diligence, or snugly ensconced on the grape-strewn deck of a\nRhine or a Moselle steamer. It gave me more than a pang to remove it\nfrom its well-known corner. A chord had been touched which set all my\nmemories vibrating, and I handled it with as much care and anxiety as\nthough it were a new-born infant or a rickety case containing rack-rent\nor nitro-glycerine.\n\nA glorious moonlight found us driving through the Vale of Clara _en\nroute_ to Glendalough\u2014the sad, stricken valley of the Seven Churches.\nThe hills, quietly entranced, lay gazing upwards at the gentle moon, who\nenfolded them in her pellucid beams as with a soft, sheeny mantle of\nlight. The Avonmore far, far down in the valley musically murmured while\nshe glided onwards to join the Avonbeg, who joyously awaited her coming\nin the sweet Vale of Avoca. The honest watch-dog\u2019s bark bayed up the\nvalley, and the perfume-laden air in its holy calm was as sweet as an\nangel\u2019s whisper.\n\nAfter \u201ca square meal\u201d of rasher and eggs which would have put the most\nelaborate _chef-d\u2019\u0153uvre_ of the _cuisine_ out of count, we strutted\nforth from the hostelry in the direction of St. Kevin\u2019s Bed, and heard\nthe oft-repeated legend of poor Kathleen\u2019s fate from the lips of a very\nragged but very amusing guide, whose services we were desirous of\nengaging for the morrow.\n\n\u201cTroth, thin, but it\u2019s me father\u2019s son that\u2019s sorry not to be wud yez;\nbut shure\u201d\u2014and here he lowered his voice\u2014\u201cit\u2019s in regard to me bein\u2019 in\na hobble that I\u2019m out in the moonlight.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat scrape have you got yourself into?\u201d asked Tom Whiffler. \u201cWhiskey?\u201d\n\n\u201cMusha, thin, it wasn\u2019t a dhrop o\u2019 sperrits that done it _this_ offer.\u201d\n\n\u201cA _colleen_?\n\n\u201cSorra a fear av all the colleens from this to Wicklow Head.\u201d\n\n\u201cMistaking another man\u2019s sheep for your own?\u201d laughed Tom.\n\n\u201cIf ye wor spaikin\u2019 airnest I\u2019d make ye sorry for them words,\u201d said the\nman in an angry tone; but brightening up, he added: \u201cAv yez wor guessin\u2019\nfrom this to Candlemas ye\u2019d be out every offer. I got into thrubble be\nraison av a saint, an\u2019 I\u2019ll tell yez how: A lot av ignoraamusses av\nEnglish comes here in the summer saison, an\u2019 nothin\u2019s too holy but\nthey\u2019ll make a joke on it; but the divvle will have his own wan av these\ndays. Well, sir, last Monday I was engaged for to divart a cupple of\nEnglish, as bowld as brass, an\u2019 that vulgar that the very cows turned\ntheir tails to thim as we thravelled through the fields\u2014sorra a lie in\nit. I done me best for to earn an honest shillin\u2019, but, on my word, wan\nav thim, a stout lump av a man, gev me all soarts av impidince, an\u2019 whin\nI come for to narrate about St. Kavin he up\u2019s an\u2019 insults the holy saint\nto me very face.\n\n\u201c'There never was no sich man,\u2019 sez he.\n\n\u201c'There was, sir,\u2019 sez I.\n\n\u201c'It\u2019s all humbug,\u2019 sez he; 'an\u2019 as for Kathleen,\u2019 sez he, 'she was no\nbetther nor\u2014'\n\n'\u201cYe\u2019d betther stop, sir,\u2019 sez I, intherruptin\u2019 him; 'for St. Kavin was\na holy man, an\u2019 never done nothin\u2019 but what was good an\u2019 saintly.\u2019 Well,\nsir, he up\u2019s an\u2019 calls the blessed saint a bad name, so I hot him betune\nth\u2019 eyes an\u2019 rowled him on the grass, an\u2019 I planted his comrade beside\nhim. An\u2019 now I\u2019m the worst in the world below at the hotel for bating\ntwo blackguards that done nothin\u2019 but insult me an\u2019 me holy religion;\nan\u2019 that\u2019s why I can\u2019t go wud yez to-morrow.\u201d\n\nIt was far into the \u201cwee sma\u2019 hours\u201d when we parted with Myles O\u2019Byrne\nand gained sanctuary in the double-bedded room which had been told off\nto us. The pale and gentle Luna was surrendering her charge to the pink\nand rosy Aurora, and we sought our couches in beautiful budding\ndaylight.\n\n\u201cWhere\u2019s your portmanteau, Dawkins?\u201d asked Tom Whiffler. \u201cI want to get\nat my things.\u201d\n\nTo my utter dismay, the portmanteau was not in the apartment. To ring\nthe bell at this unseemly hour was but to alarm the entire hotel; so,\nslipping off my shoes, I descended to the hall in the hope of\ndiscovering it in a heap of luggage which lay piled in graceful\nprofusion near the entrance. My search was vain, and, with secret\nforebodings of another mischance in connection with this unhappy valise,\nI returned to the room and retired to bed.\n\n\u201cI seen it in yer hand, sir,\u201d observed the waiter the next morning whom\nI interrogated about the missing article\u2014\u201ca thick lump of a solid\nleather portmantle. I can take the buke on it, if necessary, sir. Here\u2019s\nthe boots; mebbe he can tell us something. Jim, did ye see a thick lump\nav a solid leather portmantle lyin\u2019 about?\u201d\n\n\u201cI did,\u201d replied the boots, who was a man of much _physique_ and very\nfew words.\n\n\u201cYe did?\u201d\n\n\u201cYis.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere is it, thin?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere it ought to be.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere\u2019s that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWud th\u2019 owner.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was not left in my room,\u201d I exclaimed.\n\n\u201cIt was left in number five.\u201d\n\n\u201cShure, number five\u2019s gone,\u201d cried the waiter.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s news yer tellin\u2019 us,\u201d observed the boots with a surly grin.\n\n\u201cAn\u2019 is the portmantle tuk be number five?\u201d\n\n\u201cYis.\u201d\n\n\u201cPhew!\u201d whistled the waiter. \u201cBe the mortial the fat\u2019s in the fire now,\nanyhow.\u201d\n\nHere was a situation! My misgivings realized. My portmanteau gone,\nperhaps never to return. How could I face the owner? I never gave up the\nhope of meeting her and of restoring the property.\n\n\u201cWho slept in number five?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cNumber five is two faymales.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen did they leave?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey left for Father Rooney\u2019s first Mass beyant at Annamoe.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere were they going to?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo Lake Dan and Luggelaw.\u201d\n\nI proceeded to hold a council of war\u2014consisting of the landlord, the\nwaiter, the boots, two or three stable-boys, and the surplus population\nof the village\u2014when it was determined to send a boy on a fast-trotting\npony in pursuit of the fugitive luggage.\n\nI was two inches on a mild Havana after such a breakfast as the tourist\nalone can dispose of, when the waiter burst into the summer-house\nsituated over the lake, whither we had repaired to enjoy the \u201cwitching\nweed.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe portmantle is safe, sir, an\u2019 number five is here with it an\u2019 wants\nfor to see ye, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I do not want to see number five, waiter, so just say\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI dar\u2019n\u2019t say nothin\u2019, sir; she slipped a half a crown into the heel of\nme fist an\u2019 towld me to hurry you up,\u201d burst in the waiter, now in a\nwhite perspiration.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll not stir till I finish this cigar, at all events, and there is a\ngood hour\u2019s pull in it yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cOch! murther, an\u2019 she\u2019s in such a hurry\u2014such a dainty little craythur;\nan\u2019 it was _so_ dacent of her for to journey back the road with it.\u201d\n\nThis last thrust failed to pierce my armor. The waiter was\nconscientiously working out his half-crown.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s quite convaynient in the coffee-room, sir. I\u2019ll show ye a short\ncut across the bog.\u201d\n\nI listened and puffed, puffed and listened.\n\n\u201cI must get back, sir. May I tell her ye\u2019ll be over in five minutes,\nsir?\u201d\n\n\u201cTell her anything _you_ like, my friend, but out of this till I finish\nmy cigar I\u2019ll not stir.\u201d\n\nWhy I acted in this manner I was at a loss to determine. My anxiety for\nthe valise almost amounted to pain; and yet here was the cause for worry\nremoved, and I would not even trouble myself to walk a few hundred yards\nto the hotel to thank the lady for returning with it, which, as a\ngentleman, I was bound to do at any cost as to personal discomfort.\n\n\u201cSome frouzy old maid,\u201d suggested Whiffler.\n\n\u201cProbably; or a strong-minded female doing Wicklow on a geological\nsurvey,\u201d I added.\n\nWhen I got back to the hotel, which might have been an hour or so\nsubsequently, I found my portmanteau safely deposited in my room.\n\n\u201cWhere is this lady, until I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s gone, sir,\u201d interrupted the waiter in a reproachful tone, \u201cbut\nshe towld me for to give you this bit av\u2019 a note,\u201d handing me a piece of\npaper folded cocked-hat fashion.\n\nI opened it.\n\n\u201cI have two regrets,\u201d it said\u2014the geologist\u2019s handwriting was\nexquisitely feminine\u2014\u201cone, that I was inadvertently the cause of\ninconvenience; and the other, that I was denied the opportunity of\nclaiming the portmanteau, as I imagine that I recognize in it one which\nI lost about eight months ago during a railway journey to the north.\u201d\n\nI was literally stunned. I gazed from the letter to the now astonished\nwaiter, and back from his vacant countenance to the three-cornered\nbillet, which, alas! told so much and yet so little. It bore no name, no\ninitial, no monogram, no clue.\n\n\u201cDescribe this lady\u2019s appearance!\u201d I shouted, clutching the waiter by\nhis greasy collar, and imparting to him no very delicate shake.\n\n\u201cI never seen her; her veil was foreninst her nose the whole time she\nwas spakin\u2019 to me. The boy that attindid her is gone to the fair at\nKnockatemple.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho saw her?\u201d\n\n\u201cBarrin\u2019 the masther, dickins a wan; for Mary, the chambermaid, started\nthis mornin\u2019 for Fogarty\u2019s, of Glinmaloure. She an\u2019 the misthress had a\nfew words in regard to\u2014but here\u2019s the masther.\u201d\n\nThe burly host presented himself; he had not encountered my enslaver,\nfor the bill had been paid by the other lady.\n\n\u201cThe red wan,\u201d interposed the waiter.\n\n\u201cJust so, Mick,\u201d said his master approvingly, and turning to me: \u201cThey\nhave gone on to Luggelaw, sir, and intend to sleep at Enniskerry\nto-night.\u201d\n\nI unbosomed myself to Tom Whiffler, who immediately entered into the\naffair _con amore_. \u201cWe\u2019ll hunt them,\u201d he said; \u201cwe must catch them at\nLatouche\u2019s Cottage. There is no exit from Luggelaw except the one.\u201d\n\nThe road from the Seven Churches to Luggelaw is exquisitely picturesque.\nBehind lies that lake whose gloomy shore skylark never warbles o\u2019er,\nwith Lugnacullagh frowning sternly over its gloomy waters, and the round\ntower standing like a grim sentinel ready to challenge the approach\nalike of friend and foe. In front is the little village of Lara, with\nCastle Kevin perched upon a ledge of rock like an aerie\u2019s nest, and\nstretching away in the distance the silvern beech-woods of Annamoe,\nwhile to the left the purple-crowned crags of Slonaveena seem almost to\ntopple into the placid bosom of Lough Dan. It was a lovely summer\nday\u2014one of those days that recall past joys, and in which the present is\nbut a voluptuous dream.\n\nAt Roundwood we gained intelligence of the objects of our pursuit. The\ncar had passed through about half an hour previously; the ladies had\nstopped at the hotel while the horse was being baited, and had indulged\nin that inevitable cup of tea which is at once the dissipation and the\nsolace of the sex. The road to the first gate at Luggelaw is an ascent\nof three miles, which must of necessity be traversed upon \u201cshanks\u2019\nmare,\u201d and it is a blisterer. Not a vestige of tree, and with scarcely\nas much pasture as will satisfy the cravings of a few stunted sheep, the\nsun smiles grimly upon the entire roadway and scorches the luckless\ntraveller whom destiny leads to the little lodge perched on the summit\nof the mountain. We were not spared, and coats, waistcoats, and neckties\nwere cast upon the car, while we retained our pocket-handkerchiefs to\nmop our glowing faces, which resembled two very full and exceedingly\ndissipated-looking rosy moons.\n\nPuffing, panting, blowing, mopping, by one supreme effort we gained the\ntable-land which crowns the ascent, and, plunging towards an adjacent\nthicket of pines, took tremendous headers into the middle of it, where\nwe lay gasping like a pair of stranded fish.\n\n\u201cBlow _me_,\u201d exclaimed Tom Whiffler, \u201cif I\u2019ll ever climb Luggelaw Hill\nwidow-hunting in July again. I wish you and your portmanteau and widow\nat Timbuctoo!\u201d\n\nA low, musical laugh quite near us; a rustle of female garments\u2014my heart\ngave one mighty throb; for right in front of us, not two yards distant,\nwith her large, lustrous gray eyes bent searchingly upon me, stood the\nowner of the peripatetic portmanteau.\n\nTo spring to my feet, to apologize for our _d\u00e9shabille_\u2014the car was as\nyet half a mile down the hill\u2014to mumble some horrible incoherencies, was\nthe impulse and action of half a minute.\n\nShe seemed puzzled to know how to act, but her friend, the \u201cred wan,\u201d\ncut the Gordian knot of the present embarrassment by a fit of loud,\nhearty, ringing laughter, which, maelstrom-like, sucked us one after\nanother into it, and whirled us into an ocean of mirth before we knew\nwhere we were exactly, or what it was all about. There are some\ncontagious laughs in the world, and she of the ruby locks was the\nfortunate possessor of one.\n\nTwo things establish instantaneous and easy communication with\nstrangers\u2014with women a baby, with men a cigar. Throw in a laugh, and, if\nthe situation be a comical one, the laugh beats infant and tobacco. In\nthis case it proved a talisman, and a very few words found us at our\nease while I unfolded my tale.\n\nI was i\u2019 the vein and told my story well.\n\n\u201cWhy did you not send it after me?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cI had no clue,\u201d I replied.\n\n\u201cI flung my card to the porter at the station.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt must have gone down the line; for the only reply I could awake in\nthat self-same porter was, 'Sorra a know I know.\u2019\u201d And I devoutly dwelt\nupon all the bitter anxiety the hopeless efforts at restoration had cost\nme, to all of which I found a deeply-interested listener.\n\nBefore the sun had set on Luggelaw\u2019s deep-wooded vale I learned much\nthat satisfied me as to the past, and a something\u2014inferentially\nonly\u2014that caused the white wings of Hope to flutter against my heart.\nLucy Donaldson had been married to Captain George Middlecomb, of the\nSixth Dragoon Guards, if not against her will, at least under the\npressure of being talked into it. Captain Middlecomb had died within a\nyear of their marriage of _delirium tremens_.\n\nNeed I say that we travelled up to Dublin as a party; that I became a\nconstant visitor at Mrs. Middlecomb\u2019s beautiful residence\u2014Arcachon Villa\nat Killiney; that\u2014\n\nI suppose I should not divulge it, but, as I have written so far, I may\nas well finish the chapter. After all, I won\u2019t. Those who have been\ninterested, however, in the portmanteau may be pleased to know that it\nis now the common property of Lucy and the writer.\n\n\n\n\n                         THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.\n\n\n                                   I.\n                             ST. DOROTHEA.\n\n\n    The little martyr-maid of C\u00e6sarea\u2014\n      I do not a more lovely legend know.\n      Said young Theophilus, mocking: \u201cDost thou go\n    To join thy Spouse? If more than fond idea,\n    Send me, I pray thee, pretty Dorothea,\n      Of flowers and fruits that in his garden grow!\u201d\n      The maiden meekly bowed her head; and so\n    She passed to death along the Roman Via.\n\n    A blooming boy, with hair like odorous flame,\n      Out-dazed the sword that slew her; the next morn\n    A blooming boy to young Theophilus came,\n      With three fresh roses and three apples: scorn\n    Melted in bliss. By crown and palm! we claim\n      To guess that fragrance, and are less forlorn!\n\n\n                                  II.\n                              ST. CECILIA.\n\n\n    Two visions of divine Cecilia,\n      Born of Italian art, possess my mind.\n      One in the marble, at her tomb enshrined,\n    Reveals her as in catacomb she lay.\n    The budding maiden in her chaste array\u2014\n      Ah! closely let that awful necklace bind\n      Clipt flower to stem!\u2014to that cold sleep declined,\n    Was in warm marriage-bed a bud alway.\n\n    Her heart\u2019s dear love starved for a Mystic Spouse;\n      She was not chary of sweet music\u2019s gift\n    I see the listening rapture of her brows:\n      I hear her organ yearn, exult, and lift\n    Humanity to God! The heavens arouse,\n      And storms and seraphs o\u2019er the white keys drift.\n\n\n                                  III.\n                               ST. AGNES.\n\n\n    I was God\u2019s maid, less woman than a child;\n      And yet they threw me in the common stews\n      Naked as I was born, for men to use.\n    The dear Lord saved his vessel, though reviled,\n    From outrage of a look: the Mother smiled\u2014\n      Over my hot shame all my hair shook loose;\n      And, lo! it swept my feet in lengths profuse,\n    A bower of blinding awe to ruffians wild!\n\n    My life\u2019s green branch they lopped with cruel sword;\n      But He hath kissed my hurts, and they are well;\n      And, walking in the meads of asphodel,\n    I kiss the scarred feet of my gracious Lord:\n      I lead his lambkins by my lily bell,\n    Where the pomegranates shade the softest sward.\n\n\n\n\n             SHAKSPERE, FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.[71]\n\n\nFootnote 71:\n\n  _Shakspere, from an American Point of View: including an Inquiry as to\n  his Religious Faith and his Knowledge of Law; with the Baconian Theory\n  considered._ By George Wilkes. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle &\n  Rivington. 1877. 8vo, pp. ix. 471.\n\nThis elegantly-printed volume, published in England, though by an\nAmerican author, has for its subject four distinct lines of inquiry; two\nof these\u2014the validity of a theory which originated in this country a few\nyears ago, that Bacon, Lord Verulam, really wrote the plays known as\nShakspere\u2019s; and, secondly, the extent of Shakspere\u2019s legal\nknowledge\u2014though carried through the work, are subordinate to the other\ntwo\u2014the anti-democratic tone of the dramatist and the fact that he was a\nCatholic. These are the real issues of the book. Mr. Wilkes holds that\nShakspere should not exert the influence in this country that he does in\nEngland, and he arraigns him at the bar of American public opinion to\nanswer the indictment that he is always a strenuous upholder of royal\nauthority, an advocate of the privileges of the nobility, regarding them\nas far removed above the _ignobile vulgus_, for whom on all occasions\nthe poet manifests the utmost contempt. That a work teeming with\nconstant lessons of this character is no fit guide for Americans he\nmakes the real argument of his book. The second count is apparently\nintended to be no less damaging. Shakspere was a Catholic, and as such\nshould exercise no influence on a Protestant community. His influence in\nEngland for three hundred years has not apparently won that country back\nto Catholicity, and the United States are probably as safe. Still, it\nmay serve for a new agitation to get up a cry: \u201cNo Shakspere in the\npublic schools!\u201d\n\nThat Mr. Wilkes considers it a danger is seen by the fact that he uses\ntoward Catholics every vile nickname drawn from the slums by religious\nhate to degrade us in the eyes of our fellow-men. Yet surely a\nShaksperean scholar should not need reminding that to rob one of his\ngood name is worse than stealing his purse, oft-times as bad as taking\nhis life. Not only this, but he more than once represents the Catholic\nChurch as actuated by a hatred of intense fury against the Jews, as an\nearnest upholder of the unlawful claims of aristocracy, as an enemy of\npopular rights, and as an excuser of perjury. While thus under a strong\nanti-Catholic bias or prejudice\u2014stronger even than he at all\nconceives\u2014he has attempted to understand Catholic terms and usages, and\nto enter into that world which to Protestants seems so strange and\ninconceivable\u2014the world of Catholic thought.\n\nThe question as to the religious convictions of Shakspere is not a new\none. No Catholic has ever read the great dramatist without feeling that\nhe was strangely lacking in the usual anti-Catholic element, even if he\ndid not impress him as often Catholic in thought.\n\nCatholic writers in English periodicals, such as the _Rambler_ and\nothers, had already claimed Shakspere as a Catholic. All evidence,\nextrinsic and intrinsic, seems to sustain the position. His family\nbelonged to the gentry on the father\u2019s and mother\u2019s side, and on both\nsides had adhered to Catholicity after the change of religion in\nEngland. The will of his maternal grandfather, Robert Arden, who died in\n1556, is distinctly Catholic: \u201cI bequeath my soul to Almighty God, and\nto our Blessed Lady St. Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven.\u201d Of\nhis father there is still extant a _Testament of the Soul_\u2014not, as Mr.\nWilkes supposes, a form drawn up by some chaplain of the family, but\nthat _Testamentum Anim\u00e6 Christian\u00e6_ which, in Latin and the vernacular,\nhas for centuries been found in Catholic devotional manuals, and the\ncopying of which, as a kind of formal act, has been maintained in many\nfamilies\u2014certainly was in the family of the present writer down to the\nnineteenth century. Shakspere\u2019s father, too, was fined for\nnon-attendance at the established church. So far as the families of his\nparents were concerned, he was evidently Catholic, and must in childhood\nhave been familiar with the thoughts and language of English Catholics.\nHow far in mature age he retained the impressions of youth, or how\nfaithful he may have been to the teachings of his religion, we have no\nmeans of judging. The lightness with which moral obligations lay on him,\nhis career as a wild but gifted man, give little ground for supposing\nhim to have practised the religion he may still have professed.\n\nIn his dramas Shakspere constantly uses Catholic terms, speaks of\nCatholic clergy, religious of both sexes, rites and ceremonies with\nrespect, and in many cases turns his ridicule upon the new order of\nclergy in England. The Shaksperes and Ardens had both held office under\nthe Tudor kings, and the dramatist shows the utmost zeal for royal power\nas against the Pope. To a Catholic, now, this gives his position at\nonce. His life was not a regular one; and he could scarcely, in those\ndays of persecution, have been a firm, consistent, practical Catholic,\nalthough he clung to the faith, never abjured it, and had no liking for\nany of the new forms. His Bible reading was in the Protestant versions\nof the day, not in the Rheims and Douay, of which no influence has ever\nbeen detected in his plays. That he died a good Catholic needs proof;\nbut Mr. Wilkes\u2019 ideas of the meaning of the term are vague, since he\ntells us that Henry VIII. died a good Catholic.\n\nThe fact that Shakspere makes his characters\u2014most of whom are Catholics\nin time or country\u2014speak as Catholics is really no proof of his own\nCatholicity, any more than Longfellow\u2019s almost constant correctness in\nhis use of Catholic terms and familiarity with Catholic thought is proof\nthat he is a Catholic. The fact is, we admit, suspicious; for during\ncenturies Protestant writers seem to have made it a point to display the\nmost intense ignorance of Catholic terms, usages, rites, and ceremonies,\nand equally a point to insist on talking about what they vaunt their\nignorance of. But, going back to Shakspere\u2019s time, we must bear in mind\nthat the new religion had not yet taken any hold on the people at large;\nthat the only religious terms and expressions that conveyed any definite\nideas to their minds were those of the old faith sanctioned by the usage\nof centuries, and that the terms introduced by the various classes of\nreformers were diverse, new, strange, and, to the people, a mere\nridiculous jargon. The coinage of a new religious vocabulary took time\nand skill. It was no easy task to shape Bible translation so as to avoid\nold ideas and thoughts. This new jargon rose to be a language when the\nKing James Bible was imposed on the people after the Restoration. Though\nlong vaunted as a well of English undefiled, philologists now admit that\nit is the language of no period of English history, of no district of\nEnglish soil; it was a hash made to meet the pressing want, with\nobsolete words, terms drawn from every county of England, and new-coined\nexpressions, all forced into the service so as to supply the English\npeople with a new vocabulary of religious thought.\n\nTo convey religious ideas in Shakspere\u2019s time, the readiest words were\nthose familiar to the people. The dramatist employs them with no regard\nto the country or time. The pagan Hamlet refers to the Blessed\nSacrament, Extreme Unction, the Mass, and Office for the Dead; they talk\nof confession and beads in the _Comedy of Errors_; of indulgences in the\n_Tempest_, and even in _Troilus and Cressida_; of fasting days in\n_Pericles_ and _Coriolanus_; and christening is spoken of in _Titus\nAndronicus_. The anachronisms were apparently not noticed in his time,\nnor taken into account.\n\nThe system had not been adopted of entirely ignoring Catholic terms;\nthere were no others, and Shakspere used what he had. One word seems to\nbe avoided. The Mass is introduced only like Moore\u2019s \u201cneat little\nTestament, just kept to swear by.\u201d It occurs only in the form of an\noath, except in one instance, to which Mr. Wilkes devotes a chapter.\nJuliet, going to her confessor, asks:\n\n    \u201cAre you at leisure, holy father, now,\n    Or shall I come to you at evening Mass?\u201d\n\nMr. Wilkes goes into a lengthened argument to show that it was the\ncustom at that time in England to celebrate Mass at night. He says: \u201cI\nhave found many illustrations from Catholic reviews and other reliable\nauthorities of the practices of the hedge-priests, as they were called,\nin times of Catholic persecution, whose business it was to go in the\ndarkness of the evening to the houses of the faithful to celebrate a\nnocturnal Mass.\u201d We should be much pleased to see any such authorities.\nHe cites only an article in the _Manhattan Monthly_ last year, where a\nwriter speaks of priests in Ireland \u201cwho often at dead of night fled to\nthe mountain cave, the wooded glen, and wild rath to celebrate Mass for\nthe faithful\u201d; but travelling by night is one thing, and saying Mass at\nnight is another. Again, there were no priests in England answering to\nthe Irish hedge-priests. The priests in England found shelter in the\nhouses of Catholic gentry; they had not a mass of poor and oppressed\nfaithful among whom they lived. But neither in Ireland nor in England is\nthere a single example that the writer has ever found of a Mass said in\nwhat may be called the evening\u2014that is, between sunset and midnight\u2014much\nless of its being so frequent an occurrence as to make Shakspere refer\nto evening Mass as an ordinary matter. Dodd\u2019s _History of the Church_,\nChalloner\u2019s _Missionary Priests_, the works of Father Parsons, Campion,\nand other Catholic writers of the time, never allude to any single case\nwhere such a Mass was said. Nor is there in any liturgical work\nreference to any such custom ever having obtained in England.\n\nMr. Wilkes seems to feel that the theory is not very solid. He next\nrefers to the custom in some parts of saying a Low Mass immediately\nafter the Sunday High Mass. \u201cShakspere may have considered the last or\none o\u2019clock Mass an evening Mass.\u201d The play itself makes this untenable.\nIt was late in the afternoon when Juliet went to the friar. When she\ncomes back the nurse says:\n\n    \u201cSee where she comes from shrift with merry look\u201d\u2014\n\nnot half as charmingly as Longfellow describes Evangeline as most\nbeautiful\n\n            \u201cWhen, after confession,\n    Homeward serenely she walks with God\u2019s benediction upon her.\u201d\n\nThen, a few lines lower down, Lady Capulet, in the same scene, says:\n\n    \u201c\u2019Tis now near night.\u201d\n\nThis fixes the time too clearly to allow that any reference is made to a\nMass about mid-day. \u201cEvening Mass\u201d is simply nonsense; but the phrase\nhas charmed later writers, and several poets introduce the expression,\njust as poets and prose writers have all copied the Protestant Bible\nmisprint, \u201cStrain _at_ a gnat,\u201d instead of \u201cStrain out a gnat.\u201d\n\nBut the word Mass here is against all Catholic custom and reason. Juliet\nwishes to go to confession. She politely asks her confessor whether he\nis at leisure or whether she shall come again at a later hour. Would any\none, under the same circumstances, propose to come to confession to the\npriest when he was saying Mass? It would be just the time when he could\nnot possibly hear confessions. If he expected to say Mass soon, he would\nhear her then, and neither he nor she would think of putting it off till\nhe had begun his Mass. Shakspere critics have boggled and blundered over\nthis without seeing this incongruity, which to a Catholic is as patent\nas the day. What, then, does it mean? Juliet can ask only whether he\nwill hear her then or whether she shall come later. Now, if we consider\nShakspere to have written:\n\n    \u201cAre you at leisure, holy father, now,\n    Or shall I come to you as evening wanes?\u201d\n\nthe whole thing is as natural, consistent, and usual to Catholic ideas\nas can be. Then there is no such absurdity as evening Mass, or going to\nconfession to a priest who is saying Mass. The dense ignorance of later\ntimes on every Catholic matter will easily account for the neglect to\ncorrect the palpable error in the actual text.\n\nThe fact that, while Shakspere speaks of religion as the monastic state,\nreligious, monks, nuns, convents, monasteries, beads, penance, month\u2019s\nmind, dirge, requiem, purgatory, indulgences, relics, shrines, the\nhousel (Eucharist), christening or baptism, aneling (anointing), the\ncross, altar, holy-water, he nowhere in any of his plays speaks of the\nMass (except in the oath \u201cBy the Mass\u201d), is a strong argument against\nits use here. Convents and monasteries were abolished; relics and\nshrines were gone; no dirges or requiems resounded in the old church\nwalls; allusions to them were simply allusions to something deemed past\nand gone; but there were nearly a thousand Mass-priests in England\u2014men\nwho carried their lives in their hands, over whom the severest edicts of\nthe law were hanging like the sword of Damocles. To talk of the Mass as\na service with respect was verging on high treason. Having avoided it\neverywhere else, he would scarcely introduce it here absurdly\u2014no less\nabsurdly to him than to us.\n\nAt that time, though the government was anti-Catholic, the state church\nwas a mere matter of office. There was little zeal in its members\u2014little\nmore than conformity to law. The Puritans were active and zealous in\nspreading their doctrines; but the people were to a great extent still\nCatholic, and, with many nobles and gentlemen as leaders, and a greater\nnumber of priests than during the next two centuries, formed a power\nwhich was finally crushed by the Civil War. With this body Shakspere\nsympathized. He was not of the stuff to make a martyr. Ben Jonson and\nMassinger were, we know, Catholics, but not a single act of Shakspere\u2019s\nis recorded that stamps him as a Catholic. He was not fined as a\nrecusant, had no intercourse with known Catholics, in all arrests under\nthe penal laws there is no allusion to him, even as using his undoubted\ninfluence with the great to shield some poor victim. With the mass of\nthe people, at court and not at court, he ridiculed the new Gospellers,\nas we do Millerites or any other oddities. Against royal supremacy or\nthe religion established by law, the Common Prayer, or the bishops who\nhad been intruded into the old Catholic sees, Shakspere says nothing.\nHis ridicule is never launched at them. His wit is turned, as was that\nof the court circle, at the Puritan element. The state church was\nrespectable, but lacked earnestness, piety, and zeal: it was simply a\nstate affair. Those whose minds and imaginations tended to effusive\npiety found themselves repulsed. Gradually they camped apart and formed\nnew organizations. In Shakspere\u2019s time the government and the government\nchurch laughed at them, when they should have used them to build up the\nChurch of England. Just so in the following century they repulsed\nWesley. Shakspere takes not a Catholic but the court-prelatic side; and\nthere were no prophets on that side to see that James\u2019 son was to die on\nthe block and the Church of England be abolished by these very Puritans.\nThat he had any direct idea of attacking Protestantism as a system, or\nmaking his dramas\u2014with their coarse and often impure speech, such as\nthen found favor with Elizabeth and her court\u2014an arm against the\nReformation, is absurd, and Mr. Wilkes, in going through play after play\nto note every praise of convents or religious practices as done with a\ndirect view to elevate the Catholic Church, is extravagant. We have but\nto remember that Protestantism had then no institutions, no religious\nrites or practices, nothing absolutely for a poet or dramatist to employ\nas illustrations. Protestant poets and artists feel the poverty to this\nday, and in despair turn from cold, set formalism to Catholic themes,\nwhere poetry finds so many a subject.\n\nOur American critic has endeavored to follow out Catholic thoughts, but\nnot always successfully. Thus, in _Richard III._ Elizabeth addressing\nher murdered children:\n\n    \u201cIf yet your gentle souls fly in the air,\u201d\n\nand Buckingham:\n\n    \u201cIf that your moody discontented souls\n    Do through the clouds behold this present hour,\u201d\n\nare gravely put down as evidences of Shakspere\u2019s recognition of the\ndoctrine of purgatory, as though every believer in ghosts must be a\nbeliever in purgatory. There are some comical remarks about Shakspere\u2019s\nfamiliarity with \u201cthe intricacies of the Roman Catholic faith,\u201d because\nin _Henry VI._ we find:\n\n    \u201cAlthough by sight his sin be multiplied,\u201d\n\nwhen surely the Scriptural injunction to pluck out an eye that leads one\nto sin might explain it without his getting tangled in intricacies. His\nknowledge of the marriage service also seems peculiar; the rituals we\nknow are hardly the origin of Shakspere\u2019s marriage form.\n\nMr. Wilkes is evidently led away by his theory in his forced Catholic\ninterpretation of many passages of the dramatist; and his desire to show\nthat the whole series of dramas was a device of the Catholic Church to\nattack Protestantism in England induces him to strain much to support\nhis view, and often to jump at unwarranted conclusions, as in making\nHartley, in the strange Girachy case, to have been a priest. A man might\nbe hanged as a Catholic priest\u2014as Ury was a century ago within sight of\nthe spot where Mr. Wilkes\u2019 office now stands\u2014and yet not have been even\na Catholic. There is no Catholic record of priest or layman suffering in\nconnection with this affair.\n\nHence, while we admit Mr. Wilkes\u2019 diligence and ability in studying\nShakspere, we must regret that his judgment, like that of too many, has\nbeen warped by the old anti-Catholic feeling, to the extent of giving\nthe plays a character which neither friend nor foe of Catholicity at the\ntime dreamed of ascribing to them.\n\nIn treating the question of Shakspere\u2019s legal knowledge, he is free from\nbias, and hence easily perceives and often exposes the exaggeration\nwhich induces learned men of the law to interpret much that any\nattendant at courts, whether as witness or juror, might easily acquire\nas proof of serious legal study. The length to which the legal argument\nhas been pushed has led to similar claims by other professions; but a\nyoung man of such Catholic stock as Shakspere undoubtedly was could\nscarcely have attempted to obtain admission to the bar in those days.\n\nCertainly, as Mr. Wilkes well maintains, the amount of legal knowledge\nand the use of legal terms manifested in the plays are not of the\ncharacter that we should expect from one who had held such eminent legal\nand judicial positions as Lord Bacon. Nor is this, as he shows, the only\ndifficulty. The style of the dramas and that of Bacon\u2019s acknowledged\nwritings are utterly different; the conception of thoughts and their\nclothing in language are both distinct. The ear attuned to Shakspere\nfinds in Bacon a measure, an adaptation of words, a symmetry of his own,\nutterly at variance with the dramatist. Wilkes\u2019 euphonic test has great\nweight; and he well and aptly cites Bacon to show that the chancellor\nmade style a test of disputed authorship. If the Baconian theory is but\n\u201ca bubble which has never floated among the public with any amount of\nsuccess,\u201d it has doubtless found some advocates, and Mr. Wilkes has\nstrengthened the arguments against it.\n\nHis argument against Shakspere as one who worships a lord and despises\nthe middle and lower classes has but the one fault: that it takes our\nmodern American theories as the test\u2014our theories, and not our practice;\nfor after all personal liberty has, in a certain sense, steadily\ndeclined in America during the last century, and many of the rights\npossessed by individuals in Shakspere\u2019s time, and enjoyed by our\nancestors down to the Revolution, have been swept away in the name of\nliberty, while general and local taxation has reached a point that often\namounts practically to confiscation of all revenue, and sometimes of the\nwhole estate. In point of fact, the lower classes among us are more\noppressed in person and property by official power, and less able to\nobtain legal redress, than they were in England in Shakspere\u2019s time. The\ndistinction of rank was then as absolute almost as that of the Hindoo\ncastes, and the contemptuous style of the day in which the aristocratic\nportion treated their inferiors was caught up too readily by Shakspere.\nMr. Wilkes develops this element steadily through the work, and makes\nit, as we have seen, the basis of one of his heaviest charges against\nthe dramatist. He treats the point skilfully, and the subject affords a\nfine scope for discussion. For our own part, we think that he carries\nhis theory too far, and that Shakspere may find an advocate who will\nrelieve him from much of the obloquy and secure his claim to respect in\nAmerica.\n\nShakspere literature is now a field so vast, and has won contributions\nfrom so many able minds and eloquent pens, that it requires some courage\nto produce a new work on the topic at large; yet Mr. Wilkes has\ncertainly produced a volume that will take a prominent place among the\nShaksperiana. It gives utterance to many new views; the whole treatment,\nbeing thoroughly American, is fresh and free from much of the\nconventional bias that is almost inevitable in England; while solid\nGerman learning, by its very seriousness and profundity, seems often to\nmiss the point and _finesse_ of the dramatist.\n\nThe Catholic part is so prominent that we could not but treat it plainly\nand frankly, addressing as we do more exclusively a circle of Catholic\nreaders. We do so with no wish to be merely censorious, and with our\nrecognition of the author\u2019s evidently careful study and desire to treat\nthe question fairly.\n\n\u201cHe presents the volume,\u201d he avows, \u201crather as a series of inquiries\nthan as dogmatic doctrine, and strives,\u201d he says, \u201cto support them only\nby such an amount of controversy as is legitimately due from one who\ninvites the public to a new discussion.\u201d\n\n                           NEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\n    ESSAYS AND REVIEWS By Rt. Rev. J. L. Spalding, D.D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp.\n    355. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.\n\nThe author of these essays has been recently raised to the dignity of\nthe episcopate and appointed to the newly-created see of Peoria, Ill.\nHis name and fame as an author, preacher, and orator are already widely\nknown in this country. His _Life of Archbishop Spalding_, his\nillustrious uncle, will remain one of the landmarks of Catholic history\nand biography in the United States. By this important and valuable work\nthe name of the learned and distinguished author is at present best\nknown outside of the immediate circle with whom friendship and the round\nof daily life connect him. He has done, however, much more than this. He\nhas used his great gifts incessantly and in whatever way they could\nprove of service to the cause which every word he utters and every line\nhe writes proclaim he has alone at heart\u2014the growth and strengthening of\nChrist\u2019s church, the defence of Catholic faith and doctrine, and the\nspread of Christ\u2019s kingdom on earth. With this view he has even gone\ndown to that lowly, much neglected, yet most important field of editing\na series of Catholic school-books\u2014that issued by the Catholic\nPublication Society.\n\nHe has been a constant and most valued contributor to the pages of this\nmagazine, and a selection of his articles\u2014which, had he chosen, might\nhave been much larger\u2014goes to form the present volume of _Essays and\nReviews_. As they come before us now in book-form we are glad to have\nthis opportunity of saying publicly what we have always felt, not only\nin regard to these but also all other contributions from the same pen:\nthat they are of the very best kind of that peculiarly modern,\npeculiarly favorite, and peculiarly difficult form of literature\u2014the\nmagazine article. Dr. Brownson used to say that there were not half a\ndozen men in this country who could write a really good review article.\nWhether that be so or not, we are sure that the veteran reviewer would\nnot have excluded these essays from his category. And what we here state\nregarding them is only an echo of the general opinion, so far as it\nreaches us through the medium of the public press and the private\nverdict of excellent judges. The style is fascinating, glowing,\nbrilliant. There are here and there passages of extreme beauty and\neloquence. There is nothing like mere verbiage or redundance. There is\n_a man_ behind it all\u2014a man of knowledge, of wide yet careful culture,\nwriting in dead earnest, observing the march of events while the history\nof the past is ever present to him, with power and courage to say what\nhe means in a manner that all will understand. Not one of these articles\nfell dead. The leading one, \u201cThe Catholic Church in the United States,\n1776-1876,\u201d excited universal interest and attention not alone in this\ncountry but abroad, and a distinguished writer in the _Correspondant_\nmade it the chief text of an important article on the United States. No\nhistory or historical sketch that we have seen gives so complete and\nprofound a view of the history, the trials, and struggles of the\nCatholic Church in this country within the century as that article. The\nother essays are of a piece with it. Their very titles speak their\ntimeliness: \u201cThe Persecution of the Church in the German Empire,\u201d\n\u201cPrussia and the Church\u201d (three essays), \u201cGerman Journalism,\u201d etc.\nPerhaps the most valuable of all, however, are the three essays on the\n\u201cComparative Influence of Catholicism and Protestantism on National\nProsperity,\u201d for which M. de Laveleye\u2019s well-known pamphlet furnished a\ntext. They are eminently characteristic of the writer. He faces\neverything, shirks nothing. He takes up the subjects of \u201cWealth,\u201d\n\u201cEducation,\u201d and \u201cMorality\u201d\u2014just the very points on which Protestant\nwriters are in the habit of claiming superiority for Protestant over\nCatholic nations\u2014and how he treats them we leave to the reader\u2019s\nenjoyment.\n\nWe are often asked the kind of article needed for THE CATHOLIC WORLD. We\ncan recommend no better text-book to such applicants than this volume of\n_Essays and Reviews;_ nor can we recommend anything fresher, better, or\nmore interesting to Catholics generally who are anxious to defend their\nfaith on points where it is often believed to be most assailable.\n\n\n    MAGISTER CHORALIS: a Theoretical and Practical Manual of Gregorian\n    Chant for the use of the clergy, seminarists, organists,\n    choir-masters, choristers, etc. By Rev. Francis Xavier Haberl,\n    cathedral choir-master, Ratisbon. Translated and enlarged (from the\n    fourth German edition) by Rev. N. Donnelly, Cathedral Church of the\n    Immaculate Conception, Dublin. Ratisbon, New York, and Cincinnati:\n    Frederick Pustet.\n\nThis excellent and most timely work is one we have long desired to see.\nMany pastors of churches and their organists have been willing to do\nsomething towards the introduction of the holy chant in the divine\noffices, but the means of instruction have been almost wholly wanting.\nVery few organists and choir-directors in the United States have made\nany study whatever of the chant, and the greater number are not able to\nread even its notation. We have felt and lamented the difficulties in\nthe way of those who, convinced of the claims of Gregorian chant, and\nwearied and disgusted with the wretched cheap concert performances they\nhave been forced to endure at Holy Mass and Vespers, have longed to rid\nthemselves of the \u201cchurch music\u201d nuisance and again hear the true song\nof the church resounding in the sanctuary. Even with ample pecuniary\nresources it would not have been enough to issue an order to the\nchoir-director to organize a Gregorian choir, or even to sing some\nportions of the chant from the organ gallery. The work before us solves\nalmost all these difficulties. Of course the organist will need to study\nthe character of the chant in other works, that he may be able to\nappreciate its tonality and style, and to give it its true\naccompaniment, without which he would be more likely to produce poor\n_music_ than good _chant_, or a detestable mixture of both, such as one\ncommonly finds published in various Catholic \u201cchoir-books\u201d and books of\nso-called \u201cServices of the Catholic Church.\u201d\n\nWe recommend to Gregorian organists the careful study of the harmonies\nof John Lambert in his harmonized Gradual and Vesperal, the _Organum\nComitans by Dr. Witt, and the Accompagnment d\u2019Orgue pour le Graduel et\nAntiphonarium de Rheims et Cambrai_, by Messrs. Dietsch and Tessier.\n\nThe only faults we have to find with Father Haberl\u2019s work are, first,\nthe rules as given for the Italian pronunciation of Latin, especially\nfor the pronunciation of the word _excelsis_, which is directed to be\npronounced egg-shell-sis! and, second, the rule on page 66 directing the\nelision of the last vowel of a word when followed by another vowel in\nthe next word, in the verses of hymns; and we regret to see this rule\ncarried out in the new Vesperal as published by Mr. Pustet. This rule\nmay do for _reading_ classic poetry, but, if we mistake not, such\nelision is absolutely forbidden in the _recitation_ of the divine\nOffice, whether read or sung. In all former editions of the Vesperal we\nhave found an extra note provided for the superfluous syllable.\n\nWe cannot bring ourselves to sing or say\n\n    Sit laus Patr-ac Paraclito,\n\nor\n\n    Qu\u00e6nam lingua tib-o Lancea, debitas\n    Grates pro merit-est apta rependere?\n    Christi vivificum namqu-aperis latus\n    Und-Ecclesia nascitur.\n\nHow is one to sing _namqu-aperis_? and what are we to think of\n_clavor-aditus_ for _clavorum aditus_, and _ill-hic_ for _ille, hic_? We\nwould like to be referred to some authority on this subject. That this\nwork has already reached the fourth edition in Ratisbon is a very\nencouraging sign of the restoration of Gregorian chant among our German\nbrethren. May it find a wide-spread sale in our own country!\n\n\n    GOLDEN SAND: A Collection of little Counsels for the Sanctification\n    and Happiness of Daily Life. Translated from the French. New York:\n    Sadlier & Co. 1877.\n\nWe have not seen for a long time a more charming little hand-book of\ndaily piety than the modest volume of which a young lady, who is too\nmodest to put her name on the title-page, has here given us an excellent\ntranslation. Miss Ella J. McMahon, to whom we are indebted for the\npublication of this version of _Paillettes d\u2019Or_, has turned the simple\nand unaffected original into equally simple and attractive English.\nFirst published periodically in the form of tracts, these short chapters\nof practical counsels were afterwards collected in pocket volumes, and\nthe book now before us, though it could be read through in a morning,\ncontains the series for several years. It is addressed to people in the\nworld, and it embraces rules for the sanctification of all the actions\nof life, for making home happy and the domestic hearth an altar of\nblessing and sacrifice. No one can read a few of its pages without\nfeeling. \u201cHere is something that just suits my case; the circumstances\ndescribed here are just my own; the temptations are mine; the little\ntrials are mine; nothing can be easier than to make the virtues mine,\ntoo.\u201d Several chapters of the book, for instance, are devoted to what\nthe author styles \u201cThe Angels of the Hearth,\u201d and here is a description\nof \u201cThe Angel of Little Sacrifices\u201d:\n\n\u201cHave you never seen her at work?\n\n\u201cHave you never at least felt her influence?\n\n\u201cIn every Christian family and in all pious communities, as the image of\nhis providence in the household, God has placed the angel of little\nsacrifices, trying to remove all the thorns, to lighten all the burdens,\nto share all the fatigues.\n\n\u201cShe has for her motto these gracious words of an amiable saint: Good\nmakes no noise, and noise effects no good.\n\n\u201cThus she is like a ray of sunlight, lighting, warming, giving life to\nall, but inconveniencing no one.\n\n\u201cWe feel that she is with us, because we no longer experience those\nmisunderstandings of heretofore, those rancorous thoughts, those\ndeliberate coolnesses which spoil family life; because we no longer hear\nthose sharp, rude words which wound so deeply; because affectionate\nsentiments mount readily from the heart to the lips, and life is\nsweeter.\n\n\u201cWho, then, has absorbed that self-love which would not yield; that\negotism which mingled with the most sincere friendship; that\nself-indulgence, in fine, which always sought ease?\n\n\u201cThe angel of little sacrifices has received from heaven the mission of\nthose angels of whom the prophet speaks, who removed the stones from the\nroad, lest they should bruise the feet of travellers.\n\n\u201cAnd that of the angels who, according to the simple legend of the first\nChristians, scattered rose-leaves 'neath the feet of Jesus and Mary in\ntheir flight into Egypt....\n\n\u201cBut, like them, she is oftener invisible; she does her work in secret.\n\n\u201cThere is a place less commodious than another; she chooses it, saying\nwith a sweet smile, How comfortable I am here!\n\n\u201cThere is some work to be done, and she presents herself for it simply\nwith the joyous manner of one who finds her happiness in so doing.\n\n\u201cIt is an object of trifling value, of which she deprives herself to\ngive to her who the evening before has manifested a desire to possess\none like it.\n\n\u201cHow many oversights repaired by this unknown hand!\n\n\u201cHow many neglected things put in their places, without our ever seeing\nhow they came there!\n\n\u201cHow many little joys procured for another without his ever having\nmentioned to any one the happiness which they would give him!\n\n\u201cWho has known thus how to do good in secret? Who has known how to\ndivine the secrets of the heart?\n\n\u201cDoes a dispute arise? She knows how to settle it by a pleasant word\nwhich wounds no one, and falls upon the slight disturbance like a ray of\nsunlight upon a cloud.\n\n\u201cShould she hear of two hearts estranged, she has always new means of\nreuniting them without their being able to show her any gratitude, so\nsweet, simple, and natural is what she does.\n\n\u201cBut who will tell the thorns which have torn her hands, the pain her\nheart has endured, the humiliations her charity has borne?\n\n\u201cAnd yet she is always smiling.\n\n\u201cDoes sacrifice give her joy?\n\n\u201cHave you never seen her at work, the angel of little sacrifices?\n\n\u201cOn earth she is called a mother, a friend, a sister, a wife.\n\n\u201cIn heaven she is called a saint.\u201d\n\nHere is another example of the familiar and easy spirit, the clearness,\nthe practicality of this admirable little counsellor:\n\n\u201cWHAT IS MY CROSS OF TO-DAY?\u2014It is that person whom Providence has\nplaced near me, and whom I dislike; who humiliates me constantly by her\ndisdainful manner; who wearies me by her slowness in the work which I\nshare with her; who excites my jealousy because she is loved more than I\nand because she succeeds better than I; who irritates me by her chatter,\nher frivolity, or even by her attentions to me.\n\n\u201cIt is that person who, for some vague reason, I believe to be inimical\nto me; who, according to my excited imagination, watches me, criticises\nme, ridicules me.\n\n\u201cShe is there, always there.... My efforts to avoid her are of no avail.\n\n\u201cA mysterious power seems to multiply these appearances before me....\n\n\u201cThis is my most painful cross; the others are very small compared to\nthis.\n\n\u201cCircumstances change, temptations diminish, positions improve,\nmisfortune becomes endurable by habit, but persons who are disagreeable\nto us always irritate us more and more.\n\n\u201cHOW I MUST BEAR MY CROSS OF TO-DAY.\u2014By not showing in any way either\nthe weariness, the dislike, or the involuntary repulsion which her\npresence causes me. By obliging myself to render her some service, it\nmatters little whether she knows it\u2014it is a secret between God and me.\n\n\u201cTo say nearly every day something good of her talents, of her virtues,\nher tact.... Something, certainly, I will find to praise.\n\n\u201cTo pray seriously for her soul, and even to go so far as to ask God to\nlove her and leave her with me.\n\n\u201cDear companion, blessed messenger of God\u2019s mercy, you have\nunconsciously the mission of sanctifying me, and I will not be\nungrateful.\n\n\u201cAngel of a rude and appalling exterior, were it not for thee I would\nfall into humiliating faults. My nature disdains and repulses thee, but,\noh! how my heart loves thee.\u201d\n\nThere is an abundance of good advice which will touch directly upon a\nmultitude of the commonest faults of good people\u2014those apparently\ntrivial sins and imperfections which cause so much unhappiness at home,\nwhich make family life so hard and bitter, and place so many obstacles\nin the path of perfection.\n\nThe book cannot fail to do good. It will be a favorite companion of the\npious soul, an affectionate and never unwelcome monitor to the cold and\ncareless.\n\n\n    LIFE OF THE VENERABLE CLEMENT MARY HOFBAUER, PRIEST OF THE\n    CONGREGATION OF THE MOST HOLY REDEEMER. By a Member of the Order of\n    Mercy, authoress of the _Life of Catharine McAuley_, _Life of St.\n    Alphonsus_, _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_, etc. New York: The\n    Catholic Publication Society. 1877.\n\nWe have received advance sheets of this beautiful and most interesting\nlife by the gifted author of the _Life of Catharine McAuley_. Father\nHofbauer was one of God\u2019s heroes, and the story of his life will be\nfound full of interest and profit. He is fortunate in his biographer,\nwhose clever pen seems particularly adapted to a style of literary work\nthan which there is none more pleasing and useful. An extended notice\nwill appear later.\n\n\n    THE LADY OF NEVILLE COURT. A Tale of the Times. By the author of\n    _Marion Howard_, etc., etc. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale\n    by The Catholic Publication Society.)\n\nIt is really refreshing to come across a simple, unaffected, yet most\ninteresting story such as this. Its only fault is that happiest of\nfaults\u2014brevity. The characters are few, natural, well contrasted, and\nwell developed; the situations well wrought up, yet by the most natural\nof means. The pathetic portions are indescribably touching, but\nconstantly and happily relieved by bright dialogue or playfully humorous\nnarrative. Richard O\u2019Meara is a genuine Catholic hero, albeit a modern\none; and Maud Neville as sweet and noble a woman as we have ever met\nwith in fiction. The real art of the book lies in its genuine\nartlessness, and we trust the author may give us many such.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the July number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will appear the first\ninstalment of a new story, entitled _Alba\u2019s Dream_, by the author of\n_Are You My Wife?_, _A Salon in Paris before the War_, _Number\nThirteen_, _M. Gombard\u2019s Mistake_, etc., etc. The story will be\ncompleted in three parts.\n\n\n\n\n                          THE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n                    VOL. XXV., No. 148.\u2014JULY, 1877.\n\n\n                          THE EUROPEAN EXODUS.\n\n\nWe propose in the following pages to speak of the past history, the\npresent condition, and the future prospects of European emigration to\nthis country. We shall have to present many dry figures and prosaic\nstatistics; but the investigation will lead us to regard the wonderful\nmanner in which the wisdom and the love of God have been manifested in\nthe control which he, as the ruler of all things, has exercised over\nthis European exodus. Even out of those details of its course and\nprogress which have seemed most deplorable, and have caused to many of\nGod\u2019s enlightened servants the greatest anxiety and grief, beneficent\nand grand results now begin to be discerned which are likely to secure\nthe permanent establishment of the church in this land, and to prepare\nher for the magnificent task which, as we believe, she is destined to\naccomplish here\u2014the salvation of the republic and of society from the\nutter ruin into which the arch-enemy of mankind would otherwise soon\nengulf them. The foolishness of men is sometimes the wisdom of God; and\nGod, who governs all things sweetly, has chosen to turn the apparent\nfolly of a large portion of the emigrants from Europe to the United\nStates during the last twenty-five years into channels through which\ninestimable blessings have already flowed, and others, still more\nglorious, are yet to pass.\n\nThe great wave of emigration began to rise in 1840, reached its highest\npoint in 1869-72, and, notwithstanding some fluctuations, continued to\nbring to our shores a colony every day until 1875. In that year it\nexperienced a sudden and serious check, and has ever since steadily\nsubsided, until now it has not only sunk to low-water mark, but has even\nseemed to be about to flow the other way. The official reports of the\nCommissioners of Emigration of the State of New York classify the\npassengers who arrive at this port from foreign countries as \u201caliens\u201d\nand as \u201ccitizens or persons who had before landed in the United States\u201d;\nand the \u201caliens\u201d are subdivided into steerage and cabin passengers. It\nis safe to take the \u201calien steerage passengers\u201d as persons who have come\nto this country for the first time with the purpose of residing here\u2014in\nfine, as _bon\u00e2 fide_ emigrants. The alien cabin passengers in most cases\nare tourists or visitors, although among them also are some emigrants.\nNow, the whole number of alien steerage passengers who arrived at the\nport of New York during the year 1876 was only 60,308, of whom 17,974\nwere from Germany, 12,728 from Ireland, 5,429 from England, 1,479 from\nScotland, and 428 from Wales. The whole number of steerage emigrants\nfrom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland who landed at New\nYork during this year was only 20,064\u2014a much smaller number than arrived\nin any previous year since 1840. Indeed, in no previous year until 1875,\nwhen it was 34,636, had the number failed to be twice as great; in many\nyears it was more than ten times as large. The following table will show\nthe emigration of all classes from the United Kingdom into the United\nStates at all our ports during the last thirty-six years:\n\n                          1840         40,642\n                          1841         45,017\n                          1842         63,852\n                          1843         28,335\n                          1844         43,660\n                          1845         58,538\n                          1846         82,239\n                          1847        142,154\n                          1848        188,233\n                          1849        219,450\n                          1850        223,078\n                          1851        267,357\n                          1852        244,261\n                          1853        230,885\n                          1854        193,065\n                          1855        103,414\n                          1856        111,837\n                          1857        126,905\n                          1858         50,716\n                          1859         70,303\n                          1860         87,500\n                          1861         42,764\n                          1862         58,706\n                          1863        146,813\n                          1864        147,042\n                          1865        147,258\n                          1866        161,000\n                          1867        159,275\n                          1868        155,532\n                          1869        203,001\n                          1870        196,075\n                          1871        198,843\n                          1872        233,747\n                          1873        233,073\n                          1874        148,161\n                          1875         92,489\n                          1876     [72]54,554\n\nFootnote 72:\n\n  Of whom 24,452 landed at New York.\n\nThe 54,554 persons who, not being citizens of the United States, arrived\nin this country from the United Kingdom in 1876, embrace all those who\ncame either for pleasure, or for business, or to remain. But during the\nsame year 54,697 persons of Irish and British origin arrived in the\nUnited Kingdom from the United States; so that the emigration from this\ncountry to the United Kingdom exceeded the immigration into the United\nStates from the United Kingdom by 143 souls. The English Board of Trade,\nin publishing these returns, says that \u201cas regards North America, in\nfact, the records of 1876 are the records of a movement of passengers to\nand fro, and the so-called emigration is not really emigration.\u201d We\ndigress here, for a moment, to speak of one or two facts disclosed by\nthe emigration returns of the British Board of Trade for 1876, which\ncast a side light upon a portion of our subject.\n\nThe total emigration from the United Kingdom to places out of Europe in\n1876 was 138,222 persons; the total immigration into the Kingdom was\n91,647 persons, showing an apparent loss of population of 46,575. But\nafter deducting from both sides the persons of other than British birth,\nthe net loss of population to the United Kingdom by emigration is\nreduced to 38,000 persons\u2014a percentage scarcely worth mention when\ncompared with the annual increase by births. As regards the emigration\nfrom that Kingdom to the United States, it is noted not only that it has\nbecome very small, but that its character has materially changed. Only\n73 agricultural laborers sailed from England for the United States, but\nno less than 3,191 of this class sailed for Australia; while, on the\nother hand, \u201c4,535 gentlemen, professional men, merchants, etc., and\n10,874 persons of no occupation, have gone to the States, and only 1,106\nof the first-named class and 2,753 of the second migrated to Australia.\u201d\nThe returns go on to point out that emigration from Ireland, and of\nIrishmen living in England and Scotland, has almost entirely ceased.\n\u201cThe total number of persons of Irish origin who emigrated from the\nUnited Kingdom in 1876 to places out of Europe was 25,976.\u201d Of these\n16,432 came to the United States; some of these were only visitors; but\ncounting them all as emigrants, they would not number as many as arrived\nhere in a single month in former years.\n\nThe gradual but steady decrease of Irish emigration to the United States\nis pointed out in these returns in a forcible and apparently exultant\nmanner. From 1853 to 1860 the annual average of Irish emigration to this\ncountry was 71,856; during the ten years following it was 69,084; in\n1871 it fell to 65,591; in 1874 it was 48,136; in 1875 it was 31,433;\nand last year it sank to 16,432.[73] \u201cThe Irish people,\u201d says the Board\nof Trade with evident satisfaction, \u201cdo not at present migrate from the\nUnited Kingdom in any appreciable numbers, although they may emigrate\nfrom one part of the United Kingdom to another.\u201d We cannot call the\ncorrectness of this statement into question; it is no doubt quite\ncorrect; and it is safe to conclude that, for the present at least, and\nprobably for many years to come, Irish emigration to this country will\nbe limited to very small proportions. Nay, there is some reason to fear\nthat, unless a marked improvement soon occurs in the industrial affairs\nof our country, we shall be in danger of seeing too many of our Irish\nand Irish-American citizens leaving us to seek homes in Australia. The\nyear 1877 is scarcely six months old, but it has seen three vessels sail\nfrom this port with American, Irish, and German emigrants for Australia.\nThis movement is probably a wholly sporadic one, and too much importance\nshould not be attached to it. But we are not yet in a condition to\nencourage emigration from this country nor to desire to see it under any\ncircumstances. We wish still to receive many millions of people from the\nOld World, and, as we shall show, there is a strong probability that we\nshall obtain them.\n\nFootnote 73:\n\n  Of whom 13,314 landed at New York.\n\nEmigration from the Continent of Europe, while showing a decrease, has\nnot diminished in such a marked degree as that from the United Kingdom.\nThe whole number of alien emigrants who arrived at the port of New York\nduring the thirty years ending December 31, 1876, was 5,604,073. Of\nthese 2,920,397 were natives of Great Britain and Ireland; 2,665,774\nwere natives of the Continent; and the remaining 17,902 came from all\nthe other countries of the earth. The following table will show the\nexact number of emigrants from each country arriving at the port of New\nYork during the last thirty years:\n\nFROM GREAT BRITAIN.\n\n\n                         Ireland     2,001,727\n                         England       732,922\n                         Scotland      157,578\n                         Wales          28,170\n                                     2,920,397\n\nFROM AMERICA.\n\n                     South America           3,066\n                     West Indies             7,897\n                     Nova Scotia             1,611\n                     Canada                  1,397\n                     Mexico                  1,030\n                     Central America           289\n                                            15,290\n\nFROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE.\n\n                     Germany             2,121,020\n                     France                107,710\n                     Switzerland            81,798\n                     Holland                39,069\n                     Norway                 44,772\n                     Sweden                116,655\n                     Italy                  42,769\n                     Belgium                10,096\n                     Spain                   7,796\n                     Denmark                32,974\n                     Poland                 11,291\n                     Sardinia                2,306\n                     Portugal                1,791\n                     Russia                 22,124\n                     Sicily                    339\n                     Greece                    269\n                     Turkey                    242\n                     Austria                21,677\n                     Luxembourg              1,076\n                                         2,663,774\n\nFROM THE ORIENT.\n\n                       China               1,057\n                       East Indies           304\n                       Arabia                 14\n                       Africa                191\n                       Australia             225\n                       Japan                 175\n                       Unknown               646\n                                           2,612\n\n                                       5,604,073\n\nWe may remark that fourteen of the countries in this list are Roman\nCatholic countries, and that the emigrants from these number 2,212,963\nsouls. The proportion of Catholics among the emigrants from the other\ntwenty-one countries would probably be, taking them altogether, not less\nthan one-fourth of the whole number\u2014597,772. This would give a Catholic\nemigration at the port of New York alone, during these thirty years, of\nabout 2,800,000 souls. But we shall return to this part of our subject\nlater on.\n\nThe emigration from Germany at the port of New York during the year 1876\nwas 21,035 persons, of whom 17,974 were steerage passengers; in 1875 the\nnumber was 25,559; during the twenty-eight years from 1847 to 1875 the\naverage number of emigrants arriving from Germany at this port had been\n75,000 annually. The severe and sudden check which emigration received\nin 1875 must be traced, in the case of Germany, almost wholly to the\neffects of the financial disasters which had occurred in the United\nStates, and which had then begun to be heavily felt. The Germans are a\nprudent people; they are exceedingly well informed concerning the\ncondition of affairs here, and they were well advised not to come to a\nnew country at a moment when industry and trade were prostrated, when\nlabor was superabundant and poorly paid, and when confidence and\nenterprise were so paralyzed that capital could find no productive or\nsafe employment. The restrictive measures against emigration instigated\nand enforced by Prince Bismarck, and the financial distress which\nprevailed, and which still prevails, in Germany, had also their\ninfluence in discouraging and retarding emigration; but the principal\ncause of its decline in the case of Germany was the one we have\nmentioned. When that cause shall have ceased to act, as there is reason\nto believe it soon will do, we can expect with confidence a revival of\nemigration from Germany and the other Continental countries of Europe.\nShould the present war in the East become general and involve all\nEurope, the anxiety of the people to escape its horrors and burdens will\nincrease the desire for emigration, but their facilities for seeking a\nnew home will probably be lessened by the same causes. We must, in all\nlikelihood, wait for the return of prosperity here and of peace in\nEurope before the great wave of emigration again rises to its former\nlevel. There is no reason to doubt that in due time it will again attain\nits former proportions; but the principal countries from whence we must\nhereafter look for our emigrants are Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway,\nDenmark, Switzerland, Holland, and perhaps England. The emigration of\nthe future, most probably, will to a large extent be composed of people\npossessed of some capital, and prepared to begin their new life under\nfar more favorable conditions than those which surrounded the Irish and\nGerman emigrants of past years upon their arrival here. The latter,\nlanding here too often with no capital but their muscles, their honest\nhearts, and strong but often uncultivated intellects, have accomplished\nthe work to which they were ordained. Their successors will find much\nprepared for them, but they also will have their mission to fulfil.\n\nLet us now endeavor to ascertain with as much accuracy as possible in\nwhat manner our foreign-born citizens have disposed of themselves, and\nwhat it is that they have done and are doing for us, for themselves, and\nfor God. It appears that, according to the census of 1870, the whole\nnumber of foreign-born persons then in the United States was 5,567,229,\nof whom 62,736 were Chinese, 9,654 were negroes, and 1,136 were Indians.\nThere were also 9,734,845 persons who had been born in this country, but\nwhose parents were all of foreign birth, and 1,157,170 others the father\nor mother of each of whom had been of foreign birth. These 16,459,244\npersons constituted, in 1870, the whole of that portion of our\npopulation which could in any way be classed as foreign or as being\nunder the immediate domestic influence of foreigners. There remained\n22,099,132 persons, who were not only native-born, but whose parents on\nboth sides were natives. Let us deal, first, with the persons of foreign\nbirth. In 1850 there were but 2,244,602 persons of this class; in 1860\nthey had increased to 4,138,697, and in 1870 to 5,567,229 souls. The\nfollowing table will show their nationalities:\n\n                    Ireland               1,855,827\n                    England                 550,688\n                    Scotland                140,809\n                    Wales                    74,530\n                    Great Britain[74]         4,117\n                    Germany               1,690,410\n                    France                  116,240\n                    Denmark                  30,098\n                    Holland                  46,801\n                    Hungary                   3,649\n                    Italy                    17,147\n                    Belgium                  12,552\n                    Luxembourg                5,802\n                    Austria                  30,506\n                    Bohemia                  40,287\n                    Norway                  114,243\n                    Poland                   14,435\n                    Portugal                  4,495\n                    Russia                    4,638\n                    Spain                     3,701\n                    Sweden                   97,327\n                    Switzerland              75,145\n                    Turkey                      301\n                    Malta                        51\n                    China                    63,042\n                    Greece                      390\n                    Greenland                     3\n                    India                       551\n                    Japan                        73\n                    Africa                      673\n                    Asia                        834\n                    Australia                 3,111\n                    Pacific Isles               305\n                    Sandwich Isles              539\n                    South America             3,378\n                    West Indies               4,897\n                    Mexico                   41,308\n                    Cuba                      4,811\n                    Atlantic Isles            4,219\n                    British America         489,344\n                    At sea                    2,612\n                    Unknown                   2,135\n\nFootnote 74:\n\n  What part not stated.\n\nWe have omitted from the above table 9,654 negroes and 1,136 Indians,\nborn outside of the United States.\n\nWhere now do we find these five and a half millions of foreign-born\ncitizens? The greater part of them\u20144,193,971\u2014were congregated in ten\nStates, as shown by the following table:\n\nTABLE OF TEN STATES HAVING 200,000 OR MORE OF FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION.\n\n               STATES.            1870.      1860.      1850.\n           California           209,831    146,518     21,802\n           Illinois             515,198    324,643    111,892\n           Iowa                 204,692    106,077     20 969\n           Massachusetts        353,319    260,106    164,024\n           Michigan             268,010    149,093     54,703\n           Missouri             221,267    160,541     76,592\n           New York           1,138,353  1,001,280    655,929\n           Ohio                 372 493    328,249    218,193\n           Pennsylvania         545,309    430,505    303,417\n           Wisconsin            364,499    276,927    110,477\n\n                              4,193,971  3,183,939  1,737,998\n\nThere were fourteen States each of which had an Irish-born population of\nless than 10,000 souls\u2014to wit, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida,\nMississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina,\nTennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Virginia; nineteen States each of\nwhich had an Irish-born population of less than 100,000\u2014to wit,\nCalifornia, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,\nLouisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New\nHampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin; while\nIllinois had 120,000, Massachusetts 216,000, Pennsylvania 235,000, and\nNew York 528,000 Irish-born citizens. Eighteen States had each a\nGerman-born population of less than 10,000\u2014namely, Alabama, Arkansas,\nConnecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, New\nHampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina,\nTennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. Thirteen States had\neach a German-born population of less than 100,000\u2014namely, California,\nIndiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts,\nMichigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Texas; while Missouri had\n113,618, Pennsylvania 160,146, Wisconsin 162,314, Ohio 182,889, Illinois\n203,750, and New York 316,882. The following table will show the exact\nnumber of persons of Austrian, German, French, and Irish birth residing\nin each State in 1870:\n\n         States.        Austrian.   French.   German.    Irish.\n         Alabama               99       587     2,479     3,893\n         Arkansas              41       236     1,562     1,428\n         California         1,078     8,063    29,699    54,421\n         Connecticut          154       820     1,243    70,630\n         Delaware               8       127     1,141     5,007\n         Florida               17       126       595       737\n         Georgia               34       308     2,760     5,093\n         Illinois           2,099    10,908   203,750   120,162\n         Indiana              443     6,362    78,056    28,698\n         Iowa               2,691     3,130    66,160    40,124\n         Kansas               448     1,274    12,774    10,040\n         Kentucky             146     2,052    30,318    21,642\n         Louisiana            433    12,288    18,912    17,068\n         Maine                 10       136       508    15,745\n         Maryland             266       640    47,045    23 630\n         Massachusetts        255     1,627    13,070   216,120\n         Michigan             795     3,120    64,143    42,013\n         Minnesota          2,647     1,743    41,364    21,746\n         Mississippi           85       621     2,954     3,359\n         Missouri           1,493     6,291   113,618    54,983\n         Nebraska             299       340    10,954     4,999\n         Nevada               157       414     2,181     5,135\n         New Hampshire          9        59       436    12,190\n         New Jersey           686     3,128    53,999    86,784\n         New York           3,928    22,273   316,882   528,806\n         North Carolina        13        53       904       677\n         Ohio               3,699    12,778   182,889    82,674\n         Oregon                53       308     1,875     1,967\n         Pennsylvania       1,556     8,682   160,146   235,798\n         Rhode Island          19       167     1,200    31,534\n         South Carolina        10       143     2,742     3,262\n         Tennessee            112       562     4,525     8,048\n         Texas              1,748     2,226    23,976     4,031\n         Vermont                2        93       370    14,080\n         Virginia              56       368     4,050     5,191\n         West Virginia         59       223     6,231     6,832\n         Wisconsin          4,486     2,704   162,314    48,479\n\n                           30,104   116,240 1,690,410 1,855,827\n\nThese four nationalities, then, account for 3,692,581 of the\nforeign-born population in 1870; and the remaining 1,874,648 had their\nbirth in the other thirty-five different countries named in one of our\npreceding tables. A glance over the table just given will show still\nmore plainly within what limits the great bulk of the Irish and German\nborn population is found; and the reader will remember that we have\nshown that all but 1,373,258 of the entire foreign-born population were\nresiding in the ten States of California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts,\nMichigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In\ntwenty of the States the persons of Irish birth exceeded those of German\nbirth; in the remaining seventeen States the latter outnumbered the\nformer. The excess of persons of Irish birth over those of German birth,\nhowever, was only 165,417. This was seven years ago. During these seven\nyears the emigration from Germany has almost equalled that from Ireland,\nand for the thirty years last past, taken as a whole, the arrivals from\nGermany have exceeded those from Ireland by 119,293 souls. We shall\nprobably not be far out of the way if we assume that the entire\nforeign-born population of the United States is at present about seven\nmillions, of whom two and a half millions are of German, and nearly an\nequal number of Irish, birth. Let us, however, continue to confine\nourselves for the present to the official facts in our possession, and\nproceed to follow up the 5,567,229 persons of foreign birth whom we know\nwere among us in 1870.\n\nOne of the remarks most frequently made concerning the foreign-born\npopulation of this country is that it has a general disposition to\ncongregate in our large cities, from which have come consequences highly\nprejudicial both to itself and to the community at large. These two\nassertions have been made so persistently and in such good faith; they\nhave seemed to be so susceptible of proof and so apparently true; and\nthey have chimed in so well with the sometimes latent and sometimes\nactive prejudice against \u201cforeigners\u201d which is so often found in the\nbreasts of the natives of every country, that they have passed current\nalmost without challenge and have come to be regarded as axioms. Nay,\nnot a few of our foreign-born citizens themselves, and even of the\nCatholic bishops and clergy, have often accepted these two assertions as\ntrue, and have not ceased to deplore the crowding of the foreign\npopulation into the large cities, regarding it as an almost unmixed\nevil, and pointing to it as the source of direful woe. No doubt they\nhave had some reason on their side. A large proportion of the crime and\nmisery of our cities is perpetrated and suffered by foreign-born\ncitizens or by their children in the first generation. Had these\ncitizens not been gathered together in the cities, but scattered at\nremote distances throughout the country, they might have been criminal\nand miserable, but their crime and misery would not have been so\nobtrusive and apparent to every observer. But, leaving this point for a\nmoment to return to it in the light of the facts we are about to adduce,\nlet us see what amount of truth there is in these two assertions. We may\nremark, in passing, that the truth of the first does not necessarily\nimply the truth of the second: it may be true that the foreign-born\npopulation has congregated to an apparently undue and unwise extent in\nour cities, but it may not be true that this has been by any means an\nunmixed evil either to the foreigners themselves or to the native-born.\n\nPOPULATION, NATIVE AND FOREIGN, OF THE LARGE CITIES, 1870.\n\n              CITIES.      Scotch.  French. Austrian. Belgian.\n          New York           7,559    8,240     2,737      325\n          Philadelphia       4,175    2,471       519      116\n          Brooklyn           4,098    1,892       321      142\n          St. Louis          1,202    2,788       751      254\n          Chicago            4,195    1,417       704      392\n          Baltimore            525      428       215       29\n          Boston             1,794      615       124       31\n          Cincinnati           787    2,090       554       46\n          New Orleans          568    8,806       253      134\n          San Francisco      1,687    3,543       470      139\n          Buffalo              996    2,332       135       37\n          Washington           298      191        26        8\n          Newark               870      710       261       45\n          Louisville           298      856        69       31\n          Cleveland            668      339     2,155       16\n          Pittsburgh           584      348       117        9\n          Jersey City        1,175      276        69       43\n          Detroit            1,637      760       161      233\n          Milwaukee            423      189       574       79\n          Albany               427      149        36       17\n          Providence           575       72         5        1\n          Rochester            428      475        39        4\n          Allegheny            570      619       109        6\n          Richmond             146      144        29        5\n          New Haven            347      133        54        6\n          Charleston           115       97        39        4\n          Indianapolis         258      237        14        5\n          Troy                 462       88        14        7\n          Syracuse             138      276        47        1\n          Worcester            187       29        12        1\n          Lowell               469       28         3        3\n          Memphis              119      207        14       10\n          Cambridge            298      100         9        1\n          Hartford             359       92        20        6\n          Scranton             366       64         4        \u2014\n          Reading               35       77        36        2\n          Paterson             879      237        48       21\n          Kansas City          180      110        44        1\n          Mobile               166      311        33       11\n          Toledo               119      206        93        \u2014\n          Portland             172       23         2        1\n          Columbus             133      238        20        \u2014\n          Wilmington           117       64         \u2014        2\n          Dayton                90      242        28        2\n          Lawrence             691        4         9        2\n          Utica                198      287        25        2\n          Charlestown           89       29         1        2\n          Savannah              72       99         5        \u2014\n          Lynn                  72        5         1        \u2014\n          Fall River           382        3         4        2\n\n          Totals            43,055   42,430    11,218    2,232\n\n        CITIES.      Native.  Irish. German. English.    Brit. Amer.\n   New York          523,198 201,999 151,203   24,408          4,372\n   Philadelphia      490,398  96,698  50,746   22,034          1,453\n   Brooklyn          251,381  73,985  36,769   18,832          2,779\n   St. Louis         198,615  32,239  59,040    5,366          1,986\n   Chicago           154,420  39,988  52,316   10,026          9,528\n   Baltimore         210,870  15,223  35,276    2,138            292\n   Boston            162,540  56,900   5,606    5,968         13,548\n   Cincinnati        136,627  18,624  49,446    3,524          1,175\n   New Orleans       142,943  14,693  15,224    2,005            384\n   San Francisco      75,754  25,864  13,602    5,166          2,237\n   Buffalo            71,477  11,264  22,249    3,558          4,113\n   Washington         95,442   6,948   4,131    1,231            211\n   Newark             69,175  12,481  15,873    4,040            296\n   Louisville         75,085   7,626  14,380      930            311\n   Cleveland          54,014   9,964  15,855    4,530          2,599\n   Pittsburgh         58,254  13,119   8,703    2,838            282\n   Jersey City        50,711  17,665   7,151    4,005            556\n   Detroit            44,196   6,970  12,647    3,282          7,398\n   Milwaukee          37,667   3,784  22,599    1,395            792\n   Albany             47,215  13,276   5,168    1,572            843\n   Providence         51,727  12,085     592    2,426          1,038\n   Rochester          41,202   6,078   7,730    2,530          2,619\n   Allegheny City     37,872   4,034   7,665    1,112            152\n   Richmond           47,260   1,239   1,621      289             42\n   New Haven          36,482   9,601   2,423    1,087            336\n   Charleston         44,064   2,180   1,826      234             32\n   Indianapolis       37,587   3,321   5,286      697            297\n   Troy               30,246  10,877   1,174    1,575          1,697\n   Syracuse           29,061   5,172   5,062    1,345          1,167\n   Worcester          29,159   8,389     325      893          1,960\n   Lowell             26,493   9,103      34    1,697          3,034\n   Memphis            33,446   2,987   1,768      589            225\n   Cambridge          27,579   7,180     482    1,043          2,518\n   Hartford           26,363   7,438   1,438      787            396\n   Scranton           19,205   6,491   3,056    1,444            125\n   Reading            30,059     547   2,648      305             26\n   Paterson           20,711   5,124   1,429    3,347            128\n   Kansas City        24,581   2,869   1,884      709            821\n   Mobile             27,795   2,000     843      386             55\n   Toledo             20,485   3,032   5,341      694            984\n   Portland           24,401   3,900      82      557          2,017\n   Columbus           23,663   1,845   3,982      504            190\n   Wilmington         25,689   3,503     684      613             47\n   Dayton             23,050   1,326   4,962      394            131\n   Lawrence           16,204   7,457     467    2,456          1,563\n   Utica              18,955   3,496   2,822    1,352            261\n   Charlestown        21,399   4,803     216      488          1,119\n   Savannah           24,564   2,197     787      251             63\n   Lynn               23,298   3,232      17      330          1,133\n   Fall River         15,288   5,572      37    4,042          1,324\n\n   Totals          3,808,770 826,398 564,967  165,024         80,728\n\nIn fifty of the largest cities of the United States there was in 1870 a\ntotal native population of 3,808,770 souls; 826,398 persons of Irish\nbirth; 564,967 of German birth; 165,024 of English birth; 80,728 natives\nof British America; 43,055 natives of Scotland; 42,430 natives of\nFrance; 11,218 natives of Austria; and 2,232 natives of Belgium\u2014in all,\n1,736,052 persons born in foreign countries.\n\nThe foregoing tables give the native population of each of these fifty\ncities, with the foreign population belonging to each of these eight\nnationalities.\n\nThe persons of foreign birth of other nationalities in the above cities\nwould raise the whole number to about 1,800,000 souls.\n\nIt is to be noticed from this table, in the first place, that in these\nfifty cities, in 1870, the proportion of foreign-born to native\ninhabitants was almost exactly as 18 is to 38\u20141,800,000 to\n3,808,770\u2014while the proportion of foreign-born to native inhabitants in\nthe entire Union was almost exactly as 5 is to 38\u20145,567,229 to\n38,558,371. It must be confessed that on this showing there was an\napparently or a really undue proportion of our foreign-born citizens\ncongregated in the large cities. But it should be remembered that among\nthe native-born population were the 10,892,015 persons who had been born\nhere of parents, on one or both sides, of foreign birth, and who, to\nthis extent, were _quasi_-foreign. If these be taken into account, the\nproportion of foreign-born and the immediate descendants of foreign-born\npersons to the rest of the population throughout the country in 1870\nwould have been as 16 to 38\u201416,459,239 to 38,558,371. This is really the\nmore correct basis upon which to make the comparison; for without doubt\na large proportion of the ten millions of persons born here of foreign\nparents were the children of the five millions of foreign-born persons;\nand it is perfectly natural that the parents and the children should be\nfound living in the same localities. After giving to this consideration,\nhowever, all the weight to which it is entitled, the fact still remains\nthat an apparently excessive proportion of our foreign-born citizens are\nto be found in the large cities.\n\nLet us look still closer into the subject. The whole number of persons\nof Irish birth in the United States in 1870 was 1,855,827, and of these\n826,398, or 44.4 per cent., were living in these fifty cities. There\nwere 1,690,410 Germans, and 564,967 of them, or 33.4 per cent., were in\nthe cities; 550,688 English, of whom 165,024, or nearly 30 per cent.,\nwere in the cities; 489,344 British Americans, of whom 80,728, or only\n16.5 per cent., were in the cities; while 30 per cent. of the Scotch,\n36.5 per cent. of the French, 36.7 per cent. of the Austrians, and 17.7\nper cent. of the Belgians were in the same category. Our Irish\nfellow-citizens are the greatest sinners\u2014if any are sinners in this\nrespect\u2014and after them, in a declining ratio, come the Austrians,\nFrench, Germans, Scotch, English, Belgians, and British Americans. The\nIrish, Austrians, French, and Germans are the Roman Catholic emigrants,\nand in the wisdom of God it has been ordained that they should be the\nones most crowded into the cities. How have they performed there the\nwork which he sent them to do?\n\nOur cities are the centres of the intelligence, the culture, and the\nwealth of our country. They contain to a very large extent the brains of\nthe republic. From them issue influences which sway, if they do not\nabsolutely control, the thoughts and actions of the people. These\ninfluences are not, by any means, always altogether wholesome, but they\nare unquestionably potent. The newspapers, magazines, and other\nperiodicals published in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis,\nChicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans, San Francisco, and\nMilwaukee have a circulation exceeding that of the similar publications\nof all the rest of the country combined. The serial publications of one\nfirm in New York alone reach into the millions; the aggregate annual\ncirculation of the New York daily and weekly journals is so large that\nmere figures expressing it convey but a faint idea of its extent. The\npublisher of a magazine in New York told the writer the other day that\nif the copies of his publication issued each year were stacked together,\nthe column would be three times as high as Trinity Church steeple.\n\nThe social influences of the cities upon the rural districts are also\npowerful. The cities not only set the fashions in dress, but in\npolitical, moral, and religious thought and custom. The sturdy\nindependence of the bucolic mind may yet boast of its existence, but it\nvery often yields to the sway of urban ideas. A lady who had lived all\nher life in a small village, in which the only Catholic population\nconsisted of a handful of poor Irish people, destitute of a church, and\nvisited only at long intervals by a humble priest who celebrated the\ndivine Mysteries in an attic over a liquor-store, not long ago came to\nNew York, and was taken by her friends into one of our magnificent\nCatholic churches. The grandeur and beauty of the Mass were for the\nfirst time revealed to her; for the first time she obtained an idea of\nwhat the Catholic Church was and what it taught. By the grace of God her\nconversion followed, and, mainly through her exertions and her influence\nafter her return home, her village is now blessed with a church, a\nresident priest, and a Catholic population composed largely of converts.\nIn very many of our rural localities all over the Union the Catholics\nare few and poor; in too many of them the idea of a Roman Catholic in\nthe minds of the natives is still associated only with the idea of an\nignorant fanatic, who worships images, pays half a dollar to a priest to\npardon him for a crime, and believes that the Pope is God. But when the\ncountry merchant of such a locality comes to New York to make his\npurchases, and sees the splendid Catholic churches here, and finds,\nperhaps, that the great importer with whom he deals, or the wealthy\nbanker, or the renowned lawyer to whom he is introduced, is a Roman\nCatholic, and not unseldom an Irishman or a German, his eyes are opened\nand his mind is prepared for the reception of the truth. In a word, the\ncongregation of foreign-born emigrants, the most of whom are Catholics,\nin our large cities, has had the effect of making the Catholic church in\nthese cities a noticeable and a respectable fact, and of thereby\naccomplishing one of the preliminaries in the work which it has yet to\nperform in the republic. The influence of this fact is to be perceived,\nalso, in the changed tone of the secular press with regard to the\nchurch. Respectable journalists, with few and decreasing exceptions,\nhave become ashamed to repeat the vulgar and senseless slanders and the\nworn-out calumnies concerning the church, her ministers, her dogmas, and\nher sacraments which were so current twenty years ago. In communities\nconsisting in an appreciable and often in a large proportion of\nintelligent, wealthy, and influential Catholics, the able editors do not\nventure any longer to amuse their readers with arguments based on the\nassumption that the church is the foe of knowledge and of education, and\nthat her mission is to degrade, enslave, and pauperize mankind. In\ncities where the spires of dozens and scores of Catholic churches,\ntipped with the emblem of our salvation, point towards heaven; where\nCatholic hospitals, asylums, schools, and academies abound; where many\nof the most enterprising and wealthy merchants, manufacturers, and\nbankers are Catholics; where in the front rank of all the professions\nCatholics are found\u2014in these communities it is no longer a social\ndisgrace or a mark of singularity to be a Catholic, and a convert to the\nfaith is no longer looked upon as a person of weak intellect or a slave\nto a benumbing and degrading superstition. We shall show, in the\nsubsequent pages of our article, that for all this, to a very great\nextent, and under what seems to have been the direct guidance of God, we\nare indebted to the foreign-born population of the country, and that its\naccomplishment was made possible, humanly speaking, by their\ncongregating themselves in the cities instead of dispersing in small\nbodies throughout the agricultural regions of the country. But we shall\nshow, also, that, the work of God having thus far been accomplished, the\ntime has now arrived when the future emigration to the United States\nshould be directed towards the rural districts, under conditions which,\nuntil now, were practically impossible; and we shall seek to point out\nin what manner this new colonization may be best directed in order to\npromote the welfare of the emigrants themselves, the prosperity of our\ncountry, and the greater glory of God.\n\n\n\n\n                             ALBA\u2019S DREAM.\n BY THE AUTHOR OF \u201cARE YOU MY WIFE?\u201d \u201cA SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,\u201d\n                                  ETC.\n                                PART I.\n\n\nOnce upon a time, some sixty years ago, on one of the bleakest points of\nthe coast of Picardy, high perched like a light-house overhanging the\nsea, there was a building called the Fortress. You may see the ruins of\nit yet. It had been an abbey in olden times, and credible tales were\ntold of a bearded abbot who \u201cwalked\u201d at high water on the western\nparapet when the moon was full. One wing of the Fortress was a ruin at\nthe time this story opens; the other had braved the stress of time and\ntempest, and looked out over the sea defiant as the rock on which it\nstood. The Caboffs lived in it. Jean Caboff was a wiry, lithe old man of\nseventy\u2014a seafaring man every inch of him. His wealth was boundless,\npeople said, and they also said that he had gained it as a pirate on the\nhigh seas. There was no proof that this was true; but every one believed\nit, and the belief invested Jean Caboff with a sort of wicked prestige\nwhich was not without its fascination in the eyes of the peaceful,\nunadventurous population of Gondriac. Caboff had a wife and three sons;\nthe two eldest were away fighting with Bonaparte on the Rhine; Marcel,\nthe youngest, was at home. A shy, awkward lad, he kept aloof from the\nvillage boys, never went bird\u2019s-nesting or fishing with them, but moped\nlike an owl up in his weather-beaten home. They were unsocial people,\nthe Caboffs; they never asked any one inside their door; but the few who\naccidentally penetrated within the Fortress told wonderful stories of\nwhat they saw there; they talked of silken hangings and Persian carpets,\nand mirrors and pictures in golden frames, and marble men and maidens\nwrithing and dancing in fantastic attitudes; of costly cabinets and\njewelled vases, until the old corsair\u2019s abode was believed to be a sort\nof enchanted castle. The stray visitors were too dazzled to notice\ncertain things that jarred on this profuse magnificence. They did not\nnotice that the damp had eaten away the gilded cornices, and the rats\nnibbled freely at the rich carpets, or that Jean Caboff smoked his pipe\nin a high-backed wooden chair, while Mme. Caboff cut out her home-spun\nlinen on a stout deal table, the two forming a quaint and not\nunpicturesque contrast to the silken splendor of their surroundings.\n\nSome five miles inland, beyond a wide stretch of gorse-grown moor, rose\na wood, chiefly of pine-trees, and within the wood, a castle\u2014a fine old\nGothic castle where the De Gondriacs had dwelt for centuries. The castle\nand its owners, their grandeur and state and power, were the pride of\nthe country, every peasant along the coast for fifty miles knew the\nhistory of the lords of Gondriac as well as, mayhap sometimes better\nthan, he knew his catechism. The family at present consisted of Rudolf,\nMarquis de Gondriac, and his son Hermann. The Marquis was a hale man of\nsixty; Hermann a handsome lad of eighteen, who was at college now in\nParis, so that M. le Marquis had no company but his books and his gun in\nthe long autumn days. He was a silent, haughty man, who lived much alone\nand seldom had friends to stay with him. When Hermann was at home the\naspect of the place changed; the ch\u00e2teau opened its doors with ancient\nhospitality, and laughter and music woke up the echoes of the old halls,\nand the village was astir as if a royal progress had halted on the\nplain; but when Hermann departed things fell back into the stagnant life\nhe had stirred for a moment. It was natural that the young man\u2019s\nholidays were eagerly looked forward to at Gondriac. But one August\ncame, and, instead of returning home, Hermann joined a regiment that was\non its way to the frontier. He went off in high-hearted courage as to\nthe fulfilment of his boyish dreams. M. le Marquis, who had himself\nserved in the guards of the Comte d\u2019Artois, was proud of his son, of his\nsoldier-like bearing and manly spirit, and kept the anguish of his own\nheart well out of sight as he bade the boy farewell. \u201cI will come back a\nmarshal of France, father,\u201d was Hermann\u2019s good-by.\n\nNot long after his departure tidings were received of the death of\nHugues Caboff, the old pirate\u2019s eldest son. He had fallen gloriously on\nthe field of battle; but glory is a sorry salve for broken hearts, and\nthere was weeping in the Fortress that day\u2014a mother weeping and refusing\nto be comforted. Old Jean Caboff bore his grief with an attempt at\nstoicism that went far to soften men\u2019s hearts towards him\u2014farther than\nhis gold, which they said was ill-got, and his charity, which they\ncalled ostentation.\n\n\u201cWho may tell what will come next?\u201d said Peltran, the host of the\nvillage inn.\n\n\u201cThey say that M. le Marquis has been over to see the Caboffs,\u201d said a\ncustomer, who dropped in to discuss the event. People felt for the\nCaboffs, but, there was no denying it, this sad news was a break in the\ndull monotony of Gondriac life.\n\n\u201cI saw his carriage at the foot of the cliff,\u201d said Peltran; \u201che stayed\nfull fifteen minutes up at the Fortress. P\u00e8re Caboff conducted him down\nto his carriage, and Marcel stood watching them till it was out of\nsight.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt must have consoled them mightily to have M. le Marquis come in and\nsit talking to them in that neighborly fashion,\u201d remarked lame Pierre, a\nhero who had lost a leg and an eye at Aboukir; \u201cthat, and poor Hugues\nbeing killed by a cannon-ball under the emperor\u2019s own eye, ought to\ncheer up the Caboffs wonderfully.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, ay,\u201d said Peltran; \u201cGod tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.\u201d\n\n\u201cM. le Marquis looked as down-hearted as if he had lost a child of his\nown,\u201d observed Pierre; \u201cmay be he was thinking whose turn it might be\nnext.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere goes M\u00e8re Virginie with the little one!\u201d said Peltran; and all\npresent turned their heads towards the window and looked out with an\nexpression of interest, as if the objects in view were a rare and\npleasant sight. And yet it was one that met them in their daily walks by\nthe roadside and on the cliff\u2014the little old lady in her nun-like dress,\nwith her keen gray eyes and sweet smile, and the dark-eyed,\nelfin-looking child whose name was Alba. Alba was always singing.\n\n\u201cIs not your little throat tired, my child?\u201d said Virginie, as the\nblithe voice kept on soaring and trilling by her side.\n\n\u201cI am never tired singing, petite m\u00e8re! Do the angels tire of it\nsometimes, I wonder?\u201d\n\n\u201cNay, the angels cannot tire; they are perfectly happy.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I, petite m\u00e8re\u2014am I not perfectly happy?\u201d\n\n\u201cIs there nothing you long for, nothing you would be the happier for\nhaving?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! many things,\u201d cried Alba: \u201cI wish I were grown up; I wish I were as\nbeautiful as the flowers; I wish I had a voice like the nightingale\u2014like\na whole woodful of nightingales; I wish I lived in a castle; I wish I\nwere so rich that I might make all the poor people happy in Gondriac; I\nwish everybody loved me as you do. Oh! I should like them all to adore\nme, petite m\u00e8re,\u201d cried the child, clasping her little hands with\nenergy.\n\n\u201cNay, my child, we must adore none but God; woe to us if we do!\u201d said\nVirginie, and her face contracted as with a sudden pain. \u201cBut it seems\nto me, with so many wishes unfulfilled, you are a long way off from\nperfect happiness yet?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I am always dreaming that they are fulfilled, and that does as\nwell, you know.\u201d\n\nYes, perhaps it did, Virginie thought, as she bent a wistful smile on\nthe young dreamer\u2019s face. Alba\u2019s face was full of dreams\u2014beautiful and\npassionate, changeful as the sunbeams, tender and strong, pleading and\nimperious by turns. How would the dreams evolve themselves from out that\nyearning, untamed spirit that shone with a dangerous light through the\ndark eyes? Would they prove a mirage, luring her on to some delusive\ngoal, and leaving her to perish amidst the golden waste of sands, or\nwould they be a loadstar beckoning faithfully to a safe and happy\ndestiny?\n\nThe child gave promise of rich fruit; her instincts were pure and true,\nher heart was tender; but there was a wild element in her nature that\nmight easily overrule the rest, and work destruction to herself and\nothers, unless it were reduced in time to serviceable bondage. Who could\ntell how this would be\u2014whether the flower would keep its promise and\nprove loyal to the bud, or whether the fair blossom would perish in its\nbloom, and the tree bring forth a harvest of bitter fruit?\n\n\u201cIt will be as you will it,\u201d a wise man had said to Virginie; \u201cthe\ndestiny of the child is in the hands of the mother, as the course of the\nship is in the hands of the pilot.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen Alba\u2019s will be a happy one!\u201d Virginie replied; \u201cif love be\nomnipotent here below, my treasure is safe.\u201d\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nHermann de Gondriac had won his epaulets. Every post brought letters to\nthe castle full of battles and victories; and though the young soldier\nwas modest in his warlike narrative, it was clear to M. le Marquis that\nHermann shone like a bright, particular star even in the galaxy of the\n_grande arm\u00e9e_, and that now, as in olden times, France had reason to be\nproud of the De Gondriacs. If the boy would but calm his rhapsodies\nabout Bonaparte! M. le Marquis\u2019 patrician soul heaved at the sight of\nthis enthusiasm for the upstart who had muzzled his country and usurped\nthe crown of her lawful princes. But he was a great captain, and it was\nnatural, perhaps, that his soldiers should only think of this when he\nled them in triumph from field to field.\n\nSo far Hermann bore a charmed life. Not so the Caboffs. One day, some\neight months after the death of the eldest son, the second brother\nfollowed him\u2014\u201ckilled gloriously on the immortal field of Wagram,\u201d the\nofficial letter announced in its most soothing style. M. le Marquis\u2019\ncarriage was again seen standing at the foot of the cliff, and Peltran\ninformed the population that he had remained over twenty minutes this\ntime at the Fortress.\n\n\u201cM. le Marquis is a true _grand seigneur_, and never begrudges any\ncondescension for the good of his inferiors,\u201d observed the old tory\nhost. \u201cThis time it was only Marcel who accompanied him down the cliff.\nOld Caboff, they say, was more cut up by this last blow; still, grief\nought not to make a man selfish and unthankful.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so,\u201d said lame Pierre, who sat puffing in the bar; \u201cand it\u2019s only\nwhat those two poor lads had to expect; moreover, since a man must die,\nbetter be killed in battle than die of the small-pox.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll the same, it\u2019s hard on the folks up yonder,\u201d remarked a bystander,\n\u201cand it isn\u2019t their money-bags\u2014no, nor even M. le Marquis\u2019 good\nwords\u2014that can comfort them to-day.\u201d\n\nSoon after this M. le Marquis left Gondriac rather suddenly one morning.\nAfter reading his letters he ordered his valise to be got ready, and in\nan hour he was posting to X\u2014\u2014. There he dismissed the postchaise, and no\none knew whither or how he had continued his route. Gondriac busied\nitself in endless conjectures as to the purport and destination of this\nmysterious journey. Had M. le Marquis been summoned to Paris to assist\nthe government in some political crisis? Had he gone over to England to\npour oil on the angry waters there? For the king of England was full of\nwrath and jealousy against the great emperor, and it was well known at\nGondriac that he was plotting foul play of some sort against France. Or,\nagain, could M. le Marquis\u2019 hasty departure have had any reference to M.\nle Comte? Perhaps M. le Comte was wounded or a prisoner; who could tell?\nSo the wiseacres gossiped, adopting first one theory, then another.\n\nA month went by without throwing any light on the mystery. Then the cold\nset in suddenly, and the gossips had something else to talk about. The\ncruel winter was down upon them, catching them unprepared, so how were\nthey to face it? They were only in October, and the wind blew from the\nnortheast as if it were March, keeping up its shrill, hard whistle day\nand night, and the sea, as if it were exasperated by the sound, roared\nand foamed and thundered, till it seemed like a battle between them\nwhich should make most noise. And it was hard to say who carried the\nday.\n\nOne night, when the battle was at its fiercest, the wind shrieking its\nloudest, and the sea rolling up its biggest waves, Alba sat at her\nwindow watching the tempest with thrills of sympathetic terror. Virginie\nthought the child was in bed and asleep hours ago, and she was glad of\nit; for the storm drove right against the cottage, and burst upon it\nevery now and then with a violence that shook her in her chair and made\nthe walls rock. She was knitting away, but between the stitches many a\nprayer went up for those who were out breasting the fury of the\nhurricane. Suddenly a sound came up from the sea that made her start to\nher feet with a cry. Boom! boom! boom! it came in quick succession,\nleaping over the rocks with a sharp, dull crash. The door of the little\nsitting-room was thrown open, and Alba stood on the threshold, white as\na ghost, her dark eyes gleaming. \u201cIt is the signal-gun, mother!\u201d she\ncried. \u201cThere is a ship in distress!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow came you up and dressed, child?\u201d exclaimed Virginie.\n\n\u201cMother, I could not sleep; I have been watching the storm. Hark! there\nit is again. Why don\u2019t they answer it? Let us hurry down to the beach.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf what use would we be there, my child?\u201d said Virginie. \u201cLet us rather\nkneel down and pray that help may come.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot pray; I cannot stay here safe and quiet while that gun is\nfiring! Hark! there it is again. Oh! why don\u2019t they make haste? Mother,\nI must go! If you won\u2019t come I will go by myself.\u201d Alba, as she spoke,\nthrew back her head with the wild, free movement that Virginie knew, and\nknew that she could no more control than she could check the flight of a\nbird on the wing.\n\n\u201cI will go with you,\u201d she cried, and, wrapping a cloak round Alba, she\nflung another round herself, and then lighted her lantern, and the two\nsallied forth into the storm, clinging fast to one another for support\nuntil they got under the shelter of the overhanging cliff. Lights were\nglancing here and there, hurrying down from the cottages, and a few\nfishermen were already on the beach watching the distressed ship,\nhelpless and hopeless. Presently old Caboff appeared, holding his\nlantern high above his head\u2014an aged, shrivelled man, likely to be of\nlittle use in this desperate strait; but such was the prestige which his\nsupposed antecedents lent him in the eyes of the panic-stricken group\nthat of one accord they turned to him as to the only one who might give\nhelp or counsel. The night was pitch dark, and the blinding rain and\ndeafening roar of the breakers seemed to make the darkness thicker. It\nwas impossible to see the ship, except when the flash of the gun lighted\nup the scene for a second. In the lull of the billows\u2014that is, between\nthe heavy sweep of their rise and fall\u2014the cries of the crew and the\nwhistle of the captain issuing his commands were faintly audible. How\nwas it with the ship? Had she struck upon a rock, or was she simply\ngoing down before the storm? It was impossible to say. On finding that\nher signals were heard and her position seen from land, she slackened\nfire, and the gun only spoke every three minutes or so. In the interval\nof unbroken darkness all conjecture as to the immediate cause of the\nperil was at a stand-still. Caboff said she had struck upon a rock; the\nothers thought she was simply disabled and rolling in the trough of the\nsea.\n\n\u201cCan we put out a boat? Who is for risking it?\u201d said Caboff, pitching\nhis voice to a whistle that was heard distinctly above the roar of the\nblack breakers clamoring for the moon. There was no answer, but heads\nwere shaken and hands gesticulated in strong dissent.\n\nAlba pushed her way into the midst of the group. \u201cWhat does it matter\nwhat the danger is? Go and help them!\u201d she cried. \u201cIf you don\u2019t help\nthem they will all perish!\u201d\n\n\u201cWe cannot help them, little one,\u201d said an old fisherman. \u201cNo boat could\nlive in such a sea. See how the waves run up in mountains to our very\nfeet, and think what it must be out yonder! See, now the signal-gun\nlights it up! Look! again it flashes.\u201d\n\nIt was an appalling sight while the flashes lasted. The waves, rushing\nback, left the side of the ship visible, and then, returning with a\ntremendous sweep, broke over her and buried her out of sight in foam.\nThe stoutest heart might well recoil from venturing to put out in such a\nsea.\n\n\u201cNaught but a miracle could do it,\u201d said one of the oldest and hardiest\nof the fishermen; \u201cand we none of us can work miracles.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod can!\u201d cried Alba, and she looked like the spirit of the storm, her\ndark hair streaming, the light of courage and scorn and beseeching hope\nilluminating her face with an unearthly beauty\u2014\u201cGod can, and he does for\nbrave men; but ye are cowards!\u201d\n\n\u201cGently, little one; men will risk their lives to do some good, but it\nis suicide to rush on death where there is not a chance of saving any\none.\u201d\n\nIt was Caboff who spoke, and his words were followed by strong approval\nfrom the rest.\n\n\u201cYe are cowards!\u201d repeated Alba passionately. \u201cGod would work the\nmiracle, if ye had courage and trusted him. See, there is the light\nnow!\u201d She pointed to the sky, where, as if to justify her promise, the\nmoon came forth, and, scattering the darkness, shed her full blue\nradiance over sea and shore. The storm was now at its height. The guns\nhad ceased to give tongue, and the crowd stood watching the scene in\nmute horror, while the reverberating shore shook under their feet at\nevery shock of the furious billows.\n\nCaboff was right. The ship had struck upon the Scissors, and, caught\nbetween the two blade-like rocks, was rapidly falling to pieces. The\ndeck was deserted. The crew had either gone down into the cabin to meet\ntheir fate or they had been swept away by the devouring waters. One man\nalone was descried by Caboff\u2019s keen eyes clinging to the broken mast. \u201cI\nwill risk it!\u201d cried the old pirate, after watching the wreck for some\nminutes intently. \u201cI will risk it; my old life may as well go out in\nsaving his. Come, boys, help me to push down a boat. I must have three\npairs of hands. Who is to the fore?\u201d\n\nA dozen men rushed forward; the boat was at the water\u2019s edge in a\nmoment, and after a short scuffle\u2014for now all were fighting for\nprecedence\u2014three men got into it, and the others, putting their hands to\nthe stern, launched it with their might. A cheer rang out from the\nshore; but close upon it came a cry, piercing and full of terror. It was\nMarcel Caboff, who was flying down the cliff, and reached the scene just\nas the boat put off.\n\n\u201cFather! father!\u201d cried the lad, and he fell on his knees sobbing.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid, Marcel,\u201d said Alba, falling on her knees beside him;\n\u201che is a brave man, and God will protect him!\u201d\n\nSomething in the tone of the child\u2019s voice made him turn and look at\nher, and as he caught sight of the beam of confidence, almost of\nexultation, on her face, he felt his courage rise and despair was\nsilenced. But what meant that shout?\n\nThe boat was no sooner borne out on the receding wave than it went down\ninto the sea as if never to rise again; there was a moment of breathless\nsuspense, and then the wave rose and tossed it violently to and fro, and\nflung it back upon the shore. The men who had launched it were still\nupon the spot, and rushed forward to seize the boat and help the brave\nfellows out again. One was so stunned by the force of the shock that he\nbecame insensible and had to be lifted out. Old Caboff refused to stir.\n\n\u201cIt is madness to try it again,\u201d said his companions. \u201cA cork could not\nlive in such a sea!\u201d\n\n\u201cI will risk no man\u2019s life,\u201d said Caboff. \u201cI will go alone. Here, my\nmen, lend a hand once more!\u201d\n\nThere was a clamor of expostulation from all present; but the old man\nwas not to be moved.\n\n\u201cI will go with you, father,\u201d said Marcel, stepping in and seizing an\noar.\n\n\u201cYou here, lad! And your mother?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe sent me to look after you. _Allons! mes amis_; push us out and say\nGod speed us!\u201d\n\nBut there was now a third figure in the boat. \u201cNow we are three, and God\nwill make a fourth!\u201d cried Alba; then, turning to the men, \u201cPush us\nout,\u201d she said, \u201cand then go home, lest ye take cold here in the rain!\u201d\n\n\u201cGood God! the child is mad,\u201d cried Virginie, rushing forward to snatch\nher away. But it was too late; a heavy wave rolled in and made the boat\nheave suddenly, which the men seeing, with one impulse put their hands\nto it, till the breaker washed under it and swept it out to sea once\nmore. Virginie stood there like one turned to stone, watching in dumb\nhorror the boat drifting away on to the seething waters. Alba was on her\nknees, her arms outstretched, her face uplifted in the moonlight,\ntransfigured into an apparition of celestial beauty\u2014a heaven-sent\nmessenger from Him who can unchain the storm and bid the winds and waves\nbe still. The rough men, subdued by the sublimity of the scene, knelt\ndown like little children and began to pray.\n\nGallantly the little boat rode on, now drowned out of sight, now rising\nlightly on the crest of the wave, while the sea, as if enraged at so\nmuch daring, redoubled in fury and pitched it to and fro like a ball.\nOld Caboff, grown young again, worked away like a sea-horse. Many a time\nhad he and Death looked into each other\u2019s faces, but never closer than\nnow; and it was not the old seaman who quailed. Marcel, feeble Marcel,\nseemed endowed with the energy and strength of an athlete. They were now\nclose upon the sinking ship; but the peril grew as they approached it.\nThere was a lull for one moment, as if in very weariness the hurricane\ndrew a breath; then a huge wave rose up like a mighty water-tower,\noscillated for a moment like a house about to fall, and, dashing against\nthe boat, swallowed it up in an avalanche of foam. Five seconds of\nmortal suspense followed; not a gasp broke the horrible silence on the\nbeach. But the boat reappeared and rode bravely on to within a stone\u2019s\nthrow of the ship. The solitary man on deck was signalling to them with\none hand, while with the other he clung to the mast. At last the little\nskiff was close under the bows. Old Caboff threw up a rope-ladder; it\nmissed its aim, once, twice, three times. \u201cHow the old fellow is\nswearing! I can see it by his fury,\u201d cried one of the fishermen,\nstamping in sympathetic rage. \u201cHa! the poor devil has caught it. Bravo!\nHurrah! He is in the boat!\u201d\n\nThen there was a cheer, as if the very rocks had found a voice to\napplaud the brave ones who had conquered the storm. Wind and tide were\nwith them as they returned, the waves pitching the boat before them like\nan angry boy kicking a stone, until one final plunge sent it flying on\nthe beach.\n\n\u201cVive Caboff! Vive Marcel! Vive la petite Alba!\u201d And every hand was\nstretched out in welcome. Then there was a pause, a sudden hush, as when\nsome strong emotion is checked by another.\n\n\u201cMonsieur le Marquis!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my friends, thanks to these brave hearts I am amongst you and\nalive.\u201d\n\nHe was the first to step from the boat; then he took Alba in his arms\nand lifted her ashore into Virginie\u2019s. Marcel alighted next, and was\nturning to assist his father when M. le Marquis pushed him gently aside\nand held out both hands to his deliverer. But the old man still grasped\nhis oar and made no sign.\n\n\u201cMon p\u00e8re!\u201d cried Marcel, laying a hand on his arm, \u201cmon p\u00e8re!\u201d\n\nBut old Caboff did not answer him. He was dead.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe _grande arm\u00e9e_ was still winning famous victories, ploughing up\nsunny harvest-fields with cannon-balls, and making homes and hearts\ndesolate.\n\n\u201cThere is one comfort,\u201d said old Peltran, sitting moodily in his\ndeserted bar: \u201cwhen things come to the worst they must get better.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey\u2019ve not come to the worst yet,\u201d observed a neighbor. \u201cThere\u2019s lots\nof things that might happen, that haven\u2019t happened yet; the plague might\ncome, or the blight, or the _grande arm\u00e9e_ might get beaten. We\u2019ve not\ncome to the worst yet, believe you me.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s one thing anyhow that can\u2019t happen,\u201d said Peltran: \u201cthere can\u2019t\nbe another recruitment in Gondriac, for there isn\u2019t a man left amongst\nus fit to shoulder a musket; we are all either too old, or lame, or\nblind of an eye.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s young Caboff is neither one nor the other. To be sure, he\u2019s not\nthe stuff to make a soldier out of; but when they\u2019ve used up all the men\nthey must make the best of the milk-sops.\u201d\n\n\u201cMarcel is a widow\u2019s only son; he\u2019s safe,\u201d said Peltran.\n\n\u201cFrom one day to another the last reserves may be called out,\u201d observed\nthe neighbor; \u201cit will be hard on the mother, after two of her sons\ngoing for cannon\u2019s meat. It was a plucky thing of the old father putting\nout that night. I wonder if he knew for certain who was on the deck of\nthe ship.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf he didn\u2019t he wouldn\u2019t have been such an ass as to put out,\u201d said\nPeltran. \u201cWhy should he fling away his bit of life for a stranger that\nhe owed nothing to?\u201d\n\n\u201cFor the matter of that, he owed nothing to M. le Marquis; the Caboffs,\nthey say, are rich enough to buy up every inch of land in Gondriac.\u201d\n\n\u201cFolks may owe more than money can pay,\u201d retorted Peltran. \u201cM. le\nMarquis was very kind to the old man when his sons were killed, and,\nwhatever Caboff\u2019s sins may have been, he had a fine sense of his natural\nobligations. It didn\u2019t surprise me much when I saw how handsomely he\npaid off his debt to M. le Marquis.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey say that monseigneur swore to Mme. Caboff that if ever she asked\nhim a favor, whatever it was, he would grant it,\u201d said the neighbor.\n\n\u201cVery likely,\u201d remarked the host. \u201cM. le Marquis has a grand-seigneur\nway of doing everything. I hope the Caboffs will have the delicacy never\nto abuse it.\u201d\n\nNot many days after this conversation Mme. Caboff was to be seen walking\nacross the moor on her way to the castle. She looked an older woman than\nshe was; sorrow had broken her down, and it would take little now to\ndestroy the frail tenure of life that remained to her.\n\nThis was the first time she had ever entered the castle. Under other\ncircumstances the visit would have thrown the widow into some\ntrepidation. She would have been pleasantly fluttered at the prospect of\nan interview with the great lord in his own halls, and would have been\nmuch exercised on her way thither as to what she should say to him; but\nher mind was full of other cares to-day.\n\nM. le Marquis was at home. He had spent the morning over a letter from\nCaptain Hermann de Gondriac, which contained a graphic personal\nnarrative of the retreat from Moscow of that disastrous expedition from\nwhich, out of the fifty thousand cavalry who went forth, only one\nhundred and twenty-five officers returned. A pang of anguish and\npatriotic indignation wrung the old nobleman\u2019s heart as he read and\nre-read the terrible story, but tears of deep thankfulness fell from the\nfather\u2019s eyes at the thought that his son was spared and was returning\nsafe and unhurt with that decimated army of starved, exasperated\nspectres. The marquis was perusing the letter for the tenth time when\nMme. Caboff was announced. He rose to receive her with a warmth of\nwelcome that boded well for her petition.\n\n\u201cM. le Marquis, you made me give you a promise once\u2014that night; do you\nremember it?\u201d she said, holding his white hand lightly between her two\nblack-kidded ones, and looking up into his face with the meek and hungry\nlook of a dog begging for a bone which may be refused and a kick given\ninstead.\n\n\u201cRemember it? Yes,\u201d replied the Marquis, returning the timid pressure\nwith a cordial grasp. \u201cYou are in trouble; sit down, madame, and tell me\nwhat there is that I can do to make it lighter for you.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy son, my last and only son, Marcel, is called out, M. le Marquis!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you want to find a substitute for him. It shall be done. I will set\nabout it without an hour\u2019s delay.\u201d\n\n\u201cM. le Marquis, it cannot be done; there are no more substitutes to be\nhad. I would give every penny I possess to get one, but there are none\nleft. The widows\u2019 only sons were the last spared, and now they must go.\nMarcel has been to the prefecture, and they told him there was no help\nfor it: he must join the new levy to-morrow at X\u2014\u2014M. le Marquis, have\npity on me! It will kill me to let him go; and, oh! it is so dreadful to\nsee the boy.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is frightened at the prospect of going to battle?\u201d There was an\nimperceptible ring of scorn under the courteous tone of the aristocrat\nas he put the question.\n\n\u201cHe is mad with delight, M. le Marquis; he has always been wild to\nfollow his brothers and be killed as they were.\u201d\n\n\u201cBrave lad! But he shall not have his wish; he shall not be made food\nfor Bonaparte\u2019s cannon,\u201d said the Marquis. \u201cGo home in peace, madame,\nand break the bad news to him as tenderly as you can.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank God! God bless you, M. le Marquis!\u201d said the widow fervently.\n\u201cBut is it indeed possible? I can hardly believe in so great a joy.\u201d\n\nM. le Marquis was silent for a moment, as if making a calculation; then\nhe said musingly:\n\n\u201cThe emperor is in Paris to-day; I will start in an hour from this and\nsee him to-night. He owes me something. I never thought to have asked a\nfavor at his hands; but I will stoop to ask him that your son be\nexempted from the service.\u201d\n\n\u201cO M. le Marquis!\u201d Mme. Caboff began to cry with joy; but remembering\nsuddenly that this great emperor was conquering the whole world and\nturning kings in and out like valets\u2014for Gondriac heard of his fine\ndoings and was very proud of them\u2014it occurred to her that he might by\npossibility refuse a request proffered even by so great a man as M. le\nMarquis. \u201cYou think his majesty is sure not to refuse you, monsieur?\u201d\nshe added timidly.\n\nM. de Gondriac was too well cased in his armor of pride to be touched by\nthe poor woman\u2019s unconscious insult; he smiled and replied with a quiet\nirony that escaped his visitor: \u201cI think that is very unlikely, Mme.\nCaboff. Be at rest,\u201d he continued kindly. \u201cI pledge you my word that\nyour son shall not be taken from you. Instead of going to-morrow to X\u2014\u2014,\nhe had better start off at once with a letter which I will give him to\nthe prefect.\u201d\n\nHe wrote the letter and handed it to Mme. Caboff.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was late that evening when M. de Gondriac arrived in Paris. He drove\nstraight to the Tuileries. Time was precious, and he had travelled in\ncourt dress, so as not to lose an hour at the end of the journey. It did\nnot occur to him that there could be any delay in reaching the presence\nof the emperor. Petitioners of his class were not so common at the great\nman\u2019s door that it should close upon them because of some informal haste\nin their demand for admittance. He handed in his card and asked to see\nthe lord chamberlain. After some delay he was shown into the presence of\nthat high functionary, to whom he stated his desire for an immediate\naudience of his majesty. The lord chamberlain smilingly informed him\nthat this was impossible; mortals were not admitted into the august\npresence in this abrupt manner; but he\u2014the lord chamberlain\u2014would\npresent the request at his earliest opportunity to-morrow, and\ncommunicate in due time with M. le Marquis.\n\n\u201cThings do not proceed so summarily at court,\u201d he added graciously. The\nmarquis felt his blood boil. This mushroom duke telling a De Gondriac\nhow things were done at court!\n\n\u201cI know enough of courts to be aware that on occasions etiquette must\nyield to weightier reasons,\u201d he replied. \u201cOblige me, M. le Duc, by\ntaking my message at once to the emperor.\u201d\n\nThere was something in his tone which compelled the obsequious courtier\nto obey. He withdrew, and returned presently with a face full of amazed\nadmiration to announce to the visitor that his majesty was willing to\nreceive him.\n\nThe emperor was standing with his hands behind his back in the embrasure\nof a window when M. de Gondriac entered. He did not turn round at once,\nbut waited until the door closed, and then, walking up to M. de\nGondriac, he said brusquely: \u201cI have invited you many times, marquis,\nand you have never come. What brings you here to-night?\u201d The speech was\ncurt, but not insolent; it did not even sound uncivil.\n\n\u201cSire, I am an old man, and it is so long since I have been at court\nthat I have forgotten how to behave myself. My lord chamberlain was\ndeeply shocked, I could perceive, at my breach of ceremony in coming to\nthe palace in this abrupt way without going through the usual\nobservances. My motive will, I hope, excuse me to your majesty.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, I will let you off easier than Bassano,\u201d said the emperor.\n\u201cBut what do you want of me?\u201d He had his hands still behind his back,\nand, without desiring his visitor to be seated, he turned to pace up and\ndown the room.\n\n\u201cI have come to ask a favor of your majesty.\u201d\n\n\u201cHa! that is well. I am glad of that. Do you know, that boy of yours has\nbehaved admirably,\u201d he said, facing round and looking at the marquis.\n\n\u201cWe are accustomed to fight, sire,\u201d replied M. de Gondriac. \u201cIt came\nnaturally to my son; he had, moreover, the advantage of drawing his\nmaiden sword under a great captain.\u201d\n\n\u201cI mean to keep him by me. I have appointed him on my own staff. We are\nnot done with war. I am raising troops for a campaign in the spring.\u201d\n\n\u201cSire, I am aware of it; it is precisely about that that I have come to\nspeak to your majesty. There is in my village a widow whose two sons\nhave fallen in the service of the country; there remains to her one more\nson, a lad of nineteen....\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd she is ambitious that he should share the glorious fate of his\nbrothers; that is natural,\u201d broke in the emperor.\n\n\u201cSire, she is a widow, and this boy is all she has in the world. It is\nno longer possible to procure a substitute; therefore I come to crave at\nyour hands his exemption from the service.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! you would rob France of a soldier, when they are so scarce that\ngold cannot buy one? Is this your notion of duty to your country, M. de\nGondriac? Is it thus you aristocrats understand patriotism?\u201d The emperor\nconfronted him with a flashing eye.\n\n\u201cMy son has answered that question, sire.\u201d\n\n\u201cTut! And because, forsooth, your son has done his duty, you would have\nother men\u2019s sons betray theirs! A peasant makes as good a soldier as a\npeer, let me tell you. Because your son condescended to share the glory\nof the _grande arm\u00e9e_ you expect me to make you a present of a strong\nyoung soldier! I do not understand such sentimental logic.\u201d\n\n\u201cNeither do I, sire. I was not putting forward the services of my son as\na claim for this poor lad, but those of his two brothers who lost their\nlives, one at Wagram, the other at Friedland.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat better could have befallen them?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing, in my estimation; but their mother....\u201d\n\n\u201cFrance is their mother; she claims their allegiance and their life\nbefore any one. The man who puts his mother before his country is a fool\nor a coward!\u201d\n\n\u201cThis young man has not asked to be exempted; his mother came and\nbesought me to have him spared to her, and, counting on your gratitude\nand generosity, sire, I have come to lay her petition at your feet. The\nboy himself is frantic to be off and die like his brothers.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen he shall have his wish and France shall count one more hero. Tell\nhis mother she shall have a pension. Give me her name, and it shall be\ndone at once.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is not in want of it, sire; she has wealth enough to buy a score of\nmen, if they were to be had.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut they are not, and so her son must go.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is your last word, sire?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, marquis, my last.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I have only to crave your majesty\u2019s forgiveness for my intrusion.\u201d\nM. de Gondriac bowed and was moving towards the door, when the emperor\ncalled out:\n\n\u201cStay a moment. What motive have you in pleading this widow\u2019s cause so\nstrongly?\u201d\n\nThe marquis in a few words told the story of that memorable night when\nCaboff saved him at the cost of his own life. The emperor listened to\nthe end without interrupting him; then he resumed his walk, and,\nspeaking from the other end of the room, \u201cYou are naturally anxious to\npay back so heavy a debt,\u201d he said. \u201cWould this feeling carry you the\nlength of making some sacrifice?\u201d\n\nHow could Bonaparte ask the question? Did not M. de Gondriac\u2019s presence\nhere to-night answer it exhaustively?\n\n\u201cI think I have proved that, sire,\u201d he answered coldly.\n\nThe emperor was silent for a while; then, turning round, he looked\nfixedly at the marquis and said:\n\n\u201cI withdraw my unconditional refusal. I will let you know to-morrow on\nwhat terms I consent to exempt the son of your deliverer from dying on\nthe field of battle.\u201d\n\nM. de Gondriac bowed low. \u201cI have the honor to salute your majesty.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Au revoir_, marquis.\u201d\n\nWhat did he mean, and what was this condition so mysteriously hinted at,\nand only to be declared after the night\u2019s preparation?\n\nM. de Gondriac was sitting over his breakfast next morning when an\nestafette rode up to his old h\u00f4tel, bearing a large official envelope\nstamped with the imperial arms and the talismanic words, \u201cMaison de\nl\u2019Empereur.\u201d M. le Marquis broke the seal and ran his eye down the large\nsheet, and then tossed it from him with an exclamation of anger and\ncontempt.\n\n\u201cEnter _his_ service! Play lackey at the court of an upstart who is\ndrenching my country in blood from sheer vanity and ambition\u2014a usurper\nwho is keeping my liege sovereign in exile, and the best part of my\nkindred in idleness, or else in a servitude more humiliating than the\ndreariest inactivity! A De Gondriac tricked out in the livery of a\nmountebank king like him! Ha! ha! M. de Bonaparte, when you give that\nspectacle to the gods, ... _je vous en fais mon compliment_!\u201d\n\nM. le Marquis laughed a low, musical laugh as he muttered these\nreflections to himself. But presently he ceased laughing and his face\ntook a dark and troubled look. The emperor made his acceptance of this\noffer the price of Marcel Caboff\u2019s exemption. If he rejected it, the lad\nmust join. \u201cWould gratitude carry you the length of a sacrifice?\u201d When\nthe question had been put to him, it seemed to M. de Gondriac that he\nhad forestalled it; but the emperor evidently did not think so, and now\nhe was putting him to the test. It was the severest he could have\nchosen. When Hermann de Gondriac took service under Bonaparte, the old\nnobleman considered his son was making a fine sacrifice of personal\npride to patriotism; but the service here, at least, was a noble one,\nand rendered to France rather than to the upstart who had captured her.\nBut this other was of a totally different order. Even in the bygone\ndays, when France had a legitimate king and real court, the De Gondriacs\nhad been shy of taking office in the royal household, preferring the\nservice of the camp, diplomacy abroad, or statesmanship at home; to\nstoop now to be a courtier to Bonaparte was a degradation not to be\ncalmly contemplated. If the tyrant had asked any sacrifice but this, M.\nle Marquis said to himself, he would have made it gladly; but this was\nimpossible. It meant the surrender of his self-respect, of those\nprinciples whose integrity he had hitherto proudly maintained at no\nsmall personal risk and cost. Before he had finished his coffee, the\nquestion was settled, and he rose to write his answer.\n\nTrifles sometimes affect us with the force of great repellant causes.\nThe act of taking the pen in his hand brought before him vividly the\nlast time he had held it: it was in his library at Gondriac; the widow\nsat watching him with a swelling heart, made glad by his promise\nsolemnly given: \u201cI pledge you my word that your son shall not be taken\nfrom you.\u201d M. le Marquis laid down his pen and fell to thinking. \u201cNo, I\ncan\u2019t do it,\u201d he said after a long pause. \u201cI can\u2019t belie the traditions\nof my race; I can\u2019t stain the old name and turn saltimbanque in my old\nage.\u201d He took up the pen and wrote to the emperor, declining his offer.\n\nThe next day the town of X\u2014\u2014 was full of excitement. The new recruits\nwere pouring in, sometimes in boisterous crowds, singing and hurrahing,\nsometimes in sober knots of twos and threes, sometimes singly,\naccompanied by weeping relatives, mostly women. There had been an\nofficial attempt to get up a show of warlike enthusiasm, but it had\nfailed; people were growing sick of the glories of war, sick of sending\nsons and brothers and husbands to be massacred for Bonaparte\u2019s good\npleasure. The recruits were called out by name, and answered sullenly as\nthey passed through the Mairie out to the market-place, where the\nsergeant was waiting to give them their first lesson in drill, showing\nthem how to stand straight and get into position.\n\n\u201cMarcel Caboff!\u201d called out the recruiting agent.\n\n\u201c_Remplac\u00e9!_\u201d\n\n\u201cBy whom?\u201d\n\n\u201cRudolf, Marquis de Gondriac!\u201d\n\nTO BE CONTINUED.\n\n\n\n\n                                HIGHER.\n\n\nI have lifted up my eyes unto the mountains, whence help shall come to\nme.\u2014_Ps._ cxx.\n\nToo late have I known thee, O Infinite Beauty! too late have I loved\nthee, O Beauty ever ancient and new!\u2014_St. Augustine._\n\n\n                                   I.\n\n\n    'Mid wide green meadows, made more fair with flowers\u2014\n      Tall, golden lilies, swaying in the sun,\n      Slight, clustering rue that web of silver spun\u2014\n    I lingered dreaming through the day\u2019s first hours.\n    About me men in work-day toil were bent,\n      Swift levelling the daisies\u2019 drift of snow,\n      The clover\u2019s purple sweetness laying low,\n    And ripened grain whose summer life was spent.\n    I sat where leafy trees a shadow wrought\n      Amid the broad, warm sunshine of the plain,\n      Where, undisturbed, poured forth the wood-birds\u2019 strain\n    And fancy\u2019s magic played with every thought:\n    A whole life centred in each daisy-round,\n    And work-day toil seemed but a slumbrous sound.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\n\n    Low rippling at my feet a loitering stream\n      Slipt, murmuring music to each listening stone,\n      Or flung its silver laughter where soft shone\n    The slant sunbeam breaking the shadows\u2019 dream;\n    Betwixt the robins\u2019 song the swift blue-bird\n      Flashed like a heavenly message through the shade\n      Where with the sunshine gentlest breezes played,\n    And quiet shadows to soft motion stirred.\n    Between me and the meadow\u2019s smitten flow\u2019rs\n      The fresh June roses wreathed the rude fence bars,\n      Frail elder trailed its galaxy of stars,\n    While butterflies sped by in golden show\u2019rs\u2014\n    Far, far beyond, the earth-haze shining through,\n      Rose the great mountains\u2019 dim and misty blue.\n\n\n                                  III.\n\n\n    So far and strange those misty hills! so near\n      And intimate the little, shady nook,\n      The skies reflected in the merry brook\u2014\n    Those distant heights so lonely and austere!\n    Scarce e\u2019en the busy mowers of the field\n      Lifted their eyes to those dim gates of blue\n      Where all their gathered harvest must pass through,\n    Its grass and stubble be one day revealed.\n    As grew the day, more clear the summits grew;\n      Springing from shadow, radiant waterfalls\n      Flung trails of sunshine o\u2019er the stern rock-walls\u2014\n    Such sunshine as the valley never knew!\n    Paled the June roses, fading in my hand,\n      Tarnished the lowland river\u2019s golden sand!\n\n\n                                  IV.\n\n\n    Then seemed to stir the trembling leaves amid,\n      To mingle with the robins\u2019 cheerful call,\n      A low, sad voice, as if the hills let fall\n    Faint, wandering echoes of sweet music hid\n    In dark ravine, on solitary height.\n      I dropped my roses, gone their ravishment;\n      I passed the mowers o\u2019er their harvest bent;\n    I sought those distant mountain-lands of light.\n    Wild, thorny brambles stretched across my way,\n      Sharp rocks were weary pathways for my feet,\n      Yet ever lured me on those accents sweet\n    Whose very sadness was my weakness\u2019 stay,\n    With every step more intimate and near\u2014\n      \u201cTake heart, poor child! \u2019tis I; have thou no fear.\n\n\n                                   V.\n\n\n    \u201cTake heart, and I thy faltering steps will lead\n      Above the earth-mists and the brier-strewn road\n      To my far mountain-tops, the pure abode\n    Of heaven-born stream, and fair enamelled mead\n    Whose flow\u2019rs immortal fells not any scythe.\n      Long have I sought thee 'mid the withering flowers\n      Wherewith thou smiling crown\u2019dst the fading hours,\n    Weaving fine fancies 'mid the murmuring blithe\n    Of lowland stream, and birds, and pattering leaves;\n      Long have I called thee, waiting for thy voice,\n      So faint it rose above the troublous noise\n    Of earthly harvesters among their sheaves;\n    Long have I waited thy dear heart to win,\n      So long desired to reign with thee therein.\u201d\n\n\n                                  VI.\n\n\n    O sorrow-stricken Voice, so piercing sweet!\n      Blinding my eyes with tears, smiting my heart\n      Like some fire-pointed, swift-descending dart,\n    And giving strength unto my climbing feet\n    Seeking those dim and misty hills of blue.\n      Lo! the great mountains at thy music thrilled,\n      And all their deep recesses echoes filled\u2014\n    Near and more near the sunlit summits grew!\n    The little birds that gathered, unafraid,\n      On berry-laden boughs beside my way\n      Mingled thy cadence with their roundelay\u2014\n    Its joyousness grown sweeter through thy shade.\n    O Voice of love and grief, sad for my sin,\n    What ways were thine so poor a thing to win!\n\n\n                                  VII.\n\n\n    O thou Almighty Lord of life and death,\n      Thou that hast led me out the wilderness\n      And shown me thy great hills\u2019 pure strength to bless,\n    Guard in my soul, lest still it perisheth!\n    The cross thou gavest still I strive to bear\u2014\n      So light it grows that half, at times, I fear\n      My trust is lost, sign of thy service dear\u2014\n    Dost thou bear all, dear Lord, for me no share?\n    So in thy steps to follow still I seek,\n      The wearing way thy patient feet have pressed,\n      The blood-stained way thy heavy cross hath blessed\u2014\n    Dost thou hold me to suffer aught too weak?\n    E\u2019en when I strive one little thorn to grasp\n    It turns to tender roses in my clasp.\n\n\n                                 VIII.\n\n\n    The very stones win smoothness from thy feet,\n      Beneath whose tread immortal flowers spring,\n      Holding within their snowy hearts no sting,\n    And breathing spices for love\u2019s incense meet.\n    The lark, swift rising thy approach to greet,\n      The fulness of his heavenly song to pour\n      No higher than thy breast divine need soar,\n    There hiding life and song in joy complete!\n    Though sheltering trees o\u2019ershadow not my way\n      To ward the sultry glow of noonday sun,\n      Yet 'neath thy cross the coolest shade is won\n    That dims no ray of that eternal day\n    That from yon unstained hills of peace doth shine,\n    Whereto thou leadest me, O Love Divine!\n\n\n                                  IX.\n\n\n    Yet many bitter tears I needs must weep,\n      Remembering the glimmer of the plain\n      Where nodding lilies and the bending grain\n    Seemed rarest treasure in their gold to keep;\n    Those thoughtless hours ere I learned to look\n      Beyond my roses to the misty hills\u2014\n      The far-off pastures only God\u2019s hand tills;\n    Where lost I in the laughter of the brook\n    And song of earthly birds that loving Voice,\n      That patient call, alas! too long denied.\n      Still in my heart in weeping woe must bide,\n    E\u2019en in His breast who bids my soul rejoice,\n    The mem\u2019ry of that day\u2019s ingratitude\n    When God in vain for love his creature sued.\n\n\n\n\n                      THE IRON AGE OF CHRISTENDOM.\n\n\nOur period is emphatically one of historical studies, as we have had\noccasion to remark in a former article on the _Life and Works of M.\nOzanam_. Among other illusions swept away by the light of truth which\nthese laborious researches have let in upon the obscurity of the past,\nthere is one great illusion about golden and iron ages. In respect to\nthe Christian period, specifically, it is manifest that it is vain to\nlook, in the apostolic, ante-Nicene, medi\u00e6val, or modern ages, for that\nideal perfection in real, concrete existence which may have been in our\nimagination as a pleasing picture. There has never been an age of gold\nunmixed with baser metal for the church any more than for humanity in\ngeneral. The analogy of the past, which is the only sure criterion we\ncan apply to the future, forbids us to expect that there ever will be\nsuch a purely golden age on the earth. Moreover, those iron ages or dark\nages, of Christian or pre-Christian, historic or pre-historic times,\nwhich have been imagined to precede or to interrupt the epochs of\nsplendor and light, are seen on inspection not to have been all iron or\nall darkness. The progress of mankind towards its destination has been\ncontinuous from the beginning, although, in larger or smaller local\nextensions or numerical portions of humanity, there has been in various\nperiods a stoppage or retrogradation of the movement, in appearance, and\nin respect to individual progress. The earth keeps its regular course,\nthough men walk on its surface in an opposite direction, and they are\ncarried with it unconsciously. The ship goes on and carries with it the\npassenger, while he is walking from the bow to the stern. Clouds, night,\nand eclipses are not a destruction or suspension of the irradiation of\nlight from the sun on the earth, but its partial and temporary\nimpediments. The ship which makes a long, dangerous, but successful\nvoyage is making headway while plunging into the trough of the sea as\nwell as while riding the crest of the waves; often is less delayed by\nbeating against adverse winds than by calm weather and light breezes.\nThe bark of Peter, freighted with the treasures of human hope and\ndestiny, is steadily proceeding, under the guidance of her heavenly\nPilot, over the waves of time, through calm and stormy seas, toward the\nport of eternity. Seldom does she seem to be in safety, and show the\nspeed of her motion, to the uninstructed eyes of those who do not\npossess the sublime science of the stars and charts by which her\ncelestial course is directed. \u201cNever,\u201d says Lacordaire, \u201cis the triumph\nof the church visible at a given moment. If you look at any one point in\nthe expanse of the ages, the bark of Peter appears to be about to be\nengulfed, and the faithful are always prompt to cry out: _Lord, save us,\nwe perish!_ But if you look at the whole series of times, the church\nmanifests her strength, and you understand what Jesus Christ said in the\ntempest: _Man of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?_\u201d[75]\n\nFootnote 75:\n\n  _Conf. de Notre Dame_, tome i. conf. iv. at the end.\n\nThere is nevertheless a difference in the character of epochs. The\nepochs of Constantine, Charlemagne, Gregory VII., of the thirteenth and\nseventeenth centuries, are seen in the retrospect to have a special\nlight of glory about them. The seventh, tenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth\ncenturies present a dark aspect. The tenth century particularly, which\nwe are at present bringing under review, is generally called \u201cthe iron\nage\u201d even by our modern Catholic historians, and not without\nconsiderable reason, more especially in respect to the state and\ncondition of the Roman Church and the sovereign pontificate.\nNevertheless, the common notion, derived from compendious histories and\nthe generalized statements which form the commonplaces of popular\nliterature, respecting the tenth age of Christendom is not correct and\nis extremely confused. It was not an age of complete barbarism and\nuniversal ignorance. Ozanam says: \u201cIndeed, letters did not, at any time,\nperish. The truth is that the period of complete barbarism, supposed at\nfirst to extend over a space of a thousand years, from the fall of the\nRoman Empire to the capture of Constantinople, then gradually reduced to\nnarrower limits, until it remained finally restricted to the seventh and\ntenth centuries, vanishes away under a more severe scrutiny.\u201d[76] Cant\u00f9\nremarks: \u201cThis epoch is justly called the iron age, because of the cruel\nsufferings endured by individuals and nations; but humanity made a\nsensible progress in the face of these trials. We cannot, therefore,\nconcur in the judgment of those who consider it the most unhappy period\nof the human race.\u201d[77] We cannot make logical divisions of history into\nepochs exactly corresponding with the numerical notation of years and\ncenturies. It would be absurd to suppose that at 12 A.M. of January 1,\nA.D. 900, to borrow Carlyle\u2019s expression, \u201cthe clock of Time struck and\nan era passed away\u201d; and that the same venerable old timepiece, from its\ncorner in the parlor of the universe, struck again in just a hundred\nyears, announcing the end of the iron age and the beginning of another\nof some different metal. The boundaries of epochs are not quite so\ndeterminate, and centuries, periods, epochs, run into one another, mix,\nblend, elude precise delineation. Cant\u00f9\u2019s tenth epoch is not the tenth\ncentury, but the period beginning A.D. 800 and ending A.D. 1096. This\nperiod, between Charlemagne and the Crusades, far from presenting the\naspect of a desolate waste to the eye, is crowded and variegated with\nevents and persons of the most important and interesting character, and\ntheir history is one great act in the European drama, advancing it\nsensibly toward the consummation which we are still, in our own age,\nhastening forward and awaiting in the near or distant future. Within\nthis great period are other and lesser cycles, embracing epochs, phases,\ntemporary states of ecclesiastical and civil prosperity or adversity,\nalternations of various kinds, in Christendom, in Europe, or in portions\nof the Christian commonwealth, each having its distinctive notes. That\npart of it which is in the centre presents the characteristics of an\niron age more distinctly marked than the preceding or following periods.\nThe latter half of the ninth and the earlier half of the tenth century,\ntaken together, really constitute the period which can with strict\npropriety be called the iron age. And within this century a period of\nabout forty years, including the end of the ninth and the first years of\nthe tenth century, was a sort of crisis in which Christian Europe seemed\nto have reached the dead-point in her progress, and, having passed it,\nwent on again under the attraction of a new force.\n\nFootnote 76:\n\n  Dante, _Disc. Prelim._, sec. v.\n\nFootnote 77:\n\n  _Hist. Univ._, ep. x. epilogue, tome ix. p. 478.\n\nThis statement must not be taken as rigorously and uniformly applicable\nto all Europe and Christendom. The Greek Empire and the degenerate\nEastern Church were in a state of hopeless decadence, verging toward a\npermanent downfall. England and Spain, on the other hand, passed through\ntheir worst times earlier, and were going upward and onward, led by\ngreat men and heroes\u2014Alfred and the forerunners of Ferdinand and the\nCid\u2014just at the time when the rest of Europe was in the most disordered\nand disastrous condition. The crisis of the iron age affected chiefly\nthe countries which had constituted the great domain of\nCharlemagne\u2014France, Germany, and Italy. Its phases were various, in\nrespect to time and other conditions, in these very countries. The whole\npanorama, as presented to our view in the pages of historical narrative,\nis as shifting, varied, apparently capricious, as mountain scenery in\nthe changing aspects of light and shade, produced by sunshine, clouds,\nand moonlight, by transforming mists and sombre night. It is only when\nwe rise to the logical order and sequence of events, trace effects to\ntheir causes, enlarge our scope of vision, ascend into the upper regions\nof a true philosophy of history whose atmosphere is the Christian idea\nand whose light is celestial faith, that a real order, harmony, and\nprogression toward an intelligible and grand result are clearly\ndiscernible.\n\nSome few general statements borrowed from this higher branch of\nhistorical science must be premised before we can come at a satisfactory\nview of our particular and immediate topic and set its details in\nsystematic order.\n\nThe actual evils and miseries which afflicted the Christian people of\nEurope during the iron age were invasions of Saracens, Scandinavians,\nand Hungarians, incessant wars among greater and lesser princes,\nterrible famines and pestilences, and, in general, a state of\nturbulence, insecurity, social and moral confusion. This whole state of\nthings was a relapse into the condition brought about by the fall of the\nRoman Empire and the barbarian irruption in the seventh century. The\ngreat reason why it occurred is found in the fact that Charlemagne\u2019s\ngreat empire and power passed away and that no unifying, organic power\nsucceeded it until Europe had passed through a period of transition. The\nRoman Empire had to pass away to make room for Christendom, and for a\ntime its _d\u00e9bris_ and the new material lying on the ground for a\nreconstruction made a state of confusion. Charlemagne\u2019s fundamental work\nwas solid and lasting, but he had to make some temporary structures\nwhich were showy but not substantial, and therefore fell down or were\ntorn down; causing more disorder for a time, until they were cleared\naway to make room for the permanent and splendid walls to be built up\naccording to the idea of the divine Architect. The European, Christian\nIdea is not that of one, uniform political western empire, ruled by an\nautocracy which continues or succeeds to the old, imperial Roman power.\nIt is that of a community of nations, bound together by a common faith,\ncommon principles, international law, mutual alliance and amity, and\npreserving full scope for distinct and beautifully various forms of\nfree, spontaneous growth and culture. Its regenerating, vivifying, and\ncontrolling spirit is Christianity in the Catholic organization. Its\ncentre of unity and force is Rome and the spiritual supremacy of the\npope. The political supremacy of an emperor\u2014understanding by an emperor\na universal monarch ruling subordinate kings set over dependent\nkingdoms\u2014is incompatible with this true idea of a Christendom. Even,\nsupposing this universal political sovereignty united with the sovereign\npontificate of the Pope, it is incompatible with that true idea, partly\nfor the same reasons, partly for different reasons from those which\nmilitate against it, supposing the two distinct powers to exist\nseparately. It was necessary that the pope should possess his own\nseparate sovereignty in a kingdom of moderate size. It was also\nnecessary that some one powerful king should be endowed by the pope with\na special, sacred pre-eminence among other sovereigns, as the protector\nof his civil princedom and of his spiritual supremacy. This was the\nmeaning of Charles the Great\u2019s imperial coronation. He was, in fact,\nreally the king of almost all Europe. But this was temporary. His\nkingdom was divided. The imperial dignity was conferred on different\nsovereigns of France, Italy, and Germany from time to time, and for\nabove thirty years remained in abeyance for want of a proper subject to\nreceive it, until it rested at last on the head of the first of the\nSaxon line, passing thence to the Franconian house, and afterwards to\nthe Hohenstaufen. The German emperors were, however, by election kings\nof Germany, and as such governed their states; whereas they were made\nemperors by papal consecration, and in that capacity were protectors of\nthe Holy See and the church. The authority which they lawfully exercised\nas emperors in the city and principality of Rome was the authority of a\ncivil magistrate who was not the head but the right arm of the pope, the\nreal political sovereign in his own state.\n\nThe European crisis of the tenth century was a period in which the\nCarlovingian dynasty was going into decadence, and the new dynasties of\nFrance and Germany had not yet arisen. There was a great want of able\nsovereigns, and especially of men who were strong enough to fulfil the\nfunctions of the imperial office. To turn now especially towards Italy\nand Rome, it was the lack of a strong hand to preserve peace and order\namong the petty princes and states of Italy, and to protect the pope and\nthe Holy See from the rebellions and intrigues of powerful nobles and\ncontending factions within and around the Roman principality, which was\nthe chief cause of the long obnubilation of the sun of Christendom\u2014the\nRoman Church\u2014during the tenth epoch. We propose to enter now more\nminutely into the exposition of the historical truth respecting this\nperiod, so far as it relates to the popes and the Roman Church directly\nand immediately.\n\nThe ordinary accounts of this epoch in Roman and Italian history produce\na singular impression on the mind of the reader. It seems as if the gas\nhad been suddenly turned off and all had become dark, or as if an\nexpress-train filled with passengers had all at once been stopped by an\nimpediment in the middle of the night at an obscure way-station, to the\nsurprise and chagrin of all on board when they awoke in the morning. One\nis puzzled and disgusted by a confused, disconnected story which reads\nlike the record of crimes and disasters in a modern newspaper. The\npersons mentioned seem to have no reality or distinct character\u2014to be\nlike the spectres of dreams or the personified abstractions in parables.\nThe very names of the popes, such as Formosus, Marinus, Lando, Romanus,\nhave a strange, unpapal sound. They appear and vanish with marvellous\nrapidity, leaving no trace behind. When we read that the world was\ngenerally expected to explode in the year 1000, we are not surprised,\nbut rather wonder why it did not, and are quite relieved to find\nourselves safe and sound in the eleventh century, and hear those \u201cwhom\nthe Lord hath sent to walk through the earth answer the angel of the\nLord, and say: We have walked through the earth; and behold, all the\nearth is inhabited, and is at rest.\u201d[78]\n\nFootnote 78:\n\n  Zacharias i. 10, 11.\n\nOne great difficulty in picking the thread of history out of this snarl\nis the paucity of contemporary documents. Another cause of\nmisunderstanding and misrepresentation has been the flippant and\nmendacious character of the most extensive and minute of the chronicles\nof the period, that of Luitprand. The same kind of gossiping,\nscandal-mongering centres which exist among us may not have existed in\nthe tenth century. There were no newspapers filled with libels and\ncalumnies, falsifications of news, reports of the army of detectives of\nthe press. But there were the same violent factions, party animosities,\nintrigues, mutual denunciations, raising a cloud of smoke and dust like\nthat which overhangs a battle-field, in even more virulent activity then\nthan we now behold them in our modern political _m\u00eal\u00e9es_. All the\ncondensed scandal, partisan vituperation, indecent gossip, and malicious\ncalumny of the time in which he lived are collected in the memoirs of\nLuitprand, and from these have been infiltrated through succeeding\ntimes, leaving great stains which only the acid of criticism has been\nable to efface. Even Fleury says of him that he is extremely passionate,\nexcessive both in his abuse and his flattery, and given to buffoonery to\na degree which transgresses the bounds of decency. He was originally a\nsubdeacon of the church of Toledo in Spain, afterwards a deacon of the\nchurch of Pavia, during which time he was sent by Berenger, King of\nItaly, on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople. Later he became Bishop\nof Cremona, but was a disgrace to the episcopate. He was a courtier of\nOtho the German emperor, who sent him on another mission to\nConstantinople, a violent adherent of the German party, bitterly hostile\nto the Italian party and all the popes who favored it, and a\nparticipator in the schismatical proceedings of Otho\u2019s anti-pope. His\ncredit is now entirely lost. But at the time of the revolt of Luther all\nthe incriminations of the popes and the Roman clergy, whether true,\nfalse, or doubtful, were gathered up and made the most of to sustain the\nbill of indictment against the Holy See. The same stories, repeated by\nnumbers of writers, produced the effect of concurrent testimony on the\ngeneral mind of the readers of history. Baronius and other Catholic\nhistorians, not having sufficient materials for testing and correcting\nall these accusations, let a number of them pass uncontradicted or\nadmitted their truth. Fleury and some others of the lowest Gallican\nschool, who always write like advocates who have taken out a brief\nagainst the Holy See, have in their historical works neglected and\nperverted facts in a manner which is equally shallow and perfidious, and\nas contrary to sound criticism as it is to orthodox doctrine. It is only\nsince the discovery of Flodoard\u2019s _Lives of the Popes_, the critical and\nlearned researches of Muratori, and the great modern advance of genuine\nhistorical science, that the tissue of lies depending solely on the\nworthless testimony of Luitprand has been swept away. A better\nappreciation of the great course of events and the essential facts of\nhistory is now possible, and even easy. Men of genius, learning, and\nconscientious devotion to truth have lighted up these dark, buried\ncrypts of the substructure of Christendom, as the zealous arch\u00e6ologists\nof York have done in the old minster, whose foundations were laid in the\nvery period we are describing.[79]\n\nFootnote 79:\n\n  See Mr. Ticknor\u2019s _Life_, vol. i. p. 436.\n\nIn regard to many particular events and certain individuals whose names\nfigure in connection with the transactions of an obscure epoch we cannot\nexpect to acquire a perfect certainty. Nor is there anything of moment\ndepending on the discovery of the truth in such cases. We have to be\ncontent with a probability or with a doubt in thousands of matters of\ndetail. There are a considerable number of popes of whom we know next to\nnothing. In certain instances it is not easy to determine whether an\nelection of a given individual was valid or invalid. Of the truth or\nfalsehood of the accusations made against several popes and other\npersons of high ecclesiastical or civil rank, and of the reports of\nassassinations and other great crimes, which are so frequent in this\nperiod of disorder, we cannot always form a certain judgment. There is\nenough, however, of that which is certain or fairly probable to show the\nconnection, the continuity, and the identity of principles both with the\nforegoing and the following epochs, and to furnish ample material for\nthe vindication of the cause of the Holy See and the Papacy. There is a\nsequence in the progress through the struggles of transition; there are\ngreat and good men, noble and heroic achievements, interesting and\ncurious episodes\u2014in fine, there is a human and a Christian character\nshowing its lineaments in place of the cloudy spectre with distorted\nfeatures which has heretofore scared the imagination.[80]\n\nFootnote 80:\n\n  We make here our acknowledgment of indebtedness to the series of\n  articles in the _Civilt\u00e0 Cattolica_ entitled \u201cI Destini di Roma,\u201d\n  which was begun Aug. 19, 1871, for a great part of what is to follow\n  in this article.\n\nWe begin our historical sketch with Pope Formosus, who was elected A.D.\n891. This is one of the popes of whom we have said above that they seem\nin our common histories like a mere shadow of a great name without a\npersonal reality. Besides, there is a certain cloud on his memory,\narising from the fact that he was deprived of his see of Porto by John\nVIII., and that he was the subject of a great outrage from his\nsuccessor, Stephen VI. A careful examination of his history shows,\nhowever, that he was no common man and was both a good and an able pope.\nAs Bishop of Porto he was one of the most conspicuous among the Italian\nprelates. He left his see to become a missionary among the Bulgarians,\nwhere he labored zealously and successfully in the work of their\nconversion. There is nothing to show that his censure by Pope John\nVIII., which seems to have been chiefly occasioned by his taking an\nactive part in a political opposition to the Emperor Charles the Bald,\ninvolved in it any moral dishonor. He was restored by Pope Marinus, and\nthe indignities inflicted on his memory by his successor were a wanton\nand causeless outrage, which was condemned and repaired by a subsequent\npope with the approbation of the Roman people.\n\nEurope was just then in the depths of the disorders and miseries caused\nby the decay of the imperial authority and the degeneracy of\nCharlemagne\u2019s successors. Berenger was king in Northern Italy, but\nGuido, Duke of Spoleto, and his son Lambert had been crowned emperors in\nopposition to him and to all the French and German claimants. Toward the\nend of the short reign of Formosus, which lasted less than five years,\nand after the death of Guido, the dissatisfaction of the pope with the\nconduct of Lambert and his mother, Ermengarda, induced him to summon\nArnulph, King of Germany, to come to the relief of the Holy See and of\nItaly. He obeyed the summons, made a forcible entry into Rome, where the\nLambertine faction had gained the upper hand and thrown Formosus into\nprison, and was by him crowned emperor. This was the beginning of the\nappeals of the popes to Germany for intervention in Italian affairs, and\nof the never-ending conflicts between the Italian and German parties in\nItaly, whose _finale_ we have but just witnessed in our own day in the\nexclusion of Austria from her dominion in Venetia. We have no doubt that\nit was necessary, and on the whole productive of good results, that the\nimperial crown should be transferred to the German sovereigns. But,\nwithout delaying to consider this point, we simply take note of the fact\nthat this was one of the great questions of violent dispute and\ncontention which disturbed the Roman Church and the papal elections so\nlong as there were Italian princes who disputed the imperial dignity\nwith the Germans. Arnulph returned almost immediately to Germany.\nFormosus died and was followed to the tomb a few weeks after by his\nimmediate successor, Boniface VI. The party of Lambert succeeded in\nobtaining the election of Stephen VI., the first of the popes who\ngrievously dishonored the tiara. His violent and shameful conduct caused\na temporary reaction in favor of the opposite party, by whom he was\nimprisoned and strangled. Lambert was, nevertheless, acknowledged by the\nthree succeeding popes, Romanus, Theodore II., and John IX., and by two\nsuccessive councils, and the pact between the church and the empire was\nsolemnly renewed. These three pontificates filled only a space of three\nyears and closed the century. The year 901 saw a new competitor for the\nimperial crown, which death had taken from Lambert\u2019s head, in the person\nof Louis of Provence, who was actually crowned by Benedict IV., but very\nsoon driven away by Berenger, who was still reigning in the north of\nItaly. Berenger was an able and warlike sovereign, in many respects\nworthy of admiration, and capable of filling the imperial office with\nhonor to himself and advantage to Italy. Circumstances were, however,\nextremely adverse. He maintained himself in possession of a certain\npre-eminence among the petty sovereigns of Italy, and carried on\nvigorously wars against the Saracen and Hungarian invaders. He was even\ncrowned emperor in 915, but was never able to establish his authority on\na solid and permanent basis, and at last, in 924, he was assassinated by\na conspiracy of Italian nobles. With him the imperial office became\nextinct, and remained so until it was resuscitated, thirty-eight years\nafterward, in the person of Otho the Great.\n\nThe failure of the imperial power which had been instituted in the\nperson of Charlemagne left the Holy See and all Italy a prey to\ncontending, petty sovereigns, to powerful and mutually hostile nobles\nand factions, and to fierce heathen invaders. The Roman pontiffs\nmaintained with difficulty a restricted, often merely nominal, civil\nsovereignty in the city and principality of Rome. Between the years 900\nand 914 six popes succeeded each other: Benedict IV., Leo V.,\nChristopher, Sergius III., Anastasius III., and Lando. Of the nine popes\nwho came between Stephen VI. and John X., it is certain that nearly all\nwere worthy of their exalted position, and the grave accusations made\nagainst two of the number, Christopher and Sergius, rest on uncertain\ntestimony. The average length of their reigns being less than two years,\nand that of the longest among them only seven, most of the number had no\ntime to make a conspicuous figure in history, and their annals are so\nscanty that very little is known of the acts of their administration.\n\nThe reign of John X., which lasted fourteen years, from 914 to 928, was\nof a different character. He was one of the great popes, and proved\nhimself fully equal to the emergencies of the time and the difficulties\nof his position. For nine years previously to his election to the Roman\nSee he had been Archbishop of Ravenna, and the extraordinary ability\nwhich he had exhibited in his government of that important church had\npointed him out as one capable of making head, in conjunction with\nBerenger, against the perils with which Rome and Italy were beset at\nthis most dangerous crisis in their destinies. In fact, he was obliged\nto do the work alone; for Berenger was unable to help him, having his\nhands full in fighting Saracens and Hungarians in Northern Italy. There\nwas no hope to be placed either in Germany or France. The only resource\nfor the pope was to place himself at the head of his own barons and in\nalliance with the neighboring princes, and to lead the war against the\nSaracens in person. For this purpose he formed a league among the\nprinces of Southern Italy, and, obtaining also auxiliaries from the\nGreek emperor, conducted a short and brilliantly successful campaign\nagainst the Saracens, by which they were completely discomfited and\nfinally expelled from that part of Italy. The entire reign of John X.\nwas in conformity with its glorious beginning; but soon after the\nviolent and tragical overthrow of the noble Emperor Berenger by the\nturbulent Italian nobles, a similar catastrophe ended the career of the\ngreat pope, his friend and compeer. Alberic, Count of Tusculum, and\nTheophylact, senator of Rome, had been the two most powerful supporters,\nand the former had been the chief subordinate leader, of the great\nmilitary operations of John X. The almost exclusive glory and credit\nwhich the popular voice ascribed to John for the liberation of the\ncountry from the Saracens, and the great increase and concentration of\nthe sovereign authority under his vigorous administration, stirred up\nthe jealousy and discontent of these great nobles. The wife of\nTheophylact was the famous Theodora, the younger Theodora was their\ndaughter, and another daughter, Mariuccia, commonly called Marozia, was\nthe wife of Alberic. These women, but especially the last mentioned,\nwere remarkable for their beauty, talents, and ambition. The stream of\nfilthy tradition which has come down through the sewer of Luitprand and\nthe popular romances of the period has transmitted to posterity the\nnames of these women, stained with every kind of foulness and cruelty.\nHow much of calumny and exaggeration there may be in these scandalous\nstories we cannot determine. It is certain that the family exercised a\ngreat sway in Rome for many years both before and after the great _coup\nd\u2019\u00e9tat_ in which the intrigues of Marozia culminated and collapsed, as\nwe are about to relate. One year after the murder of Berenger, Alberic\nwas killed in an unsuccessful assault on Rome, and Marozia married\nGuido, Marquis of Tuscany. The sister of Guido, Ermengarda, Marchioness\nof Ivrea, was another of the group of Italian princesses of that period,\nremarkable in all respects, except in the special virtues of Christian\nwomen. In 926 Marozia set on foot, with these two accomplices, a\nrevolution in Italy, by which Rodolph of Burgundy, the successful rival\nand successor of Berenger in the kingdom of Italy, was chased out to\nmake room for Hugo of Provence, the half-brother of Guido. After the\ncoronation of Hugo at Pavia, Guido and Marozia took possession of Rome\nby force of arms and imprisoned Pope John X., who died a few months\nafterward, it is suspected by violence. Guido also died within a year\nfrom his usurpation, and Marozia governed the city alone with the titles\nof senator and patrician. After the two short, and perhaps abbreviated,\npontificates of Leo VI. and Stephen VIII., she caused the younger of her\ntwo sons by Alberic to be elected pope under the name of John XI. Still\nunsatisfied, she aspired to become queen of Italy, and empress, and for\nthis purpose contracted a marriage\u2014which by the ecclesiastical law was\nnull and void[81]\u2014with her brother-in-law, Hugo, the King of Italy. The\nmarriage was celebrated in 932, and the imperial coronation was expected\nto follow in due time. But the violent and imperious temper of the\nBurgundian Hugo ruined all these plans. Alberic, eldest son of Marozia\nby her first husband, Alberic of Tusculum, was a youth who inherited all\nthe brilliant qualities of both his parents, and whose character was\ncertainly not derived from his mother or due to her influence. One day\nat dinner the princely youth was acting as page to the king, and by\naccident or design poured too much water on his hands, for which he\nreceived a buffet on the cheek from his rude step-father. He immediately\nleft the room in a towering passion, and, running out upon the piazza,\nsummoned the people, with words of burning eloquence, to vengeance and\nrescue. The Castle of St. Angelo was very speedily taken by assault,\nHugo was forced to save his life by flight, and Marozia, banished from\nRome, repudiated by her husband, thwarted in her wicked schemes,\ndisappeared from view, and, it is to be hoped, passed the rest of her\ndays until her death, which did not occur later than 945, in doing\npenance for her sins.\n\nFootnote 81:\n\n  A dispensation may have been granted, but Hugo afterwards disavowed\n  the marriage on the plea of the ecclesiastical impediment.\n\nNow followed one of the most curious and interesting of episodes in the\nhistory of Christian Rome. Alberic reigned during his whole life-time\u2014a\nperiod of twenty-two years\u2014as absolute sovereign of Rome, with ability,\njustice, and popularity. He was in harmony with the popes, a protector\nof his kingdom and of the Holy See, a munificent patron of religious\norders, a benefactor to the church and religion. The period of his reign\nis like an oasis in the desert of the tenth century. It is true that he\nkept his brother, John XI., in an honorable yet strict imprisonment\nduring his life-time. Yet, although there is nothing recorded to the\ndiscredit of this pope, Alberic\u2019s conduct toward the succeeding pontiffs\nshows that he must have had strong reasons for his treatment of his\nbrother. The elections of popes during his reign were free and peaceful,\nand the best men among the Roman clergy were chosen. By degrees the\nlegal form of the administration was so regulated that the sovereign\nrights and titles of the pope were preserved; and although the actual\ncivil government was entirely in the hands of Prince Alberic, it was\nadministered by him as the pope\u2019s temporal vicar, without discord\nbetween the two powers. As a provisional arrangement it worked well, but\nAlberic was too wise and far-seeing to think its permanent continuance\npossible or desirable. By a singular stroke of policy he prepared for\nthe restoration of the real sovereignty to the one who had not ceased to\nretain the title and the right. His son Octavian was educated as an\necclesiastic, and the chiefs of the clergy and nobility were induced to\nmake a solemn engagement before Alberic\u2019s death to elect Octavian pope\non the first vacancy of the Holy See. He was accordingly elected pope\nsoon after the death of his father, although he was but eighteen years\nof age, and assumed the name of John XII.\n\nOf the personal and private character of this youthful pontiff, who died\nat the age of twenty-six after a reign of eight years, it is very\ndifficult, if not impossible, to form an exact and certain estimate. The\naccusations made against him during his life-time are atrocious, and\nthey are still repeated by modern writers, although the most judicious\nand moderate historians soften them down considerably. The learned\nwriter in the _Civilt\u00e0_ gives his judgment that as a pontiff all his\nacts were laudable, and, as a king, worthy of one who was the son of\nAlberic. In respect to his private morals, he considers that the\naccusations of his political enemies and of writers attached to the\nGerman, imperial party\u2014the almost sole remaining source of information\nrespecting that period\u2014are to be distrusted; but that it is difficult to\nexculpate him altogether from the reproach of having lived more as\nsecular princes are wont to do than as became the holy state of a\nbishop. The salient point of his administration was the calling in of\nthe King of Germany, Otho the Great, and the subsequent imbroglio\nbetween the pope and the emperor. Otho, who well deserves the name of\nGreat, notwithstanding grievous errors and wrongs in his conduct toward\nthe Holy See, had been reigning twenty years when he was summoned to\nRome and crowned emperor. The return of the old disorders in Italy made\nhis intervention necessary, but he carried it too far, and John XII.,\nprobably with good reason, and certainly acting in a way which was\nnatural in a high-spirited and youthful sovereign trained in the maxims\nand sentiments of an Italian prince, joined with the other princes of\nItaly in opposition to the German domination. A struggle between John\nand Otho was the consequence. The emperor, misled by the bad advice of\nLuitprand and other bishops, attempted to depose the pope and substitute\nan anti-pope, who called himself Leo VIII., in his place. John XII. died\nsuddenly before this conflict had any decisive issue, and Benedict V.\nwas elected in his place, but was soon after carried away into Germany\nby Otho and kept in captivity at Hamburg. On the death of the anti-pope,\nwhich occurred in March, 965, a few months after the death of John, the\nRomans requested the restoration of Benedict V., which was granted by\nOtho. The pope, however, died on his journey to Rome, venerated and\nregretted even by the emperor and by all with whom he had come into\npersonal contact, as well as by the Romans.\n\nThe emperor and all the various parties by which Rome was divided agreed\ntogether and concurred in the election of John XIII., who favored the\nGerman party in politics, and had, on the whole, a peaceful and\nprosperous reign of six years, sustained by the imperial power, although\nit was interrupted by one violent sedition, which was repressed and\npunished in the severest manner.\n\nThe close of the reigns of the Pope John XIII. and the Emperor Otho the\nGreat was marked by one extraordinary and most interesting event\u2014the\nmarriage of the young Emperor Otho II. with Theophania, a Greek princess\nof distinguished beauty, intellectual accomplishments, and personal\nvirtues. She brought with her as dowry all the Greek possessions in\nItaly, and was regarded as an angel of peace between the two empires.\n\nThe death of Otho I. in 973 was the signal for new outbreaks and\ndisturbances in Italy. In Rome a struggle began between two powerful\nfamilies: the Crescenzi, who were the great lords of the Sabine\nterritory, and the Conti\u2014that is, the Tusculan counts\u2014who were the\nprincipal barons of Latium. The latter favored, while the former\nopposed, the imperial power in Italy. Crescenzio, or Cencio, the first\nleader of the Italian faction, is supposed by many writers to have been\na grand-nephew of Marozia. He attempted an imitation of Alberic, though\nnot by the same honorable means, and endeavored to gain possession for\nhimself of the Roman principality. The pope, Benedict VI., who had\nsucceeded John XIII. a few months before the death of Otho I., was\nassaulted and dethroned by armed force, imprisoned in the Castle of St.\nAngelo, and at last strangled. An infamous ecclesiastic, a partisan and\naccomplice with Crescenzio in his crimes, was intruded into the chair of\nSt. Peter while he was still, in the language of Pope Sylvester II.,\ndripping with the blood of his predecessor. This so-called Pope Boniface\nVII., who is commonly regarded as an anti-pope, was dispossessed, after\none month, together with his patron, Crescenzio, by a counter-revolution\nunder the counts of Tusculum, and fled to Constantinople. At a later\nperiod he returned and succeeded in seizing on the government for a\nbrief period, but came at length to a most tragical and ignominious end.\nCrescenzio ended his days in a monastery. It is uncertain whether there\nwas or was not a pope named Donus II. who reigned for a few months after\nthe death of Benedict VI. Benedict VII., a nephew of Alberic, Count of\nTusculum, and Bishop of Sutri, was enthroned, according to Mansi, on the\n28th of December, 974, and governed the Roman Church during his\npontificate of nine years in such a manner as to leave no stain upon his\nreputation. One of his first acts was to excommunicate, in a council of\nbishops, Cardinal Franco, the anti-pope. In 980 he was obliged to call\nupon the young emperor, Otho II., to come to his assistance in Rome. He\ncame, in fact, during the following year, but, after an unsuccessful\ncampaign against the allied Greeks and Saracens, died in his imperial\npalace at Rome, Dec. 9, 983, in the twenty-eighth year of his age\u2014a\nprince whose character made him worthy of his father, but who was less\nfortunate in his destiny. His premature death and the infancy of Otho\nIII. seemed to threaten both Germany and Italy with great disasters.\nGermany was preserved from these menacing evils by the sanctity and\nability of two noble and heroic women\u2014St. Adelaide, the widow of Otho\nthe Great, and Theophania, widow of Otho II., and imperial regent in the\nname of her son, who was but three years old, yet universally recognized\nas King of Germany and emperor-elect. Rome, however, had still to\nsuffer, and remained for another half-century to come the foot-ball of\nrival factions. The son of Crescenzio, called Crescenzio Nomentano,\nobtained the upper hand in Rome, recalled the anti-pope, Boniface VII.,\nimprisoned and put to death John XIV., the successor of Benedict VI.,\nand made himself patrician and governor of Rome. The sudden death of\nBoniface, however, and the universal hatred in which his memory was\nheld, enabled the clergy and people of Rome to elect a worthy pope in\nthe person of John XV. (April, 986), who held the see ten years,\ngoverning with great prudence and success, notwithstanding the great\ndifficulties of his position. In 989 the empress-mother, Theophania,\ncame to Rome and held an imperial court. It was expected that she would\nput an end to the tyranny of Crescenzio Nomentano, but she was deceived\nby his extreme cunning and hypocritical promises so far that she\nconfirmed him in his office as patrician. After her departure he became\nso much worse that the pope was obliged to leave Rome and take refuge\nwith Hugo, Marquis of Tuscany, through whose intervention a pressing\nrequest was sent to the emperor-elect, Otho III., now seventeen years of\nage, to come in person to Italy. So great was now the fear of the\nimperial power that Crescenzio hastened to reconcile himself to the\npope, who returned and was reconducted with great manifestations of\nhonor to the Lateran palace.\n\nOn his arrival in Rome at the head of a large army, early in 996, Otho\nIII., who, with precocious vigor of mind and character, had assumed the\nreins of government, found the Roman See vacant by the death of John\nXV., and his first care was the election of his successor. The one whom\nhe proposed, and who was accepted by the electors, was a young\necclesiastic but twenty-four years of age, the son of the Duke of\nFranconia and his own cousin-german. His name was Bruno, and his\naccomplished education, joined with a mature virtue, made him worthy to\nfill the see of Peter. He assumed the name of Gregory V., and gave great\npromise of adorning the Holy See during a long pontificate, as Otho did\nof becoming an illustrious emperor of Germany. The hopes of the church\nand the empire were, however, frustrated by the early death of both.\nCrescenzio had been condemned to banishment, but, at the request of\nGregory, his sentence was remitted. The generosity of the two youthful\nand confiding sovereigns was requited by Crescenzio, as soon as Otho\u2019s\nback was turned, by an uprising against the German pope and the imperial\nofficers, the expulsion of Gregory, and the creation of an anti-pope,\nwho was John Philagathos, a Greek monk, Bishop of Piacenza, and lately\nambassador of the emperor at the court of Constantinople. The bold plan\nof these two conspirators was nothing less than the restoration of the\nsovereignty of the West to the Greek emperor, under whose auspices each\none hoped to be confirmed in his usurped authority at Rome. In 998\nGregory and Otho re-entered Rome together, and this time showed no\nclemency either to Crescenzio or Philagathos, both of whom were victims\nof a terrible vengeance.\n\nPope Gregory died in 999, in the twenty-seventh year of his age and the\nthird of his pontificate. He was succeeded by the celebrated Gerbert, a\nFrench monk, formerly abbot of the famous monastery of Bobbio, and at\nthis present time Archbishop of Ravenna, who took the name of Sylvester\nII. He had been the guide, the tutor, and the friend of Otho during his\nboyhood. In his earlier career he had been somewhat hot-headed, and had\nsustained a sharp and obstinate contest with Pope John XV. in respect to\nthe see of Rouen. Now, however, he was an old man and a wise. No pope so\ntruly great, in the sense of the word most appropriate to a bishop and\nan ecclesiastical ruler, had ascended the papal throne since the time of\nSt. Nicholas the Great, in the middle of the ninth century. Otho\nremained always in Rome and Italy, for which he had a special\npredilection. Nothing can be more beautiful than the picture of this\nvenerable and learned old man, with his gifted and loving pupil by his\nside, \u201c_pulchri C\u00e6saris pulcherrima proles_,\u201d filling together the\nthrone of ancient, eternal Rome with their pontifical and imperial\nmajesty. What a subject for a painter or a poet! Otho is one of the most\nwinning characters to be found in all history. His mother, the Greek\nprincess, had given him an exquisite mental culture, and his\ngrandmother, St. Adelaide, a most pious education. There was something\nvisionary and romantic in his nature which only adds to his personal\nattractiveness. He dreamed of great things for Rome and the empire, such\nas the Florentine seer who had the vision of the unseen world dreamed\nof, but which were not in accordance with the plans of divine\nProvidence, and probably not with the views of Sylvester II. He died at\na castle near Civita Castellana, in the twenty-third year of his age, in\nthe arms of Sylvester, who followed him to the tomb in a little more\nthan a year after, on the 12th of May, 1003.\n\nThe dreaded year 1000 had been passed and the eleventh century was\nbegun. It was really one of the most fortunate of all the centuries for\nRome and the popes, yet it began under dark and menacing auspices. The\nCrescenzi regained the predominance in Rome and kept it for twelve years\nduring three pontificates\u2014viz., those of John XVII., which lasted only\nfive months, of John XVIII. and Sergius IV., both of whom ruled the\nchurch in peace and with honor to themselves, yet were obliged to\ntolerate the usurpation of the patrician Giovanni Crescenzio, who seems\nto have governed with more mildness than his father, Nomentano, had\ndone. In 1012, after his death, the dominion of this family came finally\nto an end, being supplanted by that of the Conti Tusculani, who retained\nit for thirty years. Count Gregory, a descendant of Alberic and Marozia,\nwhose later years were rendered illustrious by piety and good works of a\nsplendid munificence, left at his death three sons, Alberic,\nTheophylact, and Romanus. The second of these became pope under the name\nof Benedict VIII., and governed the church as well as the Roman\nprincipality during twelve years with consummate ability, aided in his\ncivil administration by his two brothers, and in perfect amity with the\nemperor, St. Henry II., who had succeeded his cousin, Otho III., but had\nalways been prevented by wars and other pressing employments elsewhere\nfrom interfering in Italian affairs. In 1014 St. Henry was able to come\nto Rome with his queen, St. Cunegunda, to receive the imperial\ncoronation from the pope. A rival king of Italy, Arduin, the last of the\nItalian kings who aspired to the iron crown of Lombardy until Victor\nEmanuel appeared, had been conquered, and, retiring to a monastery,\npassed the rest of his days in penance. Henry and Benedict together made\nsuccessful war upon the Greeks and Saracens, putting an end to the\ntroubles of Italy from both these enemies. The pope and the emperor both\ndied at about the same time in 1024, and with Henry II. was ended the\nSaxon line of emperors, which was succeeded by the Franconian, called\nalso the Ghibelline from the family castle of Waiblingen, and the Salic,\nfrom the tribal name Salii\u2014_i.e._, dwellers by the river Sala.\nBenedict\u2019s brother Romanus succeeded him on the pontifical throne under\nthe name of John XIX., and united more strictly in his own person the\nfunctions of ecclesiastical and civil sovereignty than had been the case\nduring the reign of his predecessor. His pontificate of eight years was\na laudable administration, without any event of note which has been\nrecorded, except the coronation of the first Franconian emperor, Conrad\nII. This coronation was marked by the presence of an unusually numerous\nand splendid assemblage of princes and prelates from all parts of\nEurope, among whom were Rudolph, Duke of Burgundy, and Canute the Great,\nKing of Denmark and England. This grand ceremony was performed in the\nspring of 1027, but, notwithstanding the new splendor which seemed at\nthat time to environ the Holy See, the greatest disgrace and scandal\nwith which it was ever afflicted was close at hand and came upon it in\nthe next pontificate. On the death of John XIX., in 1032, there was no\none of the family of the Conti upon whose head the tiara could be placed\nwith any sort of fitness and propriety. So great and so strongly fixed\nwas the power of that family that they succeeded in securing the\nelection and coronation of a young boy, Theophylact, nephew of the two\npreceding popes, and the son of Count Alberic, their elder brother. He\nis said by some historians to have been twelve years old, by others to\nhave been perhaps seventeen. Under the name of Benedict IX. he continued\nduring the thirteen years of his reign, under the protection of the\nemperor and supported by the power of his family, to harass his subjects\nby his capricious tyranny, and to afflict and desolate the church by the\nunrestrained license of his moral conduct. His scandalous life and\nmaladministration of the government brought on a schism headed by an\nanti-pope calling himself Sylvester III., caused frequent and violent\npopular tumults, and excited universal contempt and odium against his\nown person. At last the discontent reached such an extreme that of his\nown free-will Benedict abdicated his office, that he might have greater\nfreedom to live without any restraint upon his conduct. The most\ndistinguished and the most respected priest of the Roman Church at this\ntime was John Gratian, arch-priest of the church of St. John at the\nLatin Gate, the preceptor of St. Hildebrand, who was afterwards Pope\nGregory VII. Desiring to put an end to the calamities of every kind\nwhich were the consequence of a sacrilegious pontificate, Gratian took\nthe extraordinary course of offering a large subsidy in money to\nBenedict IX. on condition of a complete renunciation of all his rights\nto the Roman See. He was then himself canonically elected Pope under the\nname of Gregory VI., and began with zeal the work of reformation in both\nchurch and state. Nevertheless, the circumstance that he had given a sum\nof money to induce Benedict to resign gave occasion to such a plausible\noutcry of simony and personal ambition against Gregory, and the\nresistance of the anti-pope Sylvester as well as that of Benedict, who\nreclaimed his former office, was so violent, that it was necessary to\ncall in the aid of the new emperor Henry III., and to summon a numerous\ncouncil, that the rival claims might be adjudicated and sufficient\nmeasures be adopted for restoring peace and order. The council, which\nmet at Sutri, set aside entirely both Sylvester and Benedict. The\ndecision of his own case was referred to Gregory with great respect, but\nwith a manifest wish that he should resign. The pope disclaimed in the\nmost solemn manner all mercenary and selfish motives for what he had\ndone, yet nevertheless, on account of the scandal which had been\noccasioned, he judged himself to be unworthy of the papal dignity, and\nabdicated it with many tears and expressions of humility. The council\nconfirmed his resignation, which St. Hildebrand and many others\nregretted, but which the greater number, with St. Peter Damian, highly\napproved, notwithstanding their esteem for Gregory, who retired into a\nmonastery, where he lived a secluded and holy life. Even Benedict at\nlast repented, and spent the few remaining years of his life in prayer\nand penance in the monastery of Grotta-Ferrata, which his grandfather,\nCount Gregory, had founded.\n\nOn Christmas eve, 1046, Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg, was proposed by the\nemperor to the Roman clergy and people, and by them elected pope, taking\nthe name of Clement II. He was enthroned on Christmas day, and on the\nsame day crowned the emperor and empress, and, as a safeguard against\nthe abuse of the power of the Roman patrician by the Italian barons, it\nwas transferred to the emperor, who was thus made the recognized head of\nthe Roman aristocracy, with a special right of superintending the\nelection of the sovereign pontiffs. From this moment commenced the dawn\nof better and brighter days for Rome. The great work of reformation was\nbegun by Clement; and, although his reign lasted but one year, and his\nsuccessor, another German prelate of high character\u2014Poppo, Bishop of\nBrixen, who became Damasus II.\u2014survived his enthronization but\ntwenty-three days, a saint was waiting to inaugurate the glorious series\nof the Hildebrandine popes.\n\nBruno, Bishop of Toul, who was St. Leo IX., having after long resistance\nbeen persuaded by the emperor and the most eminent prelates to consent\nto assume the tiara, stopped at Cluny to see Hildebrand, a young monk,\nwho became St. Gregory VII. With difficulty he induced him to accompany\nhim to Rome, on the condition that he would make the journey in\npilgrim\u2019s garb, and submit the imperial nomination without reserve to\nthe free election of the clergy and people of the Roman Church. He was\nenthroned on the 12th of February, which was the first Sunday of Lent,\n1049. The eleventh century was at its zenith, and the bright sun of a\nnew era shed its rays upon Christendom, as a new St. Leo sat upon the\nthrone of St. Peter, St. Leo the Great, St. Gregory, and St. Nicholas,\nchasing away the darkness and the clouds of the tenth century, and\nputting an end to the period of the obnubilation of the Roman Church.\n\nWe have confined our attention almost entirely to the local history of\nthe popes, without noticing their administration of the universal\nchurch. The general ecclesiastical history of the whole period between\nSt. Nicholas I. and St. Gregory VII. furnishes abundant proof of the\nuniversal recognition and continuous exercise of the papal supremacy in\nthe East as well as in the West. Adrian II. celebrated the eighth\n\u0153cumenical council at Constantinople in 870. John VIII., John X., and\nJohn XV. exercised throughout Europe the same spiritual authority which\nwas exercised by Nicholas the Great. The local difficulties of the\npopes, and even the scandals which disturbed the Roman Church, had no\neffect throughout Christendom to diminish the authority of the Roman\nSee. During the general anarchy and chaos caused by the new irruption of\nbarbarians the unity and common life of Christendom was oppressed and\nenfeebled, and the corporate, organic action of the universal church\ncould not manifest itself so vigorously as it had done before and did\nafterwards. When all the evils which had attacked the church and\nChristendom at the very centre of life in Rome reached their crisis in\nthe pontificate of Benedict IX., it was certainly felt by all good and\nhonest men that the very existence of the Papacy and the Catholic\nChurch, of the whole European society, and of all civilization,\nmorality, and order on the earth, was in imminent danger. The spectacle\nof a youth who was no better in morals, and no stronger in intellectual\nor princely qualities, than the weakest and most dissolute of the\nCarlovingian monarchs, seated on the throne of St. Peter, shocked and\nscandalized Christendom to such an extent that the loud outcry has not\nyet ceased to resound in our ears. Yet we perceive in the action of the\nCouncil of Sutri, and of the emperor, Henry III., in respect to Gregory\nVI., one of the most signal and splendid testimonies to the undoubting\nand unshaken faith of that age in the supremacy of the pope. Sylvester\nwas judged and condemned to perpetual imprisonment as an intruder and a\npseudo-pope. Benedict was set aside, not because the council pretended\nto judge him for his conduct while pope, but because he had executed a\nlegal and valid abdication of his office. In respect to Gregory, the\ncouncil examined and judged of nothing except the validity of his\nelection, and, this being ascertained, left the judgment of his own case\nto his own supreme authority, to his conscience, and to Almighty God.\n\nJust one rapid and parting glance we must cast over Christendom, to take\nin by a general view its movement through this segment of the great\ncycle of time, and the state into which it had grown in the middle of\nthe eleventh century. The great barbarian and heathen irruption into\nChristian Europe was like the casting of an immense mass of fresh coals\nupon a glowing but gradually-expiring fire in a great foundry furnace.\nThe general aspect was black and dead, and the momentary effect was a\nsuspension of the great works commenced, but the result was a rapid\nkindling from the burning bed beneath, a stronger and hotter fire, and a\nmore vigorous resumption of operations. The threatened Mohammedan\nconquest of Europe was averted, the Hungarian invasion completely and\nfinally repelled, the Scandinavian eruptions changed into a most\nbeneficial colonization and infusion of a new element of strength. Many\nother most remarkable and salutary political and social transformations\nwere effected. The Scandinavians, Hungarians, Russians, and other\nSclavonian nations were converted and added to the church. A beginning\nwas made with the Prussians, even, by the martyrdom of their first\napostle, St. Adalbert, although the work was not completed until near\nthe close of the thirteenth century and proved to be short-lived. Since\nthey have resumed the persecution of bishops, there may be, perhaps, a\nhope of their reconversion.\n\nThe calendars of the two centuries from 850 to 1050 are crowded with the\nnames of great saints and other illustrious men and women. Among the\npopes flourished St. Leo IV., founder of the Leonine City, St. Nicholas\nI., John X., Benedict VIII., and Sylvester II. Among the emperors and\nkings we may single out Berenger, Henry the Fowler, Otho the Great, St.\nHenry II., Hugh Capet, Robert, Alfred, Canute, Edward the Confessor;\nEdward and Edmund, martyrs; Brian Boroihme, Ferdinand, St. Stephen, St.\nOlaf, Rollo, and Wladimir. In the brilliant group of Christian empresses\nand queens shine with special lustre Theodora, St. Adelaide, St.\nCunegunda, St. Matilda, Theophania, and Olga. As illustrious specimens\nof the great number of bishops and abbots of high virtue and merit, we\nmention St. Anscharius, St. Methodius, St. Ignatius of Constantinople,\nSt. Dunstan, St. Odo of Cluny, and St. Romuald. These two centuries\ncontributed but little to the treasury of literature. There is,\nnevertheless, a considerable list of authors, among whom are worthy of\nmention Nithart, Flodoard, Suidas, Pascharius Radbert, Wuthikind the\nGerman annalist, and John Scotus Erigena. One of the most gifted and\nclever of the Latins, Luitprand, and the most intelligent and erudite of\nthe Greeks, Photius, were unhappily both so morally despicable that they\nreflect disgrace rather than honor upon their age.\n\nThe epoch we are considering was more remarkable for action than for\nwriting. The vast and strong foundations were laid for the future\nsuperstructure. Empires and kingdoms, smaller states, cities, towns,\nuniversities, monasteries, and great churches, rose in majesty during\nthe latter part of this epoch upon the ruins made during its earlier\nperiod, or upon heretofore waste and desert land. The glorious orders of\nCluny and Camaldoli, the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Cordova,\nseveral of the great minsters, and the first efforts of the new school\nof Christian art date from this period. It made scanty records of its\nown history, but it is crowded with the richest materials for the\nstudent and the literary artist. M. Ozanam projected a course of\nlectures at the Sorbonne covering the whole space from the fifth to the\nfourteenth centuries, but executed only the first and last part of his\nprogramme. The middle portion still lies open to any one worthy to\ncomplete his work. The Iron Age is worthy of more study than has been\ngiven to it, and, when it is carefully examined, there are many great\ndiscoveries to be made concerning the ages which preceded as well as\nthose which have followed this hard era. When will intelligent\nEnglishmen and Americans begin to read history and find out how they\nhave been duped? When will the wretched little manuals such as Mrs.\nMarkham\u2019s _History of England_ be driven out of our schools and\nchildren\u2019s libraries and replaced by books which tell the truth? Let us\nlay bare history and search for the hard foundations of society and\ncivilization, and we shall see with ocular evidence that the converging\nand diverging lines of all the centuries have but two centres, Jerusalem\nand Rome. The rocky height of Jebus, which David carried by craft and\nvalor; the Capitoline Hill, where Romulus and Numa laid the foundations\nof Rome, are in the cycle of history what the two foci are in an\nellipse. When the fortunes of Juda are at their lowest point, the\nsupernatural providence of God over that royal tribe and the house of\nDavid is most signally manifested. It is impossible to read\nintelligently the history of the Roman See and the popes without\nperceiving a providence of a higher order, working on a more sublime\nplane, in the disasters as well as in the glories and triumphs of the\nNew Jerusalem and its line of priestly kings, the vicegerents of David\u2019s\nroyal Son and Lord. The supernatural providence manifest in the\ndestinies of Rome and its dependent Christendom makes also the\nsupernatural end toward which God is conducting mankind equally\nmanifest. The search after natural causes without regard to the first\ncause being proved absurd, the search for natural effects without\nrespect to the final cause is equally absurd. The ideal kingdom on earth\nis not to be found. Not only are we unable to find it realized, we\ncannot even find a tendency toward a future realization. Royal power,\nnational greatness, the achievements of art and science, the external\norder and splendor of the church, are all, manifestly, only means, and\nthe end is in the spiritual order, in the souls of individual men.\nEverything external and temporal is built on the shifting, unstable sand\nof human free-will, and is therefore evanescent and changeable. The only\npermanent and eternal result is in the great, unknown mass of human\nbeings who have found the gate and the way to the kingdom of heaven, and\nin the _\u00e9lite_ of the human race who have found the way to its highest\nplaces and wear its brightest crowns. The earth is only a _pal\u00e6stra_, a\nschool, an ingenious contrivance of divine art for the acquisition and\nexercise of virtue, for gaining merit, for nurturing the childhood of\nthe destined citizens of the true and eternal city of God\u2014_C\u0153lestis\nUrbs, Jerusalem_. The whole order of divine Providence in the church and\nthe world, and its chief intention, must be changed, if any ideal and\nstable state of perfection is established on the earth; for this would\nrequire that no longer free scope should be given to the liberty of the\nhuman will. We conclude, therefore, that future ages will not differ\nessentially from those which are past. As the fourth and the seventh\ncenturies differ, as the tenth and thirteenth, the fifteenth,\nseventeenth, and eighteenth centuries mutually differ, so there are\npossible cycles of change from worse to better, or the reverse, so long\nas the world continues. There is a perpetual progress toward that\nconsummation which God has in view. But there is no change in the\n_militant_ state of the Catholic Church. We are informed by divine\nrevelation that the earthly sovereignty of Jesus Christ will continue\nonly so long as he has enemies to conquer, and that when his conquest is\ncompleted he will give up this kingdom to the Father, that God may be\nall in all. His eternal reign, in which all the elect will share,\nconsists in the glory won by merit. All the rest is only scaffolding to\nbe torn down and thrown away for fire-wood; it is scenery and\nstage-costume, of no use when the play is over. The lessons of history\nteach us to discern all the illusions which have deceived past ages; if\nwe are wise we shall learn also not to make new illusions for the\nfuture. We shall fear nothing for the eternal cause of truth and right,\nand we shall have no fanciful hopes of a coming millennium. We shall\nlearn the one needful and useful maxim that all effort is a waste of\ntime, except the one effort to make ourselves and others better and more\nvirtuous.\n\n\n\n\n                           SIX SUNNY MONTHS.\n    BY THE AUTHOR OF \u201cTHE HOUSE OF YORKE,\u201d \u201cGRAPES AND THORNS,\u201d ETC.\n                              CHAPTER XIV.\n                        THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE.\n                              CONCLUSION.\n\n\nThe morning they started for Monte Cassino the Signora had a Mass said\nfor her intention, and the intention was that she might be enabled to\ndecide speedily on her state of life, and to decide so clearly and\nwisely as never again to have a doubt about it. Never had she been\nnearer to accepting Mr. Vane, and never had she been more tremblingly\nafraid of doing so. The suspense and trouble were becoming intolerable.\nShe felt that it must be settled within these three days.\n\nBut no sooner was the journey begun than all else was lost sight of. It\nwas impossible to pass with a preoccupied mind amid all that beauty;\nimpossible not to feel one\u2019s individual life dwindle in view of the life\nof centuries there made visible. The Campagna slipped past like an old\nmonotonous song that has been sung over one\u2019s cradle, and heard in quiet\nintervals all up the years, till every note has grown to be something\nmore than a simple sound, and is rather a long series of octaves caught\nalong the heart-strings. Then\n\n    \u201cThe old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,\u201d\n\npressing near the track, and looking over each other\u2019s heads at the\ntrain as it went, as if wondering what new Jason was ploughing with\nfiery-snorting monsters down through the green fields of the south. Dim,\ngray cities stood petrified on their heights, without a sign of life;\nand the torrent-beds on their sides were like silvery paths up which the\nsouls of all the dead had climbed, and so faded off into space. What\nfancies went up those converging paths, and spread their wings in the\nshining clouds that moored themselves on crest after crest! Or, fair as\nany fancy, what brooks and torrents came rushing down in the rainy\nOctober and petulant April, catching the sunshine as they ran, and\nbringing flowers and harvests and fountains for the thirsty plains. On\nthey went through the smiling, luxuriant paradise waving with solid\ngreen and bloom in the valleys. Dark forests hung suspended in gorges,\ncities lifted themselves between the mountains to look, here and there a\ncastle sat on its rock like a king on his throne. They could no more\nhave pointed out the rapidly-succeeding beauties to each other than they\ncould have indicated the swift flashes of a tempest.\n\nAt length, and before they had begun to think they were tired, the cars\nstopped at the station of San Germano, and here a very tall old man,\nbent into the shape of a new moon, recognized them as the party he was\non the watch for, and informed them that the donkeys were waiting for\nthem outside, and that they were expected to dine at Monte Cassino.\n\nThey recollected that they were a little tired and a little hungry, and,\nvery opportunely, a pretty young _contadina_ presented herself with a\nbasket of bread, fruit, boiled eggs, and wine. So they seated themselves\nin the waiting-room, a circle of admiring _contadini_ standing about and\nwatching every mouthful they ate, as a dog watches.\n\n\u201cAre we expected to take more than we want and give them what remains?\u201d\nIsabel asked.\n\nThe Signora glanced over the company, and demanded to know which men had\ncharge of the donkeys.\n\nFive stout young fellows stood forward, and a sixth made haste to\nexplain that four of them would attend to the party, and a fifth would\ncarry their baggage up on another donkey.\n\n\u201cAnd have you anything to do with us?\u201d she inquired politely of this\ninformant.\n\n\u201cI belong to the hotel of San Germano,\u201d he replied, and then went on to\nexplain the situation still further.\n\n\u201cOh! thanks; but don\u2019t trouble yourself,\u201d the Signora interrupted quite\ncoolly. \u201cYou need not wait for us. Five men are quite enough to do all\nwe want done.\u201d\n\nHe withdrew a little, but did not go away. There was not the slightest\nsign of resentment or mortification. He was actuated by a simple and\nunadulterated desire for money, and meant to stay by till the last\nminute, in the hope that he might snatch at the chance of some small\nservice which would give him a claim.\n\n\u201cNow, girls,\u201d the Signora said, \u201cdon\u2019t you give a penny to any one,\nunless I tell you. Here are twenty people on the watch for money. Don\u2019t\nlet any one do the smallest thing for you, except these five men. We\nwill give them some bread and wine. That is all they will want. The\nItalian poor live on bread. What does that old man want of us?\u201d she\ninquired of one of the donkey-men.\n\nThe old man, who had been constantly hovering near, came forward at\nonce. He was the letter-carrier for the monastery.\n\n\u201cOh! I did not know but you had something to do with the donkeys,\u201d she\nremarked.\n\nHe came a step nearer. \u201cI do not go up till evening,\u201d he said with an\ninsinuating smile.\n\n\u201cGo whenever you like,\u201d she answered obligingly. \u201cIf you should bring us\nup any letters, however, we will give you a _soldo_ for each one.\u201d\n\nHe glanced longingly at the bread and wine, but she rose without taking\nany further notice of him.\n\n\u201cHow much is your wine a bottle?\u201d she asked of the pretty young vendor.\n\n\u201cFifteen _soldi_, Signora,\u201d was the innocent reply.\n\n\u201cNonsense! I will give you five.\u201d\n\nExclamations, deprecation, grieved reproach on the part of the young\nwoman. The wine was too good for that, she protested. It was the best\ndry wine of the country, and sincere, as the Signora could see.\n\nThe Signora was not so new as they had supposed. She had bought better\nwine in larger bottles, in Genzano, close to Rome, for seven cents a\nbottle, and this was high at six. It was not, however, worth while to\nmultiply words about it, and they made a compromise by paying seven\n_soldi_ a bottle, with which the young woman seemed to be perfectly well\nsatisfied.\n\nThen they went out and mounted their donkeys, followed by the\nreproachful eyes and extended hands of fourteen men and children, and\nclosely attended by the young hotel servant, who attached himself to\nBianca. Marion, having visited Monte Cassino thoroughly not long before,\nhad not accompanied them, being a little delicate, too, about joining\nhimself to a party without an invitation from the monastery, though he\nwould certainly have been included had his connection with the family\nbeen known.\n\nBianca dropped her pocket-handkerchief, and the young volunteer esquire\nrushed to pick it up and present it to her with a gallant touch of the\ncap and a smile that displayed a fine set of teeth. She accepted it with\nblushing thanks.\n\n\u201cMy dear, he counts on half a _lira_ for that,\u201d the Signora remarked.\n\u201cDon\u2019t get any romantic ideas into your head. He would be as gallant as\nthat to a witch, if he thought she would pay him. You must really put on\na more severe expression. You have precisely the look at this moment of\nsome young princess of fairyland who goes about giving bags of gold to\neverybody. If you keep on that sweet face, you will be as surrounded by\nbeggars as a lump of sugar with flies.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are a terribly forbidding and obdurate woman,\u201d Mr. Vane said,\nlooking into the Signora\u2019s laughing face.\n\n\u201cI am sometimes,\u201d she protested. \u201cI pity one beggar, or two beggars, or\nsometimes three beggars; but when I see a score of healthy cormorants\nsurround poor travellers, and ready for any pretence or any servility to\nget money out of them, I lose patience. I\u2019ve been victimized too much in\ndays that are gone to be very long-suffering now. Besides, I work for my\nmoney and have a feeling of indignation when I see a strong, healthy\nperson stretch out a hand that has done me no service. Aren\u2019t these\ndonkeys little darlings? I do think they are the most useful, faithful\ncreatures in the world.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I could only know just where the backbone of mine is situated,\u201d\nIsabel said pathetically; for her saddle had been constantly slipping\neither backward or forward ever since she mounted. \u201cIt really seems to\nme that I could ride a rail more securely. There I go! Oh!\u201d\n\nThe hotel-servant rushed enthusiastically to catch the back of her\nsaddle, and lift the rider from her nearly horizontal position, and help\nher off while they tightened the girths.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a sort of knack which you will soon learn,\u201d the Signora said\nconsolingly. \u201cThe poor little animals are as thin as a rail, but the\nsaddles are like a chair. Just let yourself go, humor the motion of the\ndonkey, and in a little while you will sit like\u2014like Bianca there. Look\nat that child! All she wants is an infant in her arms!\u201d\n\nThey had passed the narrow and stony loops of the path out of the town,\nand reached the mountain-side, and, as the Signora spoke, Bianca,\nleading the procession, went round a turn before them and came back\nhigher up. She sat in the saddle as easily as if in a chair, upright,\nher hands folded in her lap, and her fair face uplifted as she gazed at\nthe great pile of the monastery on the peak above them.\n\nShe needed, indeed, but an infant in her arms to be a ready picture of\nthe Holy Mother and Child in the Flight into Egypt. She had taken off\nher hat and laid a large veil over her head. A blue mantle hung over her\nshoulders and came close to her white neck. The beast she rode, the\nsaddle, the rocky path\u2014all were perfect. She passed under a cypress-tree\nthat pressed her eyes down with its black shadow, and, in that downward\nglance, caught their looks directed to her. She smiled, clasped her\nhands, and glanced around in mute rapture.\n\nTo and fro, to and fro they wound up the height, every turn unwinding\nand enlarging the scene below. The low hills of the plain disappeared,\nleaving only a vast level laid out in an exquisite mosaic of varied\ngreens, with houses here and there, single or in clusters, forests that\nhad dwindled to groves, and groves that looked like bouquets. The\nshining turns of a river lay amid that verdure, like a silver chain\ndropped and half-hidden in the grass. All round the mountains circled\nclose and jealous, guarding this little paradise. Now they were skirted\nwith trees; now they rose in harsh masses of stone that looked as if not\neven a blade of grass could find a foothold. A picturesque castle stood\non a spur sent off from the mountain they were ascending.\n\nAbove them the vast square of the monastery, with its many windows and\nbalconies, grew every moment nearer. After an hour\u2019s ride trees shut\nthem into an avenue, and they found themselves close under the grand\nwalls of the building. They alighted at the lofty open archway and saw\nbefore them a long, ascending passage that looked strong enough to\nsupport even that pile on its solid arches. The first half was dim, and\npart way up, at the right, was a shrine in the wall, with its floating\nflame burning before some saintly face only half-visible behind the wire\nscreen. The upper half was lighted by arched windows at the left,\nshowing a double wall there, with some sort of room or passage between,\narched openings in the inner wall answering to the windows. At the upper\nend of this avenue of stone shut the great black valves of a double iron\ndoor, studded thickly with nails, pierced with a little cluster of holes\nto peep through at one side, and showing the outline of a smaller door\nin the right valve.\n\nThe massive walls and doors, the long, sloping ascent, the light and\nshade, the one little golden flame, were like nothing of the nineteenth\ncentury. The action and business of such a place were not the action and\nbusiness peculiar and suitable to our times. Ecclesiastical processions\nmight go up there; the scarlet fire of a cardinal\u2019s robe in the midst of\na group of attendants would well befit that dim and echoing passage; a\ncavalcade of knights and ladies, with horn and hound and nodding plumes;\na company of soldiers with shield and helmet\u2014these were the figures to\nanimate such a scene. Or, most perfect picture of all, one might imagine\nthere that sublime company, the very thought of which brings tears to\nthe eyes\u2014that long procession of ecclesiastics and people, with their\nbanners and crucifixes and candles, chanting funeral hymns as they\nascended, bearing up to the mountain-top for burial the twin saint of\nthe glorious founder and father of the monastery\u2014Santa Scholastica. It\nis but yesterday, it seems, that the brother and sister parted, having\ntheir last conference together under a little roof down the\nmountain-side, while the tempest stormed about them. It is but this\nmorning that St. Benedict has sent his monks down to bring the holy\nrelics up and lay them in his own tomb under the grand altar, where soon\nhe will join her. So the colossal saints of all time know how to\nrecognize the grandeur of a true woman. These men are so near the most\nsublime and regal of creatures\u2014the awful, immaculate Virgin\u2014and the very\ntype of penitents\u2014the thrice-purified Magdalen\u2014that the shining veil of\nthe one and the sacred tears of the other flow about their sisters, and\nwoman is honored in whatever work her Creator calls her to do. It was in\nthe times, still illuminated by the twilight of the scarcely-departed\npresence of the Morning Star and the Son, that St. Gregory the Great\nordered his mother\u2019s portrait painted with the mitre of a doctor on her\nhead, and one hand raised in benediction, while with the other she\ntaught her son from the sacred Book on her knees\u2014the queenly St. Sylvia!\nIt was in such days that St. Chrysostom proclaimed that women may\nparticipate, as well as men, in combats for the cause of God and the\nchurch; that St. Melania, the younger, disputed so eloquently with the\nNestorians that she converted many and frightened the rest, showing\nherself so powerful that Pelagius, who drew away priests and bishops,\nstrove, but in vain, to convert her into an assistant; the same Melania\nwho converted the persecutor, Volusianus, whom all the eloquence of St.\nAugustine could not convert. It was in such days that saintly women\ninspired the Fathers of the church to write, and that St. Gregory\nconceived his Treatise on the Soul and on Resurrection while sitting at\nhis dying sister\u2019s bedside and listening to her discourse on death, as\nshe consoled him for the death of St. Basil.\n\nAnd not only such thoughts and recollections, dear to women, flowed in\nas they went up the path that St. Scholastica had passed before them,\nbut other recollections, dear to scholars and precious to the church and\nto civilization. Here was one of the citadels of learning in times when\nbarbarous invasions overran the land and threatened to extinguish every\nspark of intellectual and spiritual wealth that the race of man had\naccumulated. Here the monks, with a zeal kindled to passion, hoarded and\npreserved the remains of their devastated treasures, and spent unwearied\ndays and nights in multiplying copies of writings that must not die.\nHere, with the devotion of the bridegroom who brings the most precious\ngems he can procure to deck his bride, or of parents who shower upon\ntheir only child every gift in their power to bestow, genius the most\nexquisite consecrated itself to the work of adorning the page of the\ntext of praise and prayer with such marvellous miniature beauty of form\nand color as only the fairy pencil of Nature can rival.\n\nWrapt and exalted in such recollections, the Signora moved as one in a\ndream, forgetting her companions entirely. It was only when the great\niron doors swung open before her, and she saw a tall gentleman in a\nblack robe hurrying forward, with his hand extended in cordial welcome\nto Mr. Vane, that she came back to the nineteenth century, and made an\neffort to salute in a sufficiently-composed manner the prior of Monte\nCassino, Father Boniface.\n\nBut it was a very beautiful nineteenth century that she recalled herself\nto. They were within the monastery buildings, which completely\nsurrounded them in a massive square, broken in the middle at the left by\na long portico of white travertine supporting a superb terrace called\nthe _Loggia del Paradiso_, and at the right, in the centre, also, by the\ngrand stairs that go up to the higher level of the mountain peak, around\nwhich the monastery is built. This _loggia_ and the grand stairs are at\nthe opposite sides of a court with a picturesque well in the centre, and\ncolossal statues of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. The paved court is\nbetween two others, which are turned into gardens, the three separated\nby double colonnades and surrounded by porticos. At the head of the\nstairs, which are the whole width of the court, another portico opens\ninto the upper court\u2014that of the church\u2014and has a door at either side\nleading back to the _Loggia del Paradiso_. The church court, also\nsurrounded by porticos and adorned with statues, is closed on one side\nby the church. This is built on the very mountain-top, the confession\nbeing hewn out of the solid rock.\n\nThis plan they caught at first, though but in a glance; for, after\nwelcoming them all, the prior conducted them through two or three\ndimly-lighted rooms, all of stone, unfurnished and unadorned, into a\nbright parlor, where a balcony window gave them a view of all the\nbeautiful valley with its surrounding mountains. In a few minutes dinner\nwas announced as prepared in the next chamber, and here they found a\ntable laid out with the freshest of linen, old silver as white almost as\nthe cloth, and a well-cooked and well-served dinner.\n\nWeakening their wine before drinking it, they all observed the quality\nof the water, limpid and light as some third element half-water and\nhalf-air, and the prior explained to them that the monastery used\nrain-water filtered.\n\n\u201cWe have a great cistern, ninety feet square, hollowed out in the\nmountain under the central court. The well you saw there is in the\ncentre of it. The water is thoroughly filtered. Moreover, the conduits\nthat admit it to the cistern are closed during the four hot months, so\nthat only cold water enters.\u201d\n\nThis prior, the \u201curbane librarian\u201d of Longfellow\u2019s recollections of\nMonte Cassino, was not only a kind and generous host and an intelligent\n_cicerone_, but a most agreeable and interesting man. He had a noble\nfigure and a handsome, bright face, and combined in his character\nqualities which might have been thought to be inharmonious; for he was\nat the same time an enthusiastic monk, proud of his venerable order, and\ndevoted heart and soul to his monastery, and a man quite up to the times\nin all that the times have of praise-worthy.\n\nAfter dinner he led them up to see the church, pointing out the statues\nas they went. Here were the father and mother of St. Benedict, and with\nthem popes, royal dukes, kings, and emperors. Before entering they\npaused to look at the great door of bronze, cast in Constantinople, in\nwhich is written in silver letters the list of the possessions of the\nabbey at the time the door was made, in 1066. At this time, more than\neight hundred years later, nothing was left of these riches.\n\nEntering the church, they stood astonished. If it had been built of\nsimple marble, moderately varied and ornamented, there would still have\nbeen enough to praise warmly in the beautiful form and proportions of\nthe three naves, the grand altar by Michael Angelo, the raised tribune,\nand the beautiful paintings of the dome, roof, and eight chapels. But\nthese were only the frame-work of a mosaic the most splendid covering\nevery part of the edifice to the dimmest corner or the smallest nook\nbehind a column. And this mosaic is not that comparatively simpler kind,\nmade of small bits, but each flower and figure is cut from a single\npiece of marble or precious stone, and so perfectly fitted into the\ngroundwork that the point of a pin could not be introduced between them.\nIt was hard at first to believe that the whole was not exquisitely\npainted in every possible color and shade, and it needed a touch or a\nnear sight of that fine, inimitable gloss of marble to convince one of\nthe incalculable riches of the whole. The very floor was superb enough\nfor the walls of a splendid church; the very steps of the tribune were\nset with mosaics.\n\nThe Signora took pencil and paper, and attempted to make a memorandum of\nonly one chapel, to enumerate its alabaster columns, its flowers of\nmother-of-pearl, amethyst, agate, and lapis-lazuli, its\ninfinitely-varied marbles and precious stones and its infinitely varied\ndesigns, and, after ten minutes\u2019 rapid work, gave up the task. A week\nwould have been necessary for that one chapel; and there were seven\nmore, besides the altar, the confession, and the tribune.\n\n\u201cYou like carved wood?\u201d the prior asked, with a smile of anticipated\ntriumph, as they went up the tribune steps.\n\n\u201cWho does not?\u201d the Signora exclaimed. \u201cCarved wood and lace are two of\nmy passions. I have never stolen any lace, and I hope I never shall.\nWood-carving is fortunately usually in too heavy pieces to suggest the\npossibility of being carried away in one\u2019s pocket.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe must, however, first visit St. Benedict and Santa Scholastica,\u201d said\ntheir guide, too charitable, as well as too enthusiastic for beautiful\nthings, to be shocked at this little escapade.\n\nThirteen silver lamps burned before the screen at the back of the grand\naltar, and under that screen reposed the bodies of the twin saints.\nAbove them, written in golden letters, was the inscription:\n\n    \u201cBenedictum et Scholasticam\n    Uno in terris partu editos,\n    Una in Deum pietate c\u0153lo Redetos,\n    Unis Hic Excipit Tumulus,\n    Mortalis depositi pro Aeternitate custos.\u201d\n\nRising from their knees, they turned and faced the choir\u2014a double row of\nstalls forming three sides of a large square open to the altar. Looked\nat from a little distance, these stalls had the appearance of having\nbeen closely overgrown at some past time with the finest of vines, which\nhad turned black and petrified there, preserving perfectly every little\nleaf and tendril, and still covering entirely the plain wood beneath.\nLooking longer, one saw little figures and faces, and birds and animals.\nGoing nearer scarcely dispelled the illusion, so finely was every\nparticle carved\u2014the vines and leaves in some places quite separated from\nthe ground, so that one slipped the finger-tip behind them. Every stall\nwas different, every one provoked a new exclamation of admiring wonder.\n\nThen they went into the sacristy, a long hall with the sides completely\nlined with presses of dark wood with gilded metal ornaments. These\npresses also were carved finely, each department, in front of which a\npriest would vest himself for Mass, having a bas-relief of a subject\nsuggesting some particular virtue, as that of the Pharisee and the\npublican in the Temple, suggesting humility.\n\nBack of the sacristy was the relic-chamber, where, in addition to the\nmore sacred treasures, the ladies admired especially two little antique\ncaskets, one of smalt, bright as a jewel, the other of carved ivory of\nthe most delicious tint of creamy white\u2014that tint so soft that it seems\nas if the material itself must yield like down to the touch. They gave\none glance at a crosier by Benvenuto Cellini, on the inner curve of\nwhich stood a tiny group, then tore themselves away. The afternoon was\nwaning, and there was left them but a day and a half more, with\n\n    \u201cSuch rooms to explore,\n    Such alcoves to importune.\u201d\n\nThe air of this place was an ideal atmosphere; one breathed it like a\nfine wine that exhilarates delicately, but does not inebriate. It was\nsoft but not warm, fresh but not chilly, and as pure as pure can be. The\nfresh, rosy faces of the troop of young students they met going out\nshowed how this mountain air agreed with them.\n\n\u201cWhat a place to send boys to!\u201d Mr. Vane exclaimed. \u201cIt is a little\nworld in itself, where they can have every amusement and companionship,\nas well as instruction; and one has but to look at them to see that they\nare as happy as they are healthy.\u201d\n\nThe boys were coming in from their afternoon walk down the\nmountain-side, and all glowing with just-subsiding fun. Each one,\npassing the prior, caught at his hand to kiss it; but as he would not\npermit himself to receive such an homage, they resorted to the amusing\nsubstitute of kissing their own hands after they had touched his.\n\n\u201cWhat beautiful recollections of their school-days those boys will carry\nwith them through their lives!\u201d Mr. Vane remarked, as they went out over\nthe colonnade to the _Loggia del Paradiso_. \u201cIn no way, it seems to me,\nexcept by being educated here, unless one spend one\u2019s life here, could\none become perfectly familiar with the riches, visible and invisible, of\nthe place; and such a familiarity would be of itself an education,\nespecially for the impressible minds of the young.\u201d\n\nThe front of the _Paradiso_ fills the gap in the middle of one side of\nthe monastery\u2014that part opposite the church\u2014and is on a level with the\nchurch, or the second story of the monastery. It is probably the same\nwidth as the church. Leaning on the parapet there, one looks off on a\nview which may well give the place its name\u2014the beautiful plain and the\nbeautiful circling mountains, with the still, blue splendor of the\nsouthern sky gazing down upon them as if enamored of their beauty. There\nwas no need of imagination in such a place. Simple, literal eyes were\nenough to flood the soul with beauty.\n\nFamiliar as he was with the scene, the prior was sympathetic enough to\nsay but little; and even Isabel, whose impressions, being more\nsuperficial, ran a good deal into words, hushed herself out of respect\nfor the others.\n\n\u201cUntil we reach Rome again,\u201d the Signora remarked to her friends as they\nwent down the stairs to the great court, \u201cI should like to be excused\nfrom all social intercourse, except the mere being with you bodily. I\ndon\u2019t want to speak or be spoken to, except to learn of this place. We\nhave no right to talk; we are ghosts. We have come here in a dream or a\nvision. Father Boniface talks, of course, because he is a part of the\nplace.\u201d\n\nThey laughed and agreed.\n\n\u201cBut I hope,\u201d the prior said, \u201cthat you are not too ghostly to taste the\nwater they are just drawing up now. See how it sparkles!\u201d\n\nTwo columns support a cross-piece over this beautiful well, and from the\ncentre drops an iron chain with a copper bucket at each end. When one\ngoes down the other comes up, dripping full of airy water.\n\nThey all drank silently\u2014each, probably, to some friend, absent or\npresent. Bianca blushed as she drank, and her pretty mouth seemed to\nkiss the water. Then, standing on the upper step of the well, they\nleaned over the stone curb and looked down to where, far below, the\nsurface of the water shone like a huge black diamond set in a gray\nborder.\n\nTired out with travel and with pleasure, the ladies were not sorry when\nthe prior proposed that they should go down to the house where they were\nto sleep.\n\nThis house is the only building on the mountain except the monastery,\nand is under the control of the monastery. It was built merely to\naccommodate lady relatives of the students who might wish to see their\nsons, or brothers, or nephews without the fatigue of coming up and going\ndown the mountain the same day, and without suffering the embarrassment\nof spending the whole day in a house inhabited and served only by men.\nNow and then some benefactress or a friend of the superiors of the\nmonastery has the privilege of stopping there. The house is small and\nplain, and kept by a _contadine_ and his wife. The ladies stopping there\nhave their coffee in the house, but they dine always in a private\ndining-room at the monastery, from whence, also, their supper is sent\ndown to them in the evening\u2014supper being after Ave Maria, when the gates\nare closed.\n\nMr. Vane stayed with the prior, and the three ladies followed their\nguide. Their way led them a five minutes\u2019 walk back as they had come up,\nthen turned through an open gate in the stone wall at the right, where\nthey found their lodgings. A _contadina_ with dark cloth draperies\npinned smoothly about her, and a huge white edifice of starched linen on\nher head, overshadowing a pair of bright eyes, met them at the gate and\nwelcomed them with a pleasant voice, but in a tongue where the soft\nRoman consonants seemed to have each and every one turned itself into\nthe hardest kind of a Z.\n\nThe windows looked out on a long terrace with a parapet, and outside the\nparapet the mountain dropped steeply to the plain.\n\nA stair, which belonged entirely to the strangers\u2019 house, led up to the\nsecond floor, and here they found three pleasant bed-chambers awaiting\nthem. An hour later, as they sat at their windows looking out into the\ntwilight, they saw their _donna_, Catarina, come into the terrace with a\nhuge basket on her arm. Her head-dress and sleeves shone white in the\nlight of the rising moon, and there was a soft richness where the\nscarlet stripe ran round her petticoat, and where the rainbow colors of\nthe apron-like upper mantle bound her without a fold. Her solid step\nsounded on the stair the next minute, there was the spurt of a match in\nthe outer room of the suite, and, looking through the open doors, they\nsaw the woman, more like a picture than any picture they recollected to\nhave seen, standing with a curious brass lamp in her hand, carefully\nlighting its wick, the basket she had brought sitting on the floor at\nher feet.\n\nShe came into the Signora\u2019s room with that red light all over her from\nthe lamp she carried in her hand, smiled so as to show two rows of\nsnowy-white teeth, and, with a \u201c_Buona sera_,\u201d announced that their\nsupper had come and would be on the table in a few minutes.\n\nThe three went out into the dining-room to witness the preparations and\nlisten to the woman\u2019s pleasant voice as she half-talked, half-sang an\naccount of her life and adventures there, her manner of speech being\nthat so common among the lower classes of Italy, especially at the\nsouth\u2014almost a sort of chant, inexpressibly soft and touching. The\npeculiarity of this manner of speaking consists more, perhaps, in the\nending of the sentences than in their progress; for they never come down\nto the definite tone that ends a period, but stop on some swinging note\na little higher up, it may be only half a tone above. It is the voice of\nweeping, which never has a positive tone, as if the whole gamut were\nwashed over and blurred by tears.\n\nTalking so, the woman brought out from her basket a linen cloth for the\ntable, next a pair of cruets with vinegar and oil, next a decanter of\nwhite-wine, next an omelette made with herbs, after that a salad that\nlooked like sliced cucumbers, but was something else. Bread followed,\nthen the necessary dishes.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m ashamed to confess that I am hungry,\u201d Isabel said. \u201cIt is a\nmiserable coming down, but we won\u2019t say anything about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d responded the Signora, \u201cyou are very ungrateful to say so.\nLet us be just. Our bodies have brought our souls up to this beautiful\nplace, and carried them about from point to point of it, and kept as\nquiet as possible about their own affairs. Now, if they are hungry, let\nus feed them. Poor bodies! they have the worst of it. They are extremely\nuseful, and we sublime creatures are always turning up our noses at\nthem; they suffer, and we protest that we want to get rid of them, when,\nin nine cases out of ten, we have wantonly caused their suffering. Can a\nbody take care of itself, or even know how it should be done? No; the\nsoul has to do it, and ought to do it in gratitude for house-rent, or\nbody-rent. Then, at last, the poor things have got to corrupt, and be\ndevoured by worms, and go to dust. Fortunately, these sufferings will\nnot be felt. It is also a satisfaction to know that this arrogant\nspirit, which is for ever crowing over its poor companion, will have to\nsuffer consciously for it all and pay the uttermost farthing. You will\nplease to recollect, Miss Isabel Vane, that if ever you should have the\nhappiness of going to heaven, your body will go there too. Sometimes,\u201d\nshe said, holding her hand up before the light, which shone through and\nmade a ruby of it,\u2014\u201csometimes I think that my poor flesh has a\nglimmering, a presentiment of the possibility of being one day\nglorified.\u201d\n\n\u201cMost worshipful body,\u201d said Isabel to herself with great respect,\n\u201cwould you like a piece of that omelette\u2014a large piece, a half of it,\nsay, leaving the other half to those two? Yes? Well, you shall have it.\u201d\nAnd she proceeded with all possible dignity to help herself to a hundred\nand eighty degrees of the circle of herbs and eggs before her.\n\nThe _donna_, who, of course, had not understood a word, looked with\nastonishment at this shocking piece of voracity; and when Bianca, in\nprotection of her client, clasped her arms around the wine, and the\nSignora, with an air of determination, took possession of the salad, the\npoor creature evidently thought that she was waiting on a company of\nmaniacs.\n\n\u201cDo let\u2019s laugh,\u201d said the Signora, and at once set the example. \u201cWe are\nfrightening the poor soul to death.\u201d\n\nTheir supper and their nonsense finished, the three took possession of\ntheir rooms.\n\nA full moonlight was filling all the valley, or plain, which looked like\nthe bottom of an emerald chalice full of golden wine. A pure and sacred\nsilence reigned over all\u2014the silence of peace and lofty contemplation.\nHad it been some such silence that suggested to Charlemagne, when,\nalmost eleven hundred years before, he came to venerate the relics of\nSt. Benedict, the beautiful thought of bestowing on the abbot, with all\nthe other singular privileges he gave him, that of being the sole\nmediator between the emperor and the rebellious barons\u2014the only person\nby whose means they could make their peace? It was doubtless by virtue\nof this ancient title that the prior had written \u201cPax\u201d at the head of\nhis letter to Mr. Vane.\n\nYes, Charlemagne came up here ages ago, and popes, and princes, and\nkings came, and the Saracens swarmed up with fire and sword, and the\nLombards and the Normans; and the Crusaders came to pray at the shrine\nbefore going to the East. They had seen on the pilasters of the church\nthe different crosses in precious mosaic of the orders of knights which\nhad been formed under the Benedictine rule, among them the familiar\nnames of Calatrava, Alcantara, St. Stephen, St. James of the Sword, and\nTemplars. Ignatius of Loyola came up and stayed fifty days.\n\n\u201cBut, _signora mia_,\u201d said the lady who was going over all this part, as\nshe gazed out into the night, \u201csince you are not going to stay here\nfifty days, you will be so good as to shut your mind and your eyes and\ngo to sleep.\u201d\n\nThe next morning they went to see the monastery proper, for which they\nhad a special permission from the Pope, and spent hours in the library,\narchives, printing and lithograph rooms. It would be vain to tell what\nold books\u2014worth their weight in gold, printed on creamy vellum in\ncharacters that modern type has never excelled, if it has equalled\u2014what\ndrawers filled with scrolls, what autographs, what illuminations, they\nsaw. It were vain to fancy with what feelings one sees for the first\ntime the writing of Charlemagne, of Hildebrand, of Gregory the Great, of\nFrederick II., of Countess Matilda. Then there was the long, long\ndormitory of the boys, with a row of snowy beds at either side, and the\nimmense arched window at the end framing a superb outside picture, with\nMonte Cairo in the centre, and long, long corridors that dwindled people\nseen from opposite ends, with cracks made by earthquakes in their walls,\nand solid groined arches that only an earthquake could shake down. Then\nthe nooks, courts, and passages, which they came upon without guessing\nin the least in what part of the building they were; the round window in\nthe wall\u2014_occhio_, or eye, they call it\u2014through which they looked as\nthrough a lens, and saw the three courts and the colonnades. Finally,\ncoming down a stair with a wall at either side and a door at the foot,\nthey were told: \u201cWhen you have crossed that threshold you cannot return.\nThe cloister ends there.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat!\u201d exclaimed Isabel, \u201cif I should run out a minute, couldn\u2019t I come\nback on to the stairs again for another minute?\u201d\n\nThe prior shook his head. \u201cIt would be excommunication. That seems\nunreasonable; but listen: This is a cloister which women can enter only\nby special permission of the Pope. That permission is not lightly\ngranted, and is for but once. Your running back a minute would do no\nharm in itself, but would do harm to the principle. If you can return in\none minute, you could come back in five, or ten, or half an hour, or an\nhour, or a day, and so on; and so one visit might be made to cover an\nindefinite time. The only way, you see, is to be strictly literal in\nexcluding from a second entrance.\u201d\n\nThat afternoon they were presented to the Abbot\u2014\u201cAbbot of Abbots\u201d he was\ncalled in the palmy days of Monte Cassino\u2014and received, not only his\nbenediction, but each a little souvenir of the place: a tiny photograph\nof the tomb of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, with a wreath of\nflowers pressed round it that had been on the tomb, and at the back his\nown name written, with the date, and under it \u201cOra pro me.\u201d\n\nThey stood in the church speaking with him a few minutes, then went out\nto the _Paradiso_.\n\nA storm was coming up from the east, and round the angle of the building\nthey could just see that the mountains in that direction were\nobliterated and mists fast filling the plain. Standing up against these\nmists, as if to impede their progress, was the lower end of a rainbow,\nset straight and solid on the green like a jewelled column. The cloud\nadvanced and pushed the column before them.\n\n\u201cIt is like the pillar of light leading the Israelites,\u201d Isabel said.\n\nThe cloud unrolled itself above, and down through the rainbow ran a\ncrinkling line of white fire.\n\n\u201cHow plainly lightning asserts its own force!\u201d Mr. Vane remarked.\n\u201cSeeing it for the first time, without knowing what it was, one would\nknow at once that it is an irresistible power. What an experience it\nwould be to stand just near enough to a passing flash to perhaps hear it\nhiss through the air, to be between it and its thunder, and yet not so\nnear nor so in its track as to be smitten!\u201d\n\nLittle by little the sun was vanquished, and the rainbow grew dim,\nfaltered, blushed along the line of the advancing shadows, and\ndisappeared. There was an odd murmur growing up, fine and pervading\u2014the\nsound of rain in the plain below. All the tiny noises of each falling\ndrop joined in a multitude, countless nothings making themselves heard\nin pauses of the thunder. It was to solid sound as fine carving is to\nplain wood, as embroidery is to a fine web\u2014a continued succession of\nmillions of infinitesimal watery strokes separated by millions of\ninfinitesimal silences.\n\nThe others went into the house at the first drop that splashed on the\n_Paradiso_, but the Signora went back to the portico and seated herself\nunder its shelter. Behind her the court of the church looked weird and\nstrange. The pillars of the porticos appeared to move as the lightnings\ncame and went, the statues and busts behind them seemed to lean forward\nand retreat, and the one window in the church front looked blue, as if\nthere were light inside it.\n\nShe took herself out of the draught, and went to lean on the wall\nbetween the doors. In front of her the grand stairs went down to the\ncentral court, and the gardens shone green and wet through the\ncolonnades at either side. On a level with her, across the space,\nstretched the _Paradiso_, and under the portico that supported it a\nlarge, arched door led from the court out on to a beautiful _loggia_.\nTwo or three monks, who had been standing in this _loggia_ watching the\nstorm, were driven in by the rain, and in a minute the whole place\nseemed to be deserted. The rain and the lightning had it to themselves\nand were washing and purifying all \u201cso as by fire.\u201d\n\nThis one visible witness felt her soul expand as she gazed. If only she\nalso might be purified and enlightened in that time and place! If the\nlittlenesses of life might be washed away from her, and only the\nrealities remain!\n\n\u201cCome, Holy Spirit!\u201d she said, and blessed herself.\n\nThen, content and confident, without saying another word, she waited\nwith her two inarticulate but eloquent companions\u2014Art, consecrated to\nGod, and Nature, informed by God\u2014and felt above and about the\nilluminating Presence. For faith is the rod that calls the divine\nLightning down, whether it came as a dove, or a tongue of fire, or a\npointing finger, or a whispering voice.\n\nThe landscape of the plain, seen through the arched door under the\n_Paradiso_, was dim and gray with rain, or glittering and red with\nlightning; the mountain-tops above it, and the sky, were a changing\ntumult of shadows veined with threads of fire, and rolled hither and\nthither in visible thunders. The white pavement of the court below\nchanged every instant into jaspers, the beautiful columns and curb and\nsteps of the well became jewels, and one of the copper buckets that\nstood on the brink was like a vessel of red gold brimming over with red\nwine.\n\nSt. Benedict with his crosier, and St. Scholastica with her dove, stood\nimmovable but living, and their calmness in that tumult was like a song\nof triumph. Did he sing with Moses?\u2014\u201c_Thou shalt bring them in, and\nplant them in the mountain of thy inheritance, in thy most firm\nhabitation which thou hast made, O Lord; thy sanctuary, O Lord, which\nthy hands have established._\u201d And did she reply, like Miriam with her\ntimbrel?\u2014\u201c_Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified, the\nhorse and his rider he hath thrown into the sea._\u201d Such silence in a\ntumult seems ever a singing.\n\nWhen the Signora went down, slipping from colonnade to colonnade,\ndry-shod, the storm was spent. From the little balcony of the parlor,\nwhere she found her companions, she saw a grand arch of rainbow\ntrembling out over the east, as if astonished at its own glory,\ntrembling as it grew, but as strong and bold as light.\n\nFlocks of birds were swinging by in a great circle, screaming impudently\nas they passed the balcony, as if to say, \u201cCatch us, if you can!\u201d There\nwas a little parallelogram of garden under the window, with a rough pole\nframe-work supporting a dripping vine, and, below the dropping fields, a\ncrest of land and rock, curling over like a pointed wave, rose boldly in\nthe foreground; then, the plain.\n\nMr. Vane came to stand beside her, looking at her keenly one instant,\nthen averting his eyes.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d he said, \u201cwhat has the storm been saying to you up there?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt has washed the drift-wood out of my path, and made it as clear and\nwhite as one of those torrent-beds up the mountain-side,\u201d she answered.\n\u201cI think I ought to work a little harder for the future. Life is short,\nand I have, perhaps, sometimes played with my talents. They were given\nme for serious use. When you shall have left me alone, instead of\nsitting weakly down and thinking that it is rather lonely, I shall begin\nto carve a new book out of the next year. Do you know that year to come\nlooks to me as the block of marble looked to Michael Angelo when he\nsaid, 'I will make an angel of it.\u2019 I am not a Michael Angelo,\u201d she\nadded, smiling; \u201cbut I am something, and, firmly and intelligently set\nto work, I may do what need not be despised. My mind is clear.\u201d\n\nHe was answered.\n\nIf a shade passed over his face, it was slight. If his lips were\ncompressed a moment, she did not look to see. He stood and watched the\nrainbow grow and fade, and, as its colors went out, so faded out of his\nlife a sweet hope. But he reflected: \u201cDenials make strong. And the light\nthat made the rainbow is not dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, life is short,\u201d he said presently, and half-turned away. \u201cGod\nbless you!\u201d he added and hastily left her.\n\nThe next morning they made their last visit to the monastery, and the\nprior, after showing them the tower of St. Benedict and the fine\ncollection of pictures there, had some of the choir-books brought into\nthe parlor for them to see. There are fifty-seven in all of these great\nvolumes, bound in leather, with metal corners and knobs. These are all\nin manuscript, beautiful black scores and lettering on white parchment.\nEvery capital letter is painted, every one different and every one\nbeautiful, and occasionally the page has a border, and in some cases a\npicture in the corner, so exquisitely beautiful that one could never\ntire of examining it\u2014such leaves and flowers, and birds and figures and\narabesques, fine as the finest pencil and most delicate imagination\ncould make them, and so executed that one had to touch them to be sure\nthey are not in relief. One long, silver leaf slightly curled over to\nshow a golden lining; Bianca stretched her finger to touch, and drew it\nback immediately, fearing to break.\n\nNot a tint was faded of them all, though they had been in constant use\nthree hundred years. They are not used every day now, however.\n\nOne page was especially rich\u2014the first page of the Christmas service.\nThe whole ground of this inside the border is a deep velvety crimson,\nthe score and text being of gold. On the border imagination had\nexhausted itself, and in the left upper corner is a picture of the\nNativity, delicate and pure, with its cool, pale mountains of Syria, and\nthe heavenly faces of the Mother and Child.\n\n\u201cYou should see that at the Midnight Mass of Christmas,\u201d the prior said,\n\u201cwith the light of all the candles shining on it as it lies open on the\ndesk. It is splendid then. I copied that picture in the corner of the\npage to send the Pope on his great anniversary,\u201d he added, \u201cand it took\nme a year.\u201d\n\nFor the prior was an artist as well, and not only made exquisite copies\nfrom these old manuscripts, but played the organ, and had the evening\nbefore done the honors of their grand instrument for his visitors,\ndisplaying its orchestra stops.\n\nThe hours slipped away, and regretfully at length they took leave of\nthis beautiful and sacred place, and the kind host who had made it so\npleasant for them. The donkeys stood ready at the gate, and they mounted\nand went down into the world again. In the valley, before going to the\nstation, they stopped a minute and gazed back with a mute farewell to\nMonte Cassino. The Signora thought, but did not say aloud: \u201cI will lift\nmine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh help.\u201d\n\nThe road they took through the plain to the station ran along the\nriver-side. This river\u2014the Rapido\u2014narrowed to a swift, yellow sluice\nthat one could toss a penny across, to be caught by the beggar at the\nother side, did not look very imposing to American eyes, accustomed to\nthe grand crystalline floods of the New World; but every drop of it\nmoved to the tune of a memory, and farther on it meets the Carnello, and\nthe two, the ancient Vinius and Liri, join to make the Garigliano, the\nriver made famous by Bayard.\n\nThen back to Rome, through crowding mountains at first. But, by dark,\nthe mountains began to draw back, the level widened, they passed the\ncity wall by the stars, and rolled into the _Citt\u00e0 vecchia_.\n\n\u201cNow we must begin to look respectfully at the guide-book,\u201d Mr. Vane\nsaid the next morning. \u201cWe have been sipping the foam of the wine as it\ncame. We must drain the cup, if we can.\u201d\n\nThere was nothing more to be said. Their story was finished, and the\nremaining few weeks were but a study of what all travellers study in\nRome.\n\n\u201cI am laying up riches for my life,\u201d Mr. Vane said to the Signora. \u201cI\nhave learned of you to work, and I hope that the last of my life will be\nmore useful than the first has been. These memories that I am preparing\nnow will be the only recreation of my future and my only dream.\u201d\n\nHe did not trouble her with sadness or importunities, but took his life\nup with manly cheerfulness, and she honored him for it and liked him\nbetter than ever. But never for an instant did she waver in her\ndecision. Her mind, once cleared, was cleared for ever. She would not\nhave married him, nor any other man, to have possessed the world.\n\nOne bright October day they left her. There was sadness and tears, but\nno heart-break for any one. Marion\u2019s tender sympathy threw a rainbow on\nBianca\u2019s gentle sorrow, and Isabel clung to her father\u2019s arm and dropped\nher head on his shoulder, soothing and soothed.\n\n\u201cI shall never leave you, papa,\u201d she whispered.\n\nDid she suspect what he had missed?\n\nThe Signora watched the train roll away, then went back to her silent\nhouse, wiping her eyes as she entered.\n\n\u201cWhat a pity it is that you will have to be alone now!\u201d said Annunciata.\n\n\u201cAlone!\u201d the Signora\u2019s eyes flashed out through the tears. \u201cI am not\nalone. I never was alone in my life!\u201d\n\nShe smiled as she shut herself into her room. \u201cAlone? How little they\nknow!\u201d\n\nWhat, indeed, did they, who cannot live a day without their gossip,\nwithout trying to fill their emptiness with the husks which make up by\nfar the greater part of the world\u2019s talk, of the life of one whose mind\nwas as a fountain for ever overflowing, who had eyes in her finger-tips,\nand who listened with every pore of her body? What knew the readers of\ndaily newspapers of the hoarded treasures of literature, ever ready with\neloquent voices? What knew the Christians of one communion in the year,\nand one Mass when there was obligation, of long, delicious hours in\nchurches when there was no function to stare at, nor music to talk\nthrough? The world has no such society as the cultivated mind can fill\nits house with; and there are no receptions so splendid as those given\nby the imagination. Bores never come, tattlers and enemies never are\nadmitted, late hours never weary, and the wine never inebriates. And,\nbetter yet, those who are invited are always present and ready to stay.\nHow the possessors of such a society laugh at the \u201csocieties\u201d of the\nouter world, and how truly they can exclaim, \u201cAlone? I never was alone\nin my life!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n            DOUBTS OF A CONTEMPORARY ON THE DESTINY OF MAN.\n\n\nThe New York _Sun_ gave us (March 25, 1877) a short but thoughtful and\nsubstantial review of a little work lately published by Rev. Dr. Nisbet,\nof Rock Island, Ill., on _The Resurrection of the Body_. The reviewer\nvery justly affirms that the author\u2019s conclusions are anti-Scriptural,\nand that his method of interpretation lays the way open to a general\ndisregard of dogmatic truth; for if the Bible, as the doctor contends,\ndoes not really teach what the whole world has hitherto believed it to\nteach concerning the resurrection of the flesh, it is plain that we can\nnever be sure that we understand the doctrine of the Bible, even when it\nseems perfectly clear; and, if this be so, we can have no definite\nknowledge of revealed truth. The critic makes some very pertinent\nremarks on the baneful effects that such works as the one he criticises\nare apt to produce; and, although he does not point out explicitly the\nroot of the evil, yet he gives us a clue to it by averring that any\ninterpretation of Scripture which conflicts with the universal and\ntraditional interpretation received in the church is calculated to shake\nthe very foundations of faith, and exposes every dogma to the attacks\nand sneers of unbelievers. This is to say that the Protestant principle\nof freely interpreting the Bible without regard to ecclesiastical\ntradition leads to infidelity\u2014a truth which is painfully confirmed by\ndaily experience, and which accounts for the sympathy of all the\nanti-Christian sects with Protestantism; but which the writer in the\n_Sun_\u2014an excellent Protestant, we presume\u2014could not very consistently\ninsist upon. Yet the whole tone of his article shows his sincerity. He\nis evidently an intelligent scholar; and though he finds himself\nsomewhat entangled in the solution of some important questions, yet he\ndoes not imitate the folly of such flippant scribblers as blaspheme what\nthey do not understand, but he shows forbearance and circumspection, a\nwholesome reverence for religion, and an ardent love of truth, and\nexpresses an earnest desire to be taught how the resurrection of the\nflesh and the immortality of the soul can be successfully established\nand vindicated against the allegations of modern sceptics.\n\nAs we anticipate that Protestant divines will probably not take the\ntrouble to investigate the objections of the infidel school with which\nthey too often sympathize and of which they are the unconscious props\nand promoters, we will consider the honest appeal of the writer as\naddressed to Catholic thinkers; and we intend to do briefly what we can,\nfrom our doctrinal point of view, to solve his difficulties and to set\nat rest his doubts. The more so because, as he remarks, whoever can\nfurnish a way out of such difficulties will confer, by so doing, an\nimmense benefit upon a whole world of anxious but sincere doubters on\nthe subject of immortality.\n\n    \u201cIt cannot be denied,\u201d says he, \u201cthat while the Christians generally\n    believe in some kind of continuance of human existence after death,\n    there is a great diversity of opinions among them in regard to its\n    nature and characteristics. The men of the primitive church were not\n    perplexed about the matter, as they were not about many others which\n    are actively debated among us.\u201d\n\nThis introductory remark is exceedingly important. The primitive church\n\u201cwas not perplexed\u201d about the matter. Why? Apparently because the\nfaithful were in the habit of accepting the Gospel with humility and\nsimplicity as it was given to them by the apostles and by their\nsuccessors; because the Protestant method of interpreting Scripture\naccording to every one\u2019s individual bias was not thought to be\nconsistent with the profession of Christianity; because the teachers of\nthe faith did not contradict one another, as our modern Protestant\npreachers and writers are wont to do to the scandal and ruin of their\nbewildered flocks. When we see that our Lord\u2019s words, \u201cThis is my body,\u201d\ncan be construed by Protestant divines as meaning \u201cThis is _not_ my\nbody,\u201d we may form an idea of what must be the result of the Protestant\nsystem of Scriptural interpretation. No one can be surprised that such a\nsystem creates perplexity, fosters debate, and ends in discord and\nultimately in unbelief. But if there is \u201ca great diversity of opinions\u201d\namong Protestants, such is not the case with us Catholics. We members of\nthe universal church are not perplexed about such matters. We still\nbelieve with perfect unanimity as the primitive Christians believed; our\nteachers teach all the same Gospel\u2014the Gospel of Jesus Christ as\ntransmitted to us by legitimate channels, not the contradictory gospels\nand the doctrinal crotchets of free-thinking divines. That is what makes\nthe difference.\n\nThe critic whose words suggested to us these passing remarks will not\nfail to see that it is mainly to the rebellious spirit and presumption\nof the Protestant reformers that the present age owes its theological\nperplexities and the loss of religious unity. Would it not be better,\ntherefore, to give up at last the gospels of men, and return to the\nGospel of the primitive Christians?\n\n    \u201cThey believed,\u201d as our critic points out, \u201cthat at the last day the\n    bodies of the dead would be raised to life, and that the faithful\n    would once more, in flesh and blood, inhabit their former abodes.\n    The most ancient versions of the Apostles\u2019 Creed teach explicitly\n    the resurrection of the flesh, and the earliest Christian apologist,\n    Justin Martyr, writing only a hundred years after the death of\n    Christ, defends the doctrine by asking whether it be any more\n    difficult for God to create a body anew from its dust than for him\n    to create it the first time in its mother\u2019s womb. And Mr. Nisbet\n    concedes that all the succeeding Fathers of the church maintain the\n    same view. Tertullian declares: 'The flesh shall rise again wholly\n    in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity.\u2019\n    Iren\u00e6us agrees with him, and so do Jerome and Augustine.\u201d\n\nIt would appear that these authorities, to which many more of the same\nkind might be added, should leave no doubt in the mind of a Christian\nabout the legitimate interpretation of the dogma of resurrection. For,\nwhen an article of faith is clearly expressed in the Gospel and has been\nuniformly understood in all ages by the doctors of the universal church,\nit is difficult to see how a man who makes profession of Christianity\ncan think himself authorized to twist it according to his individual\nbias. Yet this is what Dr. Nisbet has had the courage to do.\n\n    \u201cIt is remarkable,\u201d says the reviewer, \u201cwith what confidence Dr.\n    Nisbet overrides this primitive interpretation of Scripture and\n    declares it to be incorrect. He allows no weight whatever to the\n    obvious fact that men living so much nearer than he does to the days\n    when the New Testament was written, and with whom its very language\n    was still in colloquial use, would be more likely than he to\n    perceive its true meaning. He lays great stress upon the famous\n    passage in Paul\u2019s Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xv. 35-53),\n    which, he thinks, asserts the resurrection-body not to be of flesh\n    and blood. But he fails to perceive that all that Paul is contending\n    for is a finer and more glorious form of flesh and blood. Paul\u2019s\n    language is: 'The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised\n    incorruptible, and we shall be changed\u2019 (v. 52). This he further\n    explains in writing to the Thessalonians: 'We which are alive and\n    remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are\n    asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,\n    with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the\n    dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain\n    shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the\n    Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord\u2019 (1 Thess.\n    iv. 15-17). It was the expectation of the apostolic church that the\n    Lord would come again in their time, agreeably to his prediction in\n    Matthew xxiv.: 'This generation shall not pass, till all these\n    things be fulfilled\u2019; and in John v.: 'The hour is coming, and now\n    is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they\n    that hear shall live.\u2019 They know that the Lord had raised Lazarus\n    and many others in their own flesh and blood, and had himself, after\n    his resurrection, offered his body to the touch of Thomas; and they\n    would have had to do violence to their own reasoning faculties had\n    they conceived of any different fulfilment of his promises. When,\n    therefore, Dr. Nisbet denounces, as he does, Mr. Talmage\u2019s picture\n    of the final resurrection, with its general scramble of souls for\n    their old bodies, the flying of scattered limbs through the air, and\n    their reconstruction in their pristine integrity, he discredits what\n    has been for eighteen centuries the accepted faith of the Christian\n    Church.\u201d\n\nOne would scarcely expect that the writer, after so judicious a\ncriticism, should hesitate to condemn Dr. Nisbet\u2019s view; and yet he\nseems afraid of passing too severe a judgment on it, as he immediately\nadds: \u201cNot that this proves him to be in the wrong, but only that, if he\nis in the right, no dogma, however venerable, is safe from attack.\u201d\n\nThe conception that a man who professes Christianity may not be in the\nwrong while he throws discredit on the most venerable dogmas of\nChristianity is a monstrosity not only in a religious but also in a\nlogical point of view. Unless the expressions of our critic can be\nconstrued as a figure of speech conveying under a mild and civil form\nthe merited censure, every Christian reader will say that the critic\nhimself is in the wrong. A pagan, or a man absolutely ignorant of the\ndivine origin and glorious history of Christianity, might hesitate about\nthe right or wrong of tampering with our revealed dogmas, for he would\nhave to learn first how the fact of divine revelation has been\nascertained; but a man who has read the New Testament, who lives in a\nChristian atmosphere, who knows the life, the miracles, the death, and\nthe resurrection of Christ, and who consequently cannot conceal from\nhimself the great fact of revelation\u2014such a man, we say, astonishes us\nwhen he assumes that a Christian doctor may not be in the wrong, though\nhe deal with revealed truth in such a loose manner as to expose every\ndogma, however venerable, to the attacks of our modern pagans. But let\nus proceed. To show how suicidal is Dr. Nisbet\u2019s method of\ninterpretation the reviewer says:\n\n    \u201cIn fact, men more daring and less respectful than Dr. Nisbet have\n    employed his method of reasoning against the resurrection of what he\n    calls the grave-flesh to controvert the idea of any resurrection at\n    all. He assumes as unquestioned the proposition that human beings\n    must in some way survive the death of the body, and is only\n    solicitous to determine what that way is. But just as he shows the\n    irrationality of expecting that the cast-off flesh and blood which\n    served the soul for a tabernacle during life shall be taken up\n    again, so do sceptics undertake to show the irrationality of\n    expecting any kind of future existence whatever.\u201d\n\nThe reviewer is perfectly right. If the teachers of Christianity are to\nbe free to twist the word of God as they please, why shall their\nfollowers and other men be denied the same privilege? And what can be\nthe ultimate result of such a reckless meddling with truth but universal\nunbelief? Faith must rest on unquestionable authority; when this latter\nis shaken, faith is replaced by doubt, opinion, perplexity, despondency,\nand all the vagaries of a weak, distracted reason. The present growth of\nunbelief is therefore nothing but the logical development of the\nProtestant method of free interpretation, which has engendered a\nthousand conflicting opinions and thwarted all honest efforts of its\nfollowers in the search after truth. The Catholic Church alone has a\nremedy for this plague of religious scepticism, for she alone has the\npower to teach with authority, as she alone has faithfully preserved in\nits primitive entirety the sacred deposit of revealed truths.\n\nAnd now the reviewer comes to the most important part of his article,\nwhich consists of the objections urged by the modern unbelievers against\nboth resurrection and immortality. He says:\n\n    \u201cLet us briefly state some of the various reasons which they adduce,\n    in the hope that Dr. Nisbet, or some other writer of ability, may be\n    led to meet and overthrow these reasons, and to furnish the world at\n    last with a solid and impregnable philosophical demonstration of the\n    doctrine of immortality.\u201d\n\nIt was after reading this passage that we resolved to write the present\narticle. Not that we consider ourselves \u201ca man of ability\u201d; but we are\nin possession of truth, and are confident that we can vindicate it\nsuccessfully, though we may lack the ability of our opponents. Let us\nproceed, therefore, without further observations, to the reviewer\u2019s\narguments.\n\n    \u201cIn the first place,\u201d he says, \u201cthose who deny that there is any\n    immortality of the individual human soul say it is contrary to all\n    the analogies of nature to suppose that the death of the body does\n    not end its individual being. Throughout creation, whenever any\n    organization is destroyed, it is destroyed for ever. A new\n    organization may arise similar to the old one, but it is not that\n    one. A crystal crushed into powder ceases to be a crystal. Its\n    particles may be dissolved and be crystallized anew; but they will\n    form another and not the same crystal. Every vegetable runs its\n    career from the seed to the mature plant, and, when resolved into\n    its elements, perishes as a plant. If those elements be made to\n    constitute a new plant, that plant begins its round as a new plant,\n    and not as the old one. In like manner, when animals die and their\n    bodies decay, they never reappear as the same animals. They may\n    furnish materials for new forms of mineral, vegetable, and animal\n    organisms, but these organisms are essentially new, and not the old\n    ones under the new forms. And, in the same way, these sceptics\n    contend, so far as our observation goes, human beings die once and\n    finally, other men are born and succeed them, but they are other men\n    and not the men who have died. Whether their dissolution took place\n    yesterday or thousands of years ago, it is alike, so far as our\n    ordinary experience goes, complete and irreparable.\u201d\n\nTo answer this argument it suffices to point out that the resurrection\nof the flesh and the immortality of the soul are two distinct truths, of\nwhich the first is known to us by divine revelation only, the second by\nrevelation and by reason. To say that \u201cthroughout creation whenever any\norganization is destroyed it is destroyed for ever,\u201d is to say that we\nfind nothing in the order of nature that authorizes us to infer the\nresurrection of our bodies. This, of course, is true; but what of it? No\none pretends that the future resurrection will be brought about by\nnatural causes acting in their natural manner and obeying natural laws.\nResurrection will be the work of the Omnipotent. We believe it, not\nbecause it agrees with the analogies of nature, but because God himself,\ninfallible truth, has informed us that he will raise us from death\nagainst all the analogies of nature. We concede, then, that whenever an\norganization is destroyed, it is, in the natural course of things,\ndestroyed for ever; and consequently we concede that the course of\nnature affords no proof of our resurrection. But the course of nature is\nnot the standard by which we have to judge of things supernatural. The\nanalogies of nature did not prevent the resurrection of Lazarus, of the\nson of the widow, and of others of which we read in the Gospel and in\nother Scriptural books; nor did Christ respect the analogies of nature\nwhen he rose glorious from the tomb, as he had promised. Hence the\nargument from the analogies of nature has no strength whatever against\nthe dogma of the resurrection.\n\nHas it at least any weight against the immortality of the soul? On the\ncontrary, it proves that the soul is naturally immortal. For, though\nnature can destroy the organic form, it has no power to destroy the\nsubstances of which the organism consists. The organic compound is\ndestroyed, but all the components remain. If, then, no substance is ever\ndestroyed by nature, how can we fail to see that the human soul, which\nis a substance, cannot naturally perish when the organism of the body is\ndestroyed? We may be told that the sceptic does not concede that our\nsoul is a substance; he rather believes that what we call _the soul_ is\na mere result of organic movements which must cease altogether when the\norgans are destroyed. But we answer that, if the sceptic honestly\ndesires to be enlightened on this subject, he must not rely on the\nassertions of ignorant or perverse scientists who profess to know\nnothing but matter and force; he must read and meditate what has been\nwritten on the subject by competent men. If he has sufficient ability to\nunderstand their philosophical reasonings, he will come to the\nconclusion that the substantiality of the human soul is a demonstrated\ntruth; if, on the contrary, he has too little stock of philosophy to be\nable to follow such reasonings, then he has no right to be a sceptic,\nand it becomes his duty humbly to recognize his incompetency, and to\naccept without demonstration what more cultivated minds consider a\ndemonstrated truth. This last remark is very important. Scepticism and\nunbelief are the offspring of pride. Men pretend to see the _why_ and\nthe _how_ of everything; but they often forget that they are born in\nignorance, and that, as their knowledge of material things is the fruit\nof long and varied experience so, the knowledge of supersensible things\nis the fruit of long and methodic study. He who has not studied\nastronomy, may say very honestly that he does not know how to determine\nthe mass of the sun or the distance of the moon; but he cannot honestly\ndeny what astronomy teaches on the subject. To do this, to declare\nhimself sceptic, would be accounted folly. How, then, can those be\njustified who, without having applied to philosophical studies, refuse\nto accept the soundest conclusions of philosophy about the nature of the\nsoul? If they are at all anxious to know how to prove the substantiality\nof the soul, let them apply to philosophy; and they will learn that\nmatter, owing to its inertia, cannot think, and that the organic\nmovements cannot be the thinking principle.\n\nThe writer in the _Sun_ answers the preceding objection in the following\nmanner:\n\n    \u201cIn answer to this it is usually alleged that, though the body of a\n    man dies and decays, his soul survives, and either, as Dr. Nisbet\n    maintains, continues its existence in a purer or more ethereal\n    world, or, as the Christian Church believes, retaining its\n    potentiality of life, will clothe itself again, at some future time,\n    with a bodily form and enter upon a new career.\u201d\n\nLet the writer take notice that, according to the doctrine of the\nChristian Church, the soul, when separated from the body, retains not a\nmere \u201cpotentiality of life,\u201d but actual life and the exercise thereof.\nThe life of the soul does not depend on the organism of the body; its\nspiritual operation has no need of organs; for reason and will are not\norganic faculties, though in the present life they are associated with\nthe sensitive faculties which work through the organs. The potentiality\nof life, in the language of philosophy, means the capability of\nreceiving life; and it is the organism, not the soul, that has such a\npotentiality.\n\nThe writer continues:\n\n    \u201cThis idea of the distinction between soul and body is as old as the\n    history of the world. The ancient Greeks illustrated it by the\n    example of the butterfly emerging from the hard chrysalis and\n    winging its flight through the air. Like the butterfly, the soul of\n    man, they said, when it casts off its material envelope, soars aloft\n    in the enjoyment of a purer atmosphere. The symbol, and the argument\n    drawn from it, have been adopted by moderns, and they represent the\n    common opinion on the subject. The assertion is that the soul exists\n    within the body as a separate entity, and that when the body dies\n    the soul is merely set free.\u201d\n\nWe wonder if any \u201cargument\u201d has ever been drawn from the example of the\nbutterfly to prove that the soul survives the collapse of the body.\nSimilitudes are simple illustrations of things, and they serve to help\nthe imagination, not to convince the intellect. Yet the author seems to\nbelieve that the common opinion which holds the soul to be a substance\ndistinct from the body owes its demonstration partially to an \u201cargument\u201d\ndrawn from the butterfly; and he undertakes to show that such an\n\u201cargument\u201d has no weight. He says:\n\n    \u201cBut those who maintain this view fail to note that the butterfly,\n    like the worm, is visible to the eye and subject to the laws of\n    matter; and, moreover, that the butterfly, when it has fulfilled its\n    function in the economy of creation, perishes and is never seen or\n    heard of more. If the soul is enveloped in the body as the butterfly\n    is in the worm, it should appear to sight when its covering is\n    removed. This notoriously does not happen, and therefore the\n    argument is unsatisfactory.\u201d\n\nOf course the \u201cargument\u201d would be unsatisfactory; and therefore it is\nthat philosophers do not use it. But the critic should not condemn the\nsimilitude as wrong on the ground that \u201cthe butterfly is visible to the\neye and subject to the laws of matter,\u201d whilst such is not the case with\nthe soul. Similitudes are used for illustrating something different from\nthem; hence they cannot agree in all points with the things illustrated.\nWhen the visible is used as a symbol of the invisible, it is by no means\npretended that we can see the one as we see the other, or that there is\nin the one every property of the other. A genius may be compared to an\neagle; but the eagle has feathers, a beak, and a tail, which the genius\nhas not. So the butterfly is visible to the eye, subject to the laws of\nmatter, and perishable; and in all this it differs vastly from the human\nsoul. But it is not on these points that the comparison is based. Hence\nit is idle to argue from these points against the use of the comparison.\n\nThe writer concludes the preceding in these words:\n\n    \u201cThe argument from analogy, therefore, does but little towards\n    supporting a belief in the future existence of the soul either\n    separately or in connection with a restored body.\u201d\n\nWe admit that the analogies of nature, as alleged by the writer, do very\nlittle indeed towards proving a future resurrection; but we have seen\nthat the same analogies afford an irresistible proof of the natural\nimmortality of the human soul: _No power in nature can deprive a\nsubstance of its being; the human soul is a substance; therefore no\nnatural power can deprive it of its being._ We have, then, in this\nargument, a first demonstration of the natural immortality of the soul.\nBut let us follow the reviewer. He mentions four proofs adduced by\nphilosophers and divines in favor of the immortality of the soul\u2014namely,\nthe reasonableness of immortality, the promises of Scripture, the\nlegendary stories of apparitions, and, in our time, the phenomena of\nwhat is called spiritualism.\n\n    \u201cWithout in any way admitting the sceptic\u2019s proposition,\u201d he says,\n    \u201cwe must yet recognize the striking fact that in the construction of\n    the argument from reasonableness, or the _\u00e0 priori_ demonstration of\n    the survival of the soul, our philosophers have not, so far, got one\n    step beyond the point arrived at by the old Greeks two thousand\n    years ago. No one has written more convincingly on the subject than\n    Plato in his _Ph\u00e6do_, nor is there any more thorough and exhaustive\n    presentment of it extant than the one given by that diligent student\n    of Greek literature, Cicero, in his _Tusculan Disputations_. Plato\n    begins by appealing to the general belief of men in their\n    immortality, which is like appealing to the general belief in\n    fairies and witches as a proof of their existence. He then argues,\n    from the soul\u2019s readiness in acquiring knowledge, that it must have\n    learned the same things in a previous state of existence; and hence,\n    as it existed before the body, it will exist after the body ceases\n    to be, which nowadays is not worth refuting. Next he says that the\n    soul, being uncompounded and invisible, is indissoluble, and\n    therefore immortal; but this is begging the question. Finally, he\n    argues that the soul is in itself life and the opposite of death,\n    and therefore cannot die; which is another _petitio principii_. In a\n    similar manner Cicero enumerates in favor of the soul\u2019s immortality\n    the wide-spread conviction that it is immortal; the thirst for fame\n    which inspires heroic deeds, and which would be absurd if death were\n    the end of all existence; the volatile nature of the soul, which\n    preserves it from destruction; and its superior powers over those of\n    the body.\u201d\n\nWe beg to remark that this passage is full of gratuitous assertions.\nWhat the writer calls \u201ca striking fact\u201d is not a fact. Our philosophers,\nas he himself proceeds to show, have added much to the reasonings of the\nold Greek philosophers. How can it be true, then, that they have gone\n\u201cnot one step beyond the point arrived at two thousand years ago\u201d? And\nif this were true, how could the writer disclaim any intention of\nadmitting \u201cthe sceptic\u2019s proposition,\u201d considering that the old proofs\nof immortality are, in his opinion, quite unsatisfactory?\n\nA second gratuitous and unwise assertion is that to appeal to the\ngeneral belief in immortality is \u201clike appealing to the general belief\nin fairies and witches as a proof of their existence.\u201d To say nothing of\nwitches (for we need not enter into this controversy), it is not true\nthat belief in fairies is, or has been, general, except perhaps among\nnursery children. But let this pass. There is a difference between\nbelief and belief. The belief of men in the immortality of the soul does\nnot originate in nursery tales, but in natural reason; nor is it a\nbelief extorted by imposition, but a conclusion of which thinking men\nfind sufficient evidence in their own nature. It is because the nature\nis common that the belief in immortality is common. To question it is to\nignore the _sensus natur\u00e6 communis_, and to forfeit all claim to a fair\nphilosophical reputation.\n\nA third assertion, equally gratuitous and manifestly false, is that we\ncannot, without begging the question, infer the soul\u2019s immortality from\nits simplicity. It is not easy to understand how the writer could fall\ninto such a tangible error. The simplicity of the soul and its\nspirituality are demonstrated independently of the question of\nimmortality. This being the case, it is plain that no begging of the\nquestion is possible in arguing from the known spiritual simplicity of\nthe soul to its immortality. The writer might probably object that to\nassume the simplicity and spirituality of the soul is to assume its\nimmortality. This is to say that to assume the premises is to assume the\nconclusion. But, if the premises are only assumed after demonstration,\nthe conclusion which they involve will be based on demonstration and\nwill be demonstrated. And this is the case with the soul\u2019s immortality.\nIf the simplicity and spirituality of the soul were assumed without\nproof, the argument would be worthless; but, since both are established\nby independent considerations, the conclusion is unquestionably valid.\n\nThe fourth gratuitous assertion consists in denouncing as a _petitio\nprincipii_ the argument which says that the soul cannot die, \u201cbecause it\nis life in itself.\u201d The words \u201cthe soul is life in itself\u201d mean that the\nlife of the soul is not, like that of the body, borrowed from a distinct\nvital principle, but constitutes the very being of the soul and is\ninvolved in its essence. Hence, if the substance of the soul cannot be\nblotted out of existence by natural agencies, the soul is naturally\nimmortal; for its very existence is life. And, since it is known and\nadmitted that natural agencies are wholly incompetent to cause any\ncreated substance to vanish out of existence, the consequence is that\nthe soul, as Plato very justly remarks, cannot naturally lose its life.\n\nTo complete the demonstration, however, something more is needed. For,\nalthough the preceding arguments show that the soul cannot be destroyed\nby natural agencies, they do not prove that the Author of nature, who\nhas created it, will keep it in existence after its separation from the\nbody. In other terms, it is necessary to show that the soul is no less\nextrinsically than intrinsically immortal. This the Greek philosophers,\nowing to their pagan notion of Divinity, have been unable to do; but it\nhas been done by Christian philosophers, as our writer himself\nrecognizes. He says:\n\n    \u201cOne argument, indeed, is employed by Christians which the heathens\n    do not seem to have thought of\u2014namely, the necessity of a future\n    existence to compensate men for their sufferings, and to punish them\n    for their misdeeds, in this world, and thus vindicate God\u2019s mercy\n    and justice. Virtuous human beings, it is said, are more or less\n    unhappy in this life, while the wicked are happy; and therefore we\n    must suppose that so just and benevolent a being as God will reward\n    the one class and punish the other in a life to come.\u201d\n\nTo this argument nothing can be objected. God cannot be more partial to\nthe wicked than to the good. Such a course would evidently conflict with\nhis sanctity, which necessarily loves all that is right, and necessarily\nhates all that is wrong. Hence the prosperity of the wicked and the\ntrials of the good, though permitted by God for our present probation,\nare not final, but must be reversed when the time of probation is\nover\u2014that is, at the end of the present life. A final triumph of virtue\nand a final punishment of vice are therefore as certain to come after\nthis life as it is certain that God cannot forfeit his sanctity.\nNevertheless, the writer in the _Sun_ thinks that he can get rid of the\nargument by remarking that, if it proved anything, it would prove top\nmuch.\n\n    \u201cAs if God\u2019s goodness,\u201d he says, \u201cdoes not much more require him to\n    reward the virtuous here, if it requires him to reward them at all,\n    and as if an uncertain future punishment, in a problematical state\n    of existence, would offset a present sin.\u201d\n\nBut this reply is extremely futile; for how can it be proved that God\u2019s\ngoodness requires him to reward the virtuous here? The assertion is\nquite arbitrary, not to say absurd; for if God\u2019s goodness does not\nactually reward the virtuous here, it is evident that God\u2019s goodness\ndoes not require that they should have their reward here. Then the\nwriter seems to question the very necessity of reward and punishment;\nbut he gives no reason for his doubt, as in fact no reason could be\nfound for assuming that the moral law can be either observed without\nprofit or violated with impunity. If there be no retribution, right and\nwrong are empty names, virtue becomes vice, and vice virtue. If no\nhappiness is to be expected after death, he is most reasonable and\nvirtuous who strives to satisfy all his passions, and he is most vicious\nand unreasonable who renounces his present gratification for the sake of\nmorality. The sceptic, therefore, who denies a future life is\nconstrained logically to admit that all virtue is foolishness, and all\nwisdom consists in self-indulgence and pleasure. The evident absurdity\nof this conclusion shows the falsity of the opinion from which it\nproceeds.\n\nThe writer imagines also that the future punishment is \u201cuncertain,\u201d and\nthat after death there is only a \u201cproblematical\u201d state of existence. To\nthis we need not make a new answer, as we have seen that a future\nretribution is absolutely certain and not at all problematic.\n\n    \u201cIt may still further be said,\u201d adds our writer, \u201cthat when we turn\n    to the Scriptures, we do not find them by any means so clear and\n    positive in regard to the survival of the soul as people generally\n    suppose. The five books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all\n    allusion to the subject. The Jews were told by the great lawgiver\n    nothing whatever concerning a life beyond the grave. They were\n    promised rewards in this world if they behaved well, and threatened\n    with punishments in this world if they behaved ill. Their whole\n    subsequent history illustrates this fundamental principle. When they\n    rebelled against Jehovah and worshipped other gods, they were\n    smitten with war, pestilence, famine, and captivity. When they were\n    obedient to him, they were blessed with peace and plenty, and\n    victory was granted them over their foes. In the prophetical\n    writings, full as they are of rebukes and warnings, there is no more\n    explicit teaching of a future life than in the Pentateuch; and, down\n    to the advent of Christ, the sect of Sadducees, who prided\n    themselves of their adherence to the faith of their fathers, stoutly\n    denied it.\u201d\n\nLet us make a few remarks on this argument. First, were we to concede\nthat Moses is absolutely silent about a future life, it would make no\ndifference as to the question of the soul\u2019s immortality. For if we argue\nwith Christians, Moses\u2019 silence is abundantly compensated for by other\ninspired writers; and if we argue with unbelievers, we know that Moses\nwith them is no authority whether he speaks or remains silent.\n\nSecondly, it is not true that \u201cthe five books of Moses are absolutely\ndestitute of all allusion to the subject.\u201d We are not going to write a\ndissertation on this Biblical question; it will suffice to point out a\nfew passages which would have no meaning apart from a belief in a future\nlife. We read in Genesis (xv. 1) that the Lord said to Abraham: \u201cI am\nthy protector, and thy reward exceedingly great.\u201d Can these words have\nany other meaning than \u201cprotector in the troubles of thy present life,\nand reward exceedingly great after the end of the struggle\u201d? Again we\nread that Jacob at the approach of his death, while blessing his\nchildren, exclaimed: \u201cI will look for thy salvation, O Lord\u201d (_ib._\nxlix. 18)\u2014that is, \u201cthough I shall soon die, yet my soul will not cease\nto rejoice in the earnest expectation of the Redeemer who is to\ncome\u201d\u2014_Salutare tuum expectabo, Domine._ And the same patriarch, when\nmourning for his son (Joseph), \u201cwould not receive comfort, but said: I\nwill go down to my son into hell, mourning\u201d (_ib._ xxxvii. 35). He\ntherefore believed that his soul would survive its separation from the\nbody. It is not true, then, that the books of Moses are absolutely\ndestitute of all allusion to a future life. Nor is it lawful to argue\nthat, because the great lawgiver promised rewards and threatened\npunishments of a temporal order, the eternal rewards and the eternal\npunishments must have been unknown to the children of Israel; for we\nmust reflect that Moses\u2019 menaces and promises were made to the nation or\nthe political body, not to individual persons, and that the political\nbody was not destined to last for ever; whence it follows that all the\npromises and all the menaces addressed to the nation ought to refer\nexclusively to the temporal order.\n\nThirdly, it is not true that the prophetical writings do not teach a\nfuture life. We read in Daniel (xii. 2) that \u201cmany of those that sleep\nin the dust of the earth shall awake, some unto life everlasting, and\nothers unto reproach.\u201d These words are decisive. Death is but a sleep;\nwe shall awake to a new life, and this future life will last for ever.\n\u201cOn the last day,\u201d says Job, \u201cI shall rise out of the earth, and I shall\nbe clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God\u201d (c.\nxix.) David says: \u201cThe wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations\nthat forget God. For the poor man shall not be forgotten to the end: the\npatience of the poor shall not perish for ever\u201d (Psalm ix.) \u201cThy dead\nmen,\u201d says Isaias, \u201cshall live, my slain shall rise again: awake, and\ngive praise, ye that dwell in the dust\u201d (c. xxvi.) Ezechiel (c. xviii.)\nintimates to the wicked that they shall die, while the just shall live;\nwhere _living_ and _dying_ cannot refer to the course of natural events,\nbut must be interpreted as meaning salvation and damnation. David says\nagain: \u201cBut God will redeem my soul from the hand of hell, when he shall\nreceive me\u201d (Psalm xlviii.) These passages, to which many others might\nbe added, suffice to show that our writer is not more accurate in\nspeaking of the prophetical writings than he is in speaking of the\nPentateuch.\n\nFourthly, he does not seem to know that the Sadducees, notwithstanding\ntheir \u201cpriding themselves of their adherence to the faith of their\nfathers,\u201d were nothing but a heretical sect; they denied the\nresurrection of the flesh, just as modern Protestants deny\ntransubstantiation; and it is as absurd to appeal to the Sadducees for\nthe right understanding of the Jewish faith as it would be to appeal to\nour modern heretics for the interpretation of the Catholic doctrine.\n\nThe writer adds:\n\n    \u201cThe historical books, indeed, show that in later days the doctrine\n    gained admission into some Jewish minds, having most probably been\n    communicated to them from their Assyrian, Persian, and Babylonian\n    captors; but the form it took on was that of the resurrection of the\n    flesh, which, Dr. Nisbet says, was erroneously adopted by the\n    Christian Church. If, therefore, the Old Testament be silent on the\n    topic, and the New Testament, as interpreted by contemporary\n    critics, teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept, what is\n    there in the Bible to require a belief in any resurrection\n    whatever?\u201d\n\nWe have shown that the immortality of the soul was known to the Jews\nfrom the time of the patriarchs. The Assyrians, the Persians, the\nBabylonians, and the Egyptians were also acquainted with the same truth,\nbut they seem to have been altogether ignorant of a future resurrection,\nand many of them thought that their souls were destined to transmigrate\nfrom one body to another. These errors may have been communicated to\nsome Jews by their captors; as we know that the Sadducees denied the\nresurrection, and most of the Pharisees believed in metempsychosis,\naccording to Josephus (_Antiquit._ l. xviii. c. 2). But if the captivity\nof the Jews may have been the source of these errors, it has certainly\nnot been the origin of the belief in immortality and resurrection, which\npre-existed among the Jews long before their captivity.\n\nAs to the argument which the author draws from Dr. Nisbet\u2019s view of\nresurrection, we need hardly say that, if it may have some weight\nagainst Dr. Nisbet, it can have none against the Christian doctrine. The\nNew Testament, \u201cas interpreted by contemporary critics\u201d\u2014that is, by Dr.\nNisbet\u2014\u201cteaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept.\u201d What then? Then,\nconcludes the writer, \u201cthere is nothing in the Bible to require a belief\nin any resurrection whatever.\u201d We are at a loss to understand the\nlogical connection of the consequence with the antecedent. Can we not\nsuppose that there is something in the Bible which requires a belief in\nthe resurrection of the flesh, and that Dr. Nisbet, whose infallibility\nis far from being demonstrated, has failed to understand it? When a man\nis bold enough to say that the Christian Church has \u201cerroneously\nadopted\u201d a doctrine which has been preached by the apostles and believed\nin without interruption for eighteen centuries by the Christian world,\nthere is little doubt that such a man is himself in error, and that his\nassertions cannot be made the ground of any argumentation. On the other\nhand, if Dr. Nisbet \u201ccontends for a resurrection in a form composed of\nfiner substances than flesh and blood,\u201d he may indeed err theologically,\nbut we fail to see how he thereby \u201cteaches a doctrine which reason\ncannot accept.\u201d In fact, reason is incompetent to decide what mode of\nresurrection should be accepted and what rejected; it being evident that\nin a question of this sort the province of reason is to submit to\nrevelation, and to accept the doctrine universally received by the\nmembers of the church. If therefore the Old or the New Testament, or\nboth, as interpreted by the Fathers of the church, teach a doctrine\nagainst which reason has nothing whatever to object, it is the duty of\nevery wise and reasonable man to accept the doctrine without the least\nregard to the vagaries of \u201ccontemporary _Protestant_ critics.\u201d Now, this\nis the case with the doctrine of immortality and resurrection.\n\nBut our writer has more to say:\n\n    \u201cMoreover, it is urged, if the survival of the soul is a fact at\n    all, it is a fact to-day as much as it ever was, and, like other\n    facts, susceptible of proof. There are departed souls enough now, if\n    there ever were any, to make it easy to demonstrate their existence.\n    If it be true, as so many multitudes believe, that when the body\n    dies the soul of the man, the woman, or the child who inhabited it\n    survives as a real man, woman, or child, with all that is requisite\n    to personal identity, why, ask the doubters, does it not in some way\n    manifest itself? From every home on this planet there go up daily\n    and hourly passionate demands for the return of loved ones whom\n    death has snatched away. Were they still in the flesh, no obstacle\n    would prevent their hurrying to join the objects of their affection;\n    and the sceptic finds it inconceivable that if, as is said, they\n    hover about us in spirit form, they should not make their presence\n    felt in some undeniable way.\u201d\n\nIt is perfectly true that the survival of the soul is, like other facts,\nsusceptible of proof. Yet not all facts are proved by the same kind of\nproofs. There are, even in the natural sciences, facts which must be\nproved by reasoning, owing to the impossibility of ascertaining them\ndirectly by the experimental method. We must not expect, therefore, that\nsouls, which are spiritual and invisible, should, after departing from\ntheir bodies, give sensible signs of their survival in a different\nstate. Nor do we need any such sensible proof of their survival; for we\nhave proofs of a higher order, by which we show that the human soul\ncannot die. We therefore establish not only the fact of its survival,\nbut also the necessity of the fact. On the other hand, if a soul were to\nappear before us, we might suspect the objective reality of the\napparition; at best we might simply conclude that such a soul has been\nkept in existence; but we would have no ground for concluding that all\nother human souls are likewise kept in existence, and that they must\nremain in existence for ever. In fact, could not that soul be\nannihilated some time after its apparition? Or could we logically\nmaintain that the survival of one soul suffices to prove the survival of\nall other souls? It is therefore impossible to prove the immortality of\nall human souls by means of individual apparitions; to establish it a\ngeneral principle is indispensable, and this principle is drawn from the\nvery essence of the soul and from the sanctity and justice of its\nCreator.\n\nBut \u201cwhy does not the soul in some way manifest itself\u201d? This question\nis very easily answered. The departed souls are either in heaven, or in\nhell, or in purgatory. If in hell or in purgatory, they are there like\nprisoners, and cannot freely roam about. If, on the contrary, they are\nin heaven, they have none other than spiritual relations with this\nworld, except by special dispensation of divine Providence. And again,\nwhy should departed souls manifest themselves in a sensible manner? To\nconvince us that the Scriptural doctrine of immortality is true? As if\nour faith in the word of God were based on the testimony of our senses,\nnot on the authority and truthfulness of God himself. \u201cBecause thou hast\nseen me, Thomas, thou hast believed,\u201d said our Lord to his sceptical\ndisciple: \u201cblessed are they that have not seen and have believed.\u201d\nMiracles, in the present order of Providence, are not the rule, but the\nexception: hence the sensible manifestation of departed souls, as being\nabove the requirements of nature, is not to be made the test of their\nsurvival.\n\n\u201cWere they still in the flesh,\u201d we are told, \u201cno obstacle would prevent\ntheir hurrying to join the objects of their affection.\u201d Certainly; for\nif they were still in the flesh they would belong to this world; but,\nsince they are no more in the flesh, they now belong to the world of\nspirits, which is invisible to our eyes of flesh, and from which they\ncannot communicate with us in sensible forms without a special command\nor permission of God. It is not true that they \u201chover about us in spirit\nform\u201d; this is a pagan conception. Nor is it true that the soul survives\n\u201cas a real man, woman, or child.\u201d Souls have no sex, and man cannot be\nwithout a body; hence no departed soul is either man, woman, or child:\nit is a soul simply, and its \u201cpersonal identity\u201d consists in its being\nthe same soul which was in the body.\n\nTo the question, \u201cWhy do not souls manifest themselves in a sensible\nway?\u201d a second answer can be given by replying that many souls have thus\nmanifested themselves. This answer, good and legitimate as it is, is\nridiculed by sceptical critics, who, while constantly appealing to\nfacts, are invariably determined to spurn all facts contrary to their\ntheories. Our writer says:\n\n    \u201cEqually inconclusive is the little we have of positive testimony on\n    the subject. It is true that in all ages there have been some who\n    have asserted the power of actually seeing and speaking with\n    departed souls, and the whole tribe of spirit-mediums pretend to it\n    now. As to what has happened in bygone times it is, of course,\n    impossible now to base any conclusion upon it. The circumstances\n    cannot be inquired into, and, moreover, one single witness coming\n    before us and submitting his testimony to our scrutiny is worth more\n    than a thousand who are out of our reach. The question is: Does\n    anybody at this day really have intercourse with the spirits of the\n    dead? The spirit-rappers and their followers say Yes, but the great\n    incredulous world, after hearing all they have to present in\n    confirmation of their assertions, still says No. There is so much\n    fraud and nonsense connected with the business that the scientific\n    mind rejects it contemptuously. The very phenomena themselves are\n    clouded with a suspicion of jugglery and deceit, while there is a\n    wide divergence of opinion as to their interpretation, even granting\n    them to be honestly produced.\u201d\n\nWe agree with the author that spiritists have no intercourse with the\nspirits of the dead, and we add that no mortal has the power to call\nback to this world a departed soul. This, we think, is certain both by\nauthority and philosophy. Hence, if any spirits are really made to\nappear and to answer questions\u2014which we know to be a fact, though not so\nfrequent as simpletons are apt to believe\u2014those spirits are not the\nsouls of the departed, but the lying spirits of hell, who volunteer to\nplay nonsensical tricks for the amusement and the perversion of their\nfoolish consultors. But that departed souls have now and then appeared\nto men in visible form is a fact established on indisputable historical\nevidence. Do we not read in the Bible that the ghost of Samuel appeared\nto Saul, rebuked his recklessness, and intimated to him the impending\ndefeat of his army and his own death? Nor can it be objected that the\nghost was a devil, for devils do not know the future actions of men; nor\ncan it be said that the apparition was a delusion, for the ghost was\nseen by the witch before it was seen by Saul; and the whole narrative of\nthe sacred writer is so worded as to exclude the possibility of\nexplaining away the fact by such a loose interpretation. It will be\nsaid, however, that \u201cthe scientific mind\u201d rejects all such facts with\nabsolute contempt. To which we may reply that \u201cthe scientific mind\u201d has\nno right whatever to reject historical facts. Science is based on facts;\nits duty is to account for them by a sufficient reason, not to deny them\nwhen they transcend our comprehension. We know that there is a class of\nmodern scientists who contend that everything must be explained by the\nproperties of matter, and that no exception can be admitted in favor of\nsupernatural facts. But we do not see how this mental disposition can be\ncalled \u201cscientific.\u201d If physicists refuse to acknowledge all the facts\nwhich transcend the limits of their sphere, why could not the musician\nreject all the phenomena which transcend his musical knowledge, or the\nchemist ridicule all the astronomical calculations? It is evident that\nevery science must dwell within its proper limits, and therefore no\nweight can be attached to the opinions of mere physicists when they\npresume to decide questions entirely extraneous to their profession.\nThus the facts remain, and all attempts at discrediting them must be\naccounted idle and unscientific talk. Lazarus, dead and buried, at the\nvoice of Christ revived. The fact was public and recognized by Christ\u2019s\nenemies. \u201cThe scientific mind\u201d will not deny it. But then, we ask, how\ncould the soul of Lazarus retake possession of his body, if it had\nceased to exist? and what else was the rising of the body from its tomb\nthan a sensible manifestation of the soul returned to its primitive\noffice? We read in the Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in\necclesiastical history of many dead recalled to life either by Christ or\nby his disciples and followers. In all such facts souls have manifested\nthemselves. We might mention a great number of genuine apparitions well\nknown to all readers of the lives of saints; but as we have neither time\nnor intention to enter into a critical discussion of the evidence by\nwhich they are supported, we shall content ourselves with citing the\nglorious apparitions of Lourdes, of La Salette, and of Marpingen, which,\nas all the world knows, are unquestionable facts, accompanied and\nfollowed by a continuous series of public miracles, to which \u201cthe\nscientific mind\u201d of modern thinkers has found nothing to object, though\nit has been formally and repeatedly challenged to disprove them by its\npretended superior knowledge. Our Catholic readers know most of the\nfacts to which we allude; but it is probable that the writer to whom we\nreply is not acquainted with them, and we would suggest to him to read\nM. Lasserre\u2019s book on the apparition of Lourdes, where he will find, we\ntrust, sufficient evidence concerning the reality and nature of the\nfacts just mentioned. But we repeat that a Christian and a philosopher\nhas no need of sensible manifestations to believe in the immortality of\nthe human soul. Reason and the Gospel afford such a strong evidence of\nthis truth that all further evidence may seem superfluous. When\nunbelievers ask for apparitions or sensible manifestations, we may\nanswer them as Abraham answered the rich man: \u201cIf they hear not Moses\nand the prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the\ndead\u201d (Luke xvi. 31).\n\nOur writer sums up his arguments as follows:\n\n    \u201cThe fact, then, seems to be\u2014and we would earnestly press it upon\n    the attention of religious thinkers of every kind, and especially\n    upon theologians and clergymen, whose peculiar duty it is to deal\n    with such subjects\u2014the fact seems to be that analogy, reason,\n    revelation, and human testimony alike fail to establish the doctrine\n    that man can exist as a man without a material body. Books such as\n    that of Dr. Nisbet rather add to than remove the philosophical\n    difficulties of the subject so long as they leave the main question\n    untouched. Moreover, in explaining away the popular interpretation\n    of the Scriptures in regard to it, they tend to produce very much\n    the same results as have been produced by the efforts to reconcile\n    Genesis with geology. The conclusion that the Bible does not teach\n    science correctly has been followed by the conclusion that it does\n    not teach science at all; and so, if we agree with Dr. Nisbet that\n    what it says about the resurrection is not to be taken literally, we\n    shall be in great danger of rejecting its testimony altogether.\u201d\n\nThis is to say that the Scriptures, in the Protestant system of free\ninterpretation, lose all authority, inasmuch as the word of man is\nthereby substituted for the word of God. Thus far we agree with the\nwriter. But that religious thinkers, theologians, and clergymen should\nundertake a new demonstration of the soul\u2019s immortality and of the\nresurrection of the flesh, we consider unnecessary. Theologians and\nclergymen have done their duty on this point with such completeness as\nto make all sceptics inexcusable. All that is wanted is that the\nsceptics themselves undertake to study the works of such theologians and\nphilosophers as have answered the objections of the materialists of the\nlast century. Scepticism is ignorance. There is no remedy for it but\nstudy\u2014the study of that special branch of knowledge on which the\nsolution of any given question depends.\n\nOur writer imagines that some \u201cefforts\u201d have been made \u201cto reconcile\nGenesis with geology.\u201d This, however, is not the case. The truth is that\na class of scientists have made some \u201cefforts\u201d to turn geology against\nGenesis, and that those efforts have been unsuccessful. A science which\ndenies to-day what it considered yesterday as demonstrated, and which is\napt to deny to-morrow what it teaches to-day, needs none of our\n\u201cefforts\u201d to be reconciled with Genesis. When the facts of geology shall\nbe well known, and when the theories built on those facts shall be\nlogically correct, then we shall have no need of \u201creconciling\u201d geology\nwith Genesis; for geology will teach us nothing in opposition to the\nrevealed origin of things.\n\nAs to the conclusion \u201cthat the Bible does not teach science correctly,\u201d\nor \u201cthat it teaches no science at all,\u201d we will only remark that the\nBiblical record of creation is a history of _facts_, not a treatise of\nscience. Hence the proposition that the Bible does not teach science\ncorrectly has no meaning, whilst the proposition that the Bible teaches\nno science at all is perfectly true, although the facts themselves which\nit relates must be looked upon as the groundwork of geological science.\n\nBut our writer seems to take a different view of the subject. He says:\n\n    \u201cMany believers in Christianity deny that the world was made in six\n    days, although the Bible says it was made in six days; deny that a\n    flood ever covered the tops of the mountains, that there ever were\n    witches and magicians, and that Joshua made the sun and the moon\n    stand still, although the Bible asserts all these things; why may\n    they not likewise safely deny as unscientific the dogma of a future\n    existence of all individual human beings? This is the dilemma into\n    which speculations like those of Dr. Nisbet bring us; and if he and\n    his school can furnish a way out of it, they will confer an immense\n    benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters upon\n    this great subject.\u201d\n\nSuch is the end of the article we have been examining. We would tell the\nwriter that if there are believers in Christianity who deny anything\nrevealed by God in the Bible, such believers are not consistent with\nthemselves; for why should they believe in Christianity if they\ndisbelieve the Bible? If the word of God in the Old Testament does not\ncommand their assent, why should the same word of God in the New\nTestament cause them to believe? It is clear that, if they believed on\nGod\u2019s authority, they could not reject anything based on that authority.\nA belief of this sort is not divine faith, but human opinion; it is not\nsubmission to God\u2019s authority, but a denial of God\u2019s authority in all\nthings which man chooses to disbelieve; and consequently such a belief\nis not that faith \u201cwithout which it is impossible to please God.\u201d It is,\nhowever, the faith of many advanced Protestants; and thus we are not\nsurprised that the writer considers such an irrational form of belief as\nconsistent with the mutilated form of \u201cChristianity\u201d with which he is\nfamiliar. But we Catholics\u2014we heirs of the apostolic doctrine\ntransmitted to us in an uninterrupted manner by the universal church\u2014we\nbelieve everything that has been revealed either in the Old or in the\nNew Testament. We do not question the fact that there have been witches\nand magicians, nor do we see any reason for questioning it; we believe\nin like manner what the Bible says about the Flood, the six days of\ncreation, Joshua\u2019s great miracle, and everything else; by which we mean\nthat those facts which we read in the Bible, whether we have a true\nappreciation of them or not, are all true, and that the difficulties we\nmay find in their explanation arise from our ignorance, which the modern\nprogress of science has done very little to dispel. Thus, while we are\nfree to choose among the various explanations of Biblical facts, we all\nagree in believing the facts themselves. But, if this is true of those\npassages of Scripture whose meaning is obscure, and whose interpretation\nhas not been settled by the authority of the church or by the\n_consensus_ of the doctors, it is not true of those other passages whose\nmeaning is obvious and unmistakable, or whose interpretation has been\nsanctioned by the unanimous decision of the universal church. Hence,\nwhile we may freely discuss the six days of creation and the\nastronomical result of Joshua\u2019s dealings with the sun, we have no\nreasonable ground for discussing or doubting \u201cthe dogma of a future\nexistence of all individual human souls.\u201d To say that this dogma is\n\u201cunscientific\u201d is to assume what neither has been nor can be proved;\nunless, indeed, we call \u201cunscientific\u201d every truth which ranges above\nthe compass of experimental science; in which case even logic itself\nwould be utterly unscientific.\n\nWhether Dr. Nisbet or his school can furnish a way out of the\ndifficulties complained of by our writer we do not know. It is probable,\nhowever, that neither Dr. Nisbet nor any other doctor of the same school\ncan successfully combat the invading spirit of infidelity so long as\nthey do not give up their Protestant method of reasoning and their\nProtestant profession. Protestantism is itself one kind of infidelity;\nit cannot contribute in any way towards the restoration of sound\nphilosophical or theological ideas; it can only sow doubt, discord, and\ninconsistency, thus paving the way for religious scepticism and its\nconcomitant evils. The history of Protestantism is sufficient evidence\nof the fact. It is vain, therefore, to hope that Dr. Nisbet or his\nschool will \u201cconfer any benefit upon the whole world of anxious but\nsincere doubters\u201d by establishing either the immortality of the soul or\nthe resurrection of the flesh on impregnable proofs. Let, then, all\nanxious but sincere doubters turn to Catholic doctors and Catholic\nbooks; let them hear the church\u2014the old, calumniated church, the column\nof truth, the heir of the apostles, of the prophets, of the patriarchs,\nand the spouse of Christ. She will teach them how to reconcile reason\nwith faith and religion with science, so as to believe rationally and\nconsistently whatever God has revealed, while preserving the fullest\nliberty of judgment in regard to all other things. Yet we must warn\nthese \u201canxious but sincere doubters\u201d that no benefit will accrue to\nthem, if they approach our divines or read our books with that spirit of\ncontention which is so common among all the Protestant sects. If they\nare \u201canxious\u201d to know the truth, they must not rely exclusively on the\nstrength of their reasoning powers, but must be ready to yield to\nauthority in all things connected with Christian faith. If they are\n\u201csincere,\u201d humility must be a part of their sincerity.\n\nTo conclude: We have met and answered the reasons alleged by the writer\nin the _Sun_ against the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of\nthe flesh; and although we have scarcely developed the reflections\nsuggested by those reasons, yet we confidently believe that our brief\nremarks will be found sufficient to set at rest the arguments of the\nsceptic. As to the doctrine of immortality in particular, of which the\nsame writer desired \u201ca solid and impregnable philosophical\ndemonstration,\u201d we have shown that the human soul neither can be\ndestroyed by any created cause nor will be destroyed by God;\naccordingly, the human soul is intrinsically and extrinsically immortal.\nOur proofs have been few, but simple and intelligible; and we trust that\nthe writer who gave us occasion to speak of this subject, if he chances\nto read these pages, will soon acquire the conviction that the doctrine\nof immortality was really in no need of a new philosophical\ndemonstration.\n\n\n\n\n                              SANNAZZARO.\n\n\nOne Sunday morning, while at Naples, we went to hear our Mass of\nobligation in the church of the Servites, erected by the poet Sannazzaro\nin honor of the divine Maternity of Mary, and called after his famous\npoem, _De Partu Virginis_. It stands on the Mergellina, that _pezzo di\ncielo caduto in terra_, as the Neapolitans say\u2014\u201ca fragment of heaven to\nearth vouchsafed\u201d\u2014and certainly the most beautiful shore on which the\nsun shines. It was this shore that inspired the ardent Stazio. Not far\noff is the tomb of Virgil, and the place where Pollio lived, and the\ngrove where Silius Italicus conceived the idea of his _Punica_. Here,\ntoo, Sannazzaro had a charming villa which tempted the very Muses to\ndescend from the mountain to dwell on the sandy shore, as Ariosto says:\n\n                    \u201cAlle Camene\n    Lasciar fa i monti e abitar le arene.\u201d\n\nHere he wrote most of his poems and gathered around him all the wit and\ntalent of Naples on those _Dies geniales_, which were as famous at that\ntime as the _Noctes Ambrosian\u00e6_ of Christopher North at Edinburgh in our\nyounger days, though not quite so convivial, perhaps. This villa had\nabout it a certain perfume of antiquity of which we know nothing in\nthese times, and which we affect to despise. It was the natural\natmosphere of this Virgilian region, and it had an inspiration of its\nown which must be taken into account in reading the works of Sannazzaro.\nHe has celebrated his villa in an ode worthy of Horace. He did not,\nhowever, notwithstanding his classical tastes, dedicate his household\naltar to Apollo, or even to Venus\u2014he was too genuine a Christian for\nthat\u2014but to the tutelar care of San Nazzaro, whom he reckoned among his\nancestors. When nearly done with life, he built a church on the spot, in\nmemory of that divine Birth which he had so sweetly sung, and attached\nthereto a convent of Servite monks, to whom he gave the income of eight\nthousand florins for the solemn celebration of Christmas and certain\nexpiatory services for himself, his ancestors, and King Frederick III.\nof Naples. Here he also set up an altar to San Nazzaro, and ordered his\nown tomb to be built.\n\nWe had repeatedly passed the Church del Parto without being able to find\nit, so embedded is it among houses on the side of the cliff. And the\nentrance is from a side terrace, to which you ascend by a flight of\nsteps, as to the court of a private dwelling. This terrace commands a\nview that surpasses all the most vivid imagination could conceive. The\nCastel del Ovo advances directly before you into the incomparable bay,\nthe waters of which, generally blue as the heavens, were at this early\nhour all crimson and gold and amethyst, with great floods of silver\ncoming in from the sea. Behind them were islands, such as we see in\ndreams, rising out of the magic waves: Capri, with its marvellous\ngrottos, clouded with the memory of Tiberius; Procida, with its fort on\nthe volcanic rocks; and Ischia, where the beautiful Vittoria Colonna,\nbeloved of Michael Angelo, retired to mourn her husband\u2019s loss, and\nbeneath which the giant Typh\u0153us, transfixed by a thunderbolt from\nJupiter, lies imprisoned, at long intervals groaning with pain, and\nsending forth in his rage fearful eruptions of burning lava. On the\ninner curve of the bay sits Naples like a queen, with her palaces, her\ncitadels, her white villas gleaming like jewels\u2014her glance all flame,\nand her heart all fire. Beyond rises Mount Vesuvius, with its cone of\nperfect symmetry, full of mystery and terror, its summit now flecked\nwith patches of snow, looking like great white flowers that bloom\n\n    \u201cAround the crater\u2019s burning lips,\n    Sweetening the very edge of doom.\u201d\n\nA light vapor, rather than smoke, issued from the top, no longer dark\nand foreboding like the evil genius whose vase was unsealed, but of\nsoft, dove-like hues, as if some pacific herald. At its foot sleep fair\nvillages among peaceful olive-trees, wreathed with vines, and lulled\ninto forgetfulness by the gentle waves that caress the shore. Harmonious\ntints blend earth and sky and sea, but they are constantly varying with\nthe rolling hours. There is nothing monotonous here, except the languid\nair which wearily plays among the odorous trees without the force to\nagitate their branches. Nature is here a genuine siren, half-earth,\nhalf-sea, whose magic voice wooes many a wanderer still to forget his\nnative shore. We feel its charm as we survey the matchless landscape. An\nelectric fire comes over the soul\u2014admiration, wonder, emotions no words\ncan express. Poetry is in the golden air, the bright waves, the\nenchanting shores, the intense hues that color everything\u2014yes, even in\nthe awful scars and lava streams that furnished the ancients with their\nideas of Tartarus, and made Virgil place his descent thereto near the\n_tenebrosa palus_\u2014the gloomy lake of Avernus, formed from the\noverflowing of the Acheron\u2014\n\n    \u201cSad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep.\u201d\n\nThe church bell awoke us from this delightful vision, and we entered the\nopen door. It is a small building whose walls within are tinged a\ndelicate sea-green, and have white mouldings, as if to harmonize with\nthe foam-crested waves of the bay without. The windows are mere\nlunettes, high up in the arches, and below are five or six deep recesses\nwith altars and paintings. The white marble basin at the entrance, for\nholy-water, looks like a flower on its tall, slender stem. On it is\ngraven a shield like a chess-board\u2014perhaps the arms of some noble of\nthis _farniente_ land to whom life was a mere game. We were at once\nstruck by a singular crucifix on a kind of a tripod, under a canopy like\na penthouse. Near by stood the _Addolorata_\u2014the Madonna of Many\nSorrows\u2014in black like a nun, with wimple and veil, a stole embroidered\nwith gold, and a wheel of gilt arrows piercing the silver heart on her\nbreast. One poor dim lamp was burning before her. Opposite was a more\ncheerful altar with the Virgin _del Parto_, the titular of the church,\ngaily dressed after the Italian taste, and surrounded with lights and\nflowers. These two Madonnas seemed to personify Bethlehem and\nCalvary\u2014the Alpha and Omega of the Christian mysteries\u2014and between them\nwe knelt to hear Mass.\n\nThe church was nearly full of people in bright holiday attire, quite\nabsorbed in their devotions, and, though mostly of the lower classes,\nso-called, they all responded in Latin to the litany at the close of the\nservice. Near by us, in the pavement, was a tomb-stone with the\nbas-relief of a boy with a book under his head, another in his hand, and\none at his feet. This was a promising youth named Fabrizio Manlio, who\nso loved the Mergellina that, when ill, he wished to be brought here to\ndie, and here be buried, as his touching epitaph relates. But that was\nthree hundred years ago, and the father who here records the tears he\nshed long since rejoined his son, and now there is not a smile the less\nat sunny Naples. Why lay aught too much to heart?\n\nIn a recess at the right is a noted painting, generally known at Naples\nas the _Diavolo di Mergellina_. This is no new fiend, but the old\noutcast from heaven vanquished by St. Michael, the great captain of the\nheavenly host, a picture by Leonardo da Pistoja, a Tuscan painter of the\nDa Vinci school. The archangel, \u201csevere in youthful beauty,\u201d is girded\nwith a vest of heavenly azure, and from his shoulders spring broad wings\nof many hues\u2014green, yellow, and purple\u2014with rays like long arrows of\ngold. His right hand seemingly disdains to use its sword\u2014\u201cSatan\u2019s dire\ndread\u201d\u2014but holds it behind him, while with the left he thrusts his long\nspear through the demon\u2019s neck and nails him to the ground. His face is\nperfectly passionless, as if not even so terrible a combat could ruffle\nthe serenity of his angelic nature. The _Diavolo_ is one of those\nstrange demons that entice souls down to the gulf of perdition, common\nin the middle ages, with two faces, not Janus-wise, but with the second\nface on the bowels, of most startling character. The fiend before us has\nthe beautiful face and bust of a woman, said to be the genuine portrait\nof a lady who became passionately enamored of Diomedes Carafa, Bishop of\nAriano, who lies buried at the foot of the altar beneath, with the\ntriumphant inscription: _Et fecit victoriam, halleluja!_ which may be\napplied both to the bishop and the archangel. The round arms of this\nfair demon are drawn up under her head. Her long, golden locks\n\n        \u201cIn masses bright\n    Fall like floating rays of light\u201d\n\naround her shoulders and half-veil her bosom. Her youthful face is\ndeadly pale, but not contracted, and her eyes are cold and vigilant. The\nlower face, on the contrary, is old and convulsed, as if crying with\npain. The hair is grizzled and witch-like. The legs are like two scaly\nserpents, twisted and writhing, and the bat-like wings shade off to a\nlurid brown and yellow. The contrast in these two faces is very striking\nand has a deep moral. It is a common proverb at Naples to compare too\ntempting a project, or too seducing a beauty, to the Diavolo di\nMergellina.\n\nThe high altar of the church is of inlaid marble. At the sides are\nniches containing statues of SS. Jacobo and Nazzaro, the patrons of the\nfounder. On what is called the arch of triumph over the head of the nave\nis an old painting of the Annunciation, the Virgin in one spandrel with\nthe dove on her hand, and the angel in the other with the lily stem.\nAlong the connecting arch is the distich from Sannazzaro:\n\n    \u201cVirginitas Partus discordes tempore longo,\n    Virginia in gremio f\u0153dera pacis habent.\u201d[82]\n\nFootnote 82:\n\n  Virginity and Maternity, long at variance, have made peace in the womb\n  of the Virgin.\n\nIn a neighboring recess is an Adoration of the Magi, which contends with\nthat of the Castello Nuovo as being the one given Sannazzaro by\nFrederick of Aragon, painted by Van Eyck, and said by Vasari to be the\nfirst oil-painting ever brought to Italy.\n\nWe searched a long time in vain for the tomb of Sannazzaro. Chapels,\nflagstones, and mural inscriptions, all underwent a severe scrutiny;\nand, supposing it must have been destroyed in some political convulsion,\nwhen even death itself is not respected, we were on the point of leaving\nthe church when it occurred to us to go behind the high altar. We found\nthere a door which we made bold to enter, remembering how often we had\nbeen repaid for exploring sacristies and odd nooks. There was the tomb\ndirectly before us, in the smallest of choirs in which ever monk lost\nhis voice \u201cwith singing of anthems.\u201d It is the most quiet, secluded spot\nin the world\u2014dim, frescoed, and crowded with a dozen stalls, on which\ncherubs\u2019 heads are carved. It is more like a little chantry than a\nchoir, and nothing ever breaks the silence but the voice of holy\npsalmody. The poet\u2019s tomb is of white marble, chiefly sculptured by Fra\nGiovanni da Montorsoli. It is surmounted by his bust crowned with\nlaurel. The face is somewhat haggard, but the features are noble. He\nwears a cap like that we see in pictures of Dante. Beside him are two\n_putti_, one with a book and the other bearing a helmet, in allusion to\nthe different ways in which Sannazzaro distinguished himself. The\nsarcophagus beneath rests on an entablature, below which, in delicate\nrelief, are Neptune and his trident\u2014doubtless in allusion to the\n_Piscatori\u00e6_\u2014and Pan with his reeds, accompanied by fauns and satyrs,\nwith jovial faces and shaggy sides, as if to sing the praises of the\nauthor of the _Arcadia_. Along the base of the monument is an\ninscription by Bembo, which shows he believed Virgil to have been buried\nat Naples:\n\n    \u201cDa sacro cineri flores: hic ille Maroni\n    Syncerus musa proximus ut tumulo.\u201d[83]\n\nFootnote 83:\n\n  Strew this sacred tomb with flowers. Here, near Virgil, lies Syncerus,\n  his brother in the Muses.\n\nAt the sides are fine statues of Apollo and Minerva by Santa-croce.\n\nIacopo Sannazzaro, the inspired poet of the Virgin, was born at Naples\nin 1458. He sprang from an illustrious family of Spanish origin that had\nfallen from its former grandeur, but was left not without considerable\nmeans. His mother, on becoming a widow, withdrew into the country in\norder to bring him up in retirement, uncontaminated by the world; but he\nsoon displayed such uncommon abilities that she was persuaded to return\nto Naples and there watch over his education. It is said he showed a\ntalent for poetry at eight years of age; but it must be remembered he\nbelonged to a land where poesy is like the flowers that spring up\nspontaneously from the soil at every season. Of course his education was\nchiefly classical; for he belonged to an age when Greek and Latin\nliterature was regarded as the standard of excellence, and the very\nmysteries of religion were sung in the measure of Homer and Virgil. When\nof sufficient age he chose as his master Giovanni Pontano, called \u201cthe\nTrojan Horse\u201d on account of the great number of illustrious poets,\norators, and warriors that sprang from his school. Pontano was then\ndirector of the celebrated Accademia Napolitana, in which he figured as\ngrammarian, philosopher, historian, orator, and poet. He was the\nliterary autocrat of Naples,\n\n    \u201cWhose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate.\u201d\n\nHe was regarded as the favorite of Apollo and the Aonides, and from his\nlips was said to flow a river of gold:\n\n                  \u201cQuel bel tesoro\n    D\u2019Apollo e delle Aonide sorelle,\n    Che con la lingua sparge un fiume d\u2019oro.\u201d\n\nHis astronomical discoveries were announced in Latin verse. It is said\nhe was the first in modern times to revive the idea of Democritus that\nthe Milky Way is composed of myriads of stars.\n\nSannazzaro succeeded his master at the Academy of Naples, which at that\ntime held its meetings at Pontano\u2019s residence, near which was the\nCappella Pontaniana\u2014a gem of art, erected by Pontano in honor of the\nVirgin and the two St. Johns. Here were set up the wise maxims of the\nfounder, graven on stone, which we translate from the original Latin:\n\n\u201cIt is noble but difficult to restrain one\u2019s self in opulence.\n\n\u201cHe who never forgets injuries forgets that he is man.\n\n\u201cWhatever thy fortune, be mindful of Fortune herself.\n\n\u201cIntegrity promotes confidence, and confidence friendship.\n\n\u201cHe who decides too hastily on doubtful occasions repents too late,\nthough he repent quickly.\n\n\u201cIt is in vain the law cannot reach him whose conscience absolves him\nnot.\n\n\u201cThe sky is not always serene, nor does prudence always ensure safety.\n\n\u201cIn every condition of life the chief thing is to know thyself.\n\n\u201cIt belongs to the upright to despise the injuries of the wicked, whose\npraises even are a disgrace.\n\n\u201cLet us bear the penalty of our faults rather than the state should\nexpiate them to its injury.\n\n\u201cContent not thyself with being upright, but find others who resemble\nthee to serve thy country.\n\n\u201cIt is by boldness and conquest a kingdom is enlarged, and not by those\ncounsels that seem to the timid full of wisdom and prudence.\u201d\n\nSuch were the maxims instilled into Sannazzaro\u2019s youthful mind. They\nhave a flavor of antiquity. The Academy of Naples still exists, but\nholds its meetings in the cell of St. Thomas Aquinas at San Domenico\u2019s,\nwhere royalty itself used to attend the lectures of the Angelic Doctor.\nIn the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples\u2014where Tasso found shelter\u2014there\nis a striking group of figures in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre,\ngathered in sorrowful attitudes around the dead Christ\u2014all life-size\nlikenesses of celebrities in the time of the artist, Modanin of Modena.\nSannazzaro is represented as Joseph of Arimathea; Pontano as Nicodemus;\nAlfonso II. as St. John, with his son Ferdinand beside him.\n\nSannazzaro has celebrated a young Neapolitan girl in classical measure,\nunder the Greek names of Amarante, Phyllis, and Charmosyne, which\nsignify joy, love, and the immortal; but he veiled his passion, if it\nwas one, under mythological allusions. He took as his device an urn of\nblack pebbles, among which was a single white one with the motto,\n_\u00c6quabit nigras candida sola dies_, as if in time he hoped to please his\nlady. But she died young, and he bewailed her in suitable elegies. In\nspite of this somewhat fantastic attachment\u2014perhaps only a poetic\nfancy\u2014it is sure Sannazzaro was all his life rather a votary of Diana\nthan of Venus, as became one destined to sing the praises of the\nPurissima.\n\nAdmitted to familiarity with Frederick of Aragon, son of King Ferdinand\nof Naples, Sannazzaro was appointed director of the royal festivities,\nand in this capacity composed dramas in the language of the _lazzaroni_\nfor the amusement of the court. These soon became as popular in the\nstreets as in the palace, and were the germs of the modern Italian\ncomedy, which finds its broadest expression in Pulcinella\u2019s farces at\nSan Carlino. One of these plays is spoken of with particular admiration,\ncomposed in 1492 to celebrate the conquest of Granada, and acted at the\nCastello Capuano in presence of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.\n\nSannazzaro became so attached to his royal patron that he accompanied\nhim in an expedition against the Turks, where he acquired the reputation\nof a courageous soldier. And when the prince was deprived of the throne\nto which he had succeeded, and retired to France, the poet, more\nfaithful in misfortune than Pontano to Frederick I., generously sold two\npaternal estates to provide for his sovereign\u2019s wants, and accompanied\nhim into exile. It was in the following lines he bade adieu to Naples,\nwhich to leave is a kind of death:\n\n    \u201cParthenope, mihi culta; vale, blandissima siren,\n      Atque horti valeant, Hesperidesque tu\u00e6;\n    Mergellina, vale, nostri momor; et mea flentis\n      Serta cape, heu domini numera avara tui;\n    Matern\u00e6 salvete umbr\u00e6, salvete patern\u00e6.\u201d[84]\n\nFootnote 84:\n\n  Farewell, adored Parthenope; sweet siren, farewell! Farewell,\n  enchanted gardens of the Hesperides! Farewell, Mergellina, be mindful\n  of me; accept these tears of regret from the master who has naught\n  else to offer thee! Farewell, shade of my mother; my father\u2019s shade,\n  farewell!\n\nSannazzaro remained with Frederick III. till his death at Tours, and\nthen returned to Naples, where he devoted himself wholly to literature.\nThe _Arcadia_, which he finished in France, was published in 1504. This\nis a romance of mingled prose and verse after the manner of Boccaccio\u2019s\n_Ameto_. It caused a great sensation in Italy, and is still regarded as\none of the happiest inspirations of the Italian muse. His pleasant villa\non the Mergellina had been respected during his exile, and here he\nestablished himself at his return. It became a rendezvous for all the\nliterary men of the city. On Thursdays in particular, when the scholars\nand barristers had a holiday, all that was brilliant at Naples assembled\nhere for a frugal repast, at which poems and epigrams were recited.\nSannazzaro was very popular, and to be his friend was regarded as a\n_brevet_ of immortality.\n\n    \u201cDipinto io sia nell\u2019opre eterne e belle\n    Del mio bel Sannazzaro, vero Sincero,\n    Ch\u2019allora io giugnero fino alle stelle,\u201d[85]\n\nFootnote 85:\n\n  Let me be depicted in the immortal works of my glorious Sannazzaro, so\n  worthy of the name of Sincerus, and I shall be exalted to the very\n  stars.\n\nwrote Cariteo. Sannazzaro, it should be remarked, had, after the fashion\nof the time, taken the more classical name of Actius Syncerus, to which\nallusion is made on his tomb.\n\nBut the greatest festival of the year on the Mergellina was the birthday\nof Virgil, for whom Sannazzaro had a kind of passion. He celebrated this\nanniversary\u2014perhaps in imitation of Silius Italicus, who offered an\nannual sacrifice to the manes of the bard of Mantua\u2014by a banquet, to\nwhich he invited his most intimate friends, such as \u201cAlessandro, the\njurisconsult, whose works, so long popular, furnish curious details\nrespecting the public and private life of the Romans; Cariteo, who sang\nin his heterodox style the human soul formed by the Creator, from which\nnothing is concealed in heaven before it assumes its earthly veil, but\nwhich, coming below, as if fallen from some star into a human body, no\nlonger retains any memory of the past; Andrea Acquaviva, who dismounted\nfrom his war-horse to take the lyre and drink from the fount of\nHippocrene; Girolamo Carbone, who preferred the Tuscan language to the\nLatin, then so popular, and whose rhythm is a kind of music to the ear;\nand, finally, Pontano, the master of Sannazzaro, the restorer of the\nNeapolitan academy founded by Panormita.\u201d[86] These repasts were served\nby Hiempsal, a young African slave whom Sannazzaro had freed and taught\nto sing the elegies of Tibullus to an air he himself had composed. It\nwas after one of these Virgilian feasts the poet went to hear Egidio, an\nAugustinian monk, preach. He was as celebrated for his eloquence as his\nlearning, and was a favorite of two popes, one of whom (Leo X.)\nafterwards made him cardinal. Egidio, in declaiming with his usual\nanimation against the vices of the time, made a happy citation from\nVirgil, which delighted his hearer and led to a friendship between them.\nIt was this or some other sermon of his that suggested to Sannazzaro the\nidea of his great poem, _De Partu Virginis_, to which he devoted twenty\nyears of his life\u2014a poem of which Mr. Hallam says \u201cit would be difficult\nto find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification.\u201d\nPope Leo. X., who appreciated genius in whatever way it found\nexpression, whether by pen, chisel, or pencil, sent the poet a brief in\n1521 to encourage him in singing the mysteries of the Christian faith,\nand to express his satisfaction that, at a time when the voice of a monk\nwas troubling the peace of the church, the Catholic faith should find a\ndefender among the laity\u2014another David, as it were, to smite the new\nGoliath and appease with his lyre another Saul; and he declared the poem\nan honor to religion and to his pontificate. Clement VII. also wrote him\na brief, accepting the dedication, which alone, he said, was enough to\nimmortalize the pontiff thus honored.\n\nFootnote 86:\n\n  Audin.\n\nThe _De Partu Virginis_ is the most remarkable poem of the Renaissance,\nand its publication was an event in the literary world. It was\neverywhere eulogized, and the author was styled the Christian Virgil.\nEgidio of Viterbo, after reading it, thus wrote to the author: \u201cWhen I\nreceived your divine poem, I eagerly hastened to make myself familiar\nwith its contents. God alone, whose inspiration suggested so wonderful a\ncreation, can reward you suitably\u2014not by admitting you to the Elysian\nFields, the fabulous abode of Linus and Orpheus, but to a blessed\neternity.\u201d This poem still merits attention, if for no other reason, at\nleast because of its effect on religious art in the sixteenth century\u2014an\ninfluence which has been compared to Dante\u2019s. Mrs. Jameson says she can\ntrace it in all the contemporary productions of Italian art of all\nschools from Milan to Naples. She regards this influence, however, as\nperverse. But let us take a brief glance at a poem which has excited so\nmuch admiration and criticism down to the present day.\n\nThe _De Partu Virginis_ is an epic poem, in which the birth of Christ is\nsung with the harmonious flow, the variety of imagery, and the elevated\ntone of Virgil. But, strange to say, none of the sacred characters\nintroduced are called by their real names\u2014perhaps because unknown to the\nLatin muse. Even the names of Jesus and Mary are expressed by Virgilian\nparaphrases. The former is called _Divus Puer_ and _Numen sanctum_; the\nlatter _Alma parens_, _Dia_, and _Regina_. St. Joseph is the _Senior\nCustos_; St. Elizabeth the _Matrona defessa \u00e6vo_; and the Supreme Being\nis styled the _Regnator_, _Genitor superum_, etc. The author calls upon\nthe inhabitants of heaven (_c\u0153licol\u00e6_) to reveal to his limited vision\nthe profound secrets of the mystery he is about to sing, and invokes the\nsacred Aonides as the natural protectresses of virginal purity. \u201cDear\ndelight of poets,\u201d says he, \u201cye sacred Muses who have never refused me\nyour favor, allow me once more to take a long draught at your clear\nfount. Ye who derive your glorious origin from heaven, and have so\nsingular a regard for what is pure, aid me in singing of heavenly themes\nand celebrating the glory of a Virgin. Drive away the darkness of my\nmind and show me the way by which to rise to the highest summit of your\ncelestial mount. These lofty mysteries were not unknown to you. You must\nhave beheld the sacred grotto of the Nativity. You must have heard the\nsweet music of the angels that surrounded it. And it is hardly credible\nyou did not admire the splendor of the star that led from the extremity\nof the Orient three powerful princes to render homage to the new-born\nChild.\n\n\u201cI have not herein the less need of thy aid, thou constant Hope of men\nand gods, at once Maid and Mother! If I have taken delight every year in\nadorning the walls of thy temple with festoons and garlands of flowers;\nif, on this delicious cliff of the Mergellina, that seems from its proud\nheight to disdain the waves of the sea and promise safety to the boatmen\nwho hail it from afar, I have hewn out for thee altars of eternal\nduration; if, following the footsteps of my ancestors, I have taken\npleasure in singing thy praises and celebrating thy honor with the\nimmense crowds of devout people who, with lively joy, hallow the for\never memorable day of thy happy deliverance, guide my steps in these\nunfrequented paths, give me the courage to accomplish what I have\nundertaken, and abandon me not in a task at once so glorious and so\ndifficult.\u201d\n\nThe poet goes on to relate how the _Regnator Superum_, seeing the human\nrace in danger of falling into Tartarus, a prey to the fury of\nTysiphone, wishes, as all this evil has been brought about by woman,\nthat by woman it should be repaired. He therefore despatches one of his\nministering spirits to announce to the purest of virgins the sublime\ndestiny that awaits her. The messenger finds her plunged in meditation\nwith the prophetic page of the Sibyl open before her, and, saluting her\nwith reverence, he makes known the advent of the _Numen sanctum_ who\nwould deliver mankind from the horrors of the Styx. Fame everywhere\npublishes the tidings of this mysterious event. Hell itself is told of\nit. The Eumenides tremble. Alecto, Cerberus, and all the monsters of\npaganism shudder with fear. The souls of the Fathers\u2014those genuine\nheroes, as Sannazzaro, after St. Jerome, calls them\u2014rejoice. David\nhimself repeats his prophetic Psalms, and sings the life of Christ, his\nPassion, Death, and Descent into Limbo.\n\nBut it is the great Governor of the universe himself who reveals to the\ninhabitants of heaven his designs of mercy towards mankind. And when the\ntime of the Nativity comes, he summons Joy (_L\u00e6titia_) to his presence,\nwhose privilege it is to appease the anger of the Thunderer and diffuse\nserenity over his face:\n\n    \u201cH\u00e6c magni motusque animosque Tonantis\n    Temperat et vultum discuss\u00e2 nube serenat,\u201d\n\nand sends her to announce the glad tidings of the divine Birth. Putting\nwings to her feet, she leaves heaven, guarded by the Hours, and proceeds\nto earth, where she reveals the great event to the shepherds. Two of\nthem, Lycidas and Egon, recite a part of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil,\napplying it to the new-born Child. The birth of Christ is related with\ndelicacy and poetic grace. There is a sublime energy worthy of Dante in\nthe lines that speak of the Incarnation, and the astonishment of nature\nin view of the prodigy. Angels in the air celebrate it by sports and\ncombats in the style of Homer\u2019s heroes, with the instruments of the\nPassion for arms. Other angels, like Demodocus, sing the creation,\nrenovation of nature, the seasons, etc. The Jordan, leaning on its urn,\nis moved to its depths, and relates to the Naiads gathered about him the\nwonderful event on its shores. An angel comes to bathe the Child in its\nwaters. A dove hovers above. The water-nymphs bend around in veneration.\nThe Jordan, amazed, stays its current with respect, and recalls the\nprophecy of old Proteus, that the time would come for it to be visited\nby One who would raise the glory of the Jordan above the Ganges, the\nNile, or the Tiber. After which the river, wrapped in its mantle,\nwonderfully wrought by the Naiads, returns majestically to its bed.\n\nThis is too brief an outline of the splendid crown Sannazzaro has woven\nfor the Blessed Virgin, set with so many antique gems. Many have been\nshocked by the mingling of paganism and Christianity in this poem, but\nto us it is as if the waters of the Permessus had been turned into the\nJordan. All these pagan deities and profane allusions that sprinkle its\npages seem to sing the triumph of Christianity. They are in harmony,\ntoo, with the Virgilian region in which the poem was written, as well as\nwith the spirit of the age. There was such a passion for antiquity and\nfor Greek and Latin authors in the sixteenth century that even religion\nand art put on a classic air. Nor was Leo X., to whom it has been made a\nsubject of reproach, the only dignitary of the church that has felt this\nfascination. St. Jerome himself was called by the accusing spirit, _Non\nChristianus, sed Ciceronianus_, and he used to fast before reading the\nworks of the great orator, so much did he fear their ascendency.\n\nVirgil was especially dear to the middle ages on account of the\ntenderness and melancholy of his noble nature and his strange\npresentiment of the future. We all remember the famous passage: \u201cThe\nlast age of the Cum\u00e6an song now approaches; the great series of ages\nbegins again; now returns the Virgin (Astrea), now return the Saturnian\nkingdoms; now a new progeny is sent from high heaven. Be propitious,\nchaste Lucina, to the boy at his birth, through whom the iron age will\nfirst cease, and the golden age dawn on the world.\u201d\n\nThe learned at that time regarded Virgil as a prophet; and the people,\nas a magician. It was common to have recourse to his writings, as well\nas Homer\u2019s and other authors, to obtain prognostics. But this was not\nexclusively a medi\u00e6val superstition. It was in use before the Christian\nera, and has not in these days wholly disappeared. The author of\nMargaret Fuller\u2019s life says: \u201cShe tried the _sortes biblic\u00e6_, and her\nhits were memorable. I think each new book which interested her she was\ndisposed to put to this test and know if it had somewhat personal to say\nto her.\u201d The church has condemned this practice, even by a similar use\nof the Holy Scriptures.\n\nDante shared in the general passion for Virgil. He makes him his\nguide\u2014\u201cMy guide and master, thou\u201d\u2014through the lower realms; not in\nParadise, whence he is excluded,\n\n    \u201cFor no sin except for lack of faith.\u201d\n\nPetrarch, too, loved Virgil and planted a laurel\u2014\u201cthe meed of poets\nsage\u201d\u2014at his tomb, but it was long since done to death by the cruel\nhands of tourists.\n\nA touching sequence was long sung in the church of Mantua, in which St.\nPaul is represented visiting the tomb of Virgil at Naples, and weeping\nbecause he had come too late for him.\n\nIn the time of Sannazzaro, Plato was also in great repute. Every one\nremembers the festival instituted in his honor by Lorenzo de\u2019 Medici at\nhis villa on the side of Fiesole, in which Ficino, Politian, and all\nthat was brilliant in the intellectual world of Florence took part. The\nbust of the divine Plato, presented by Jerome Roscio of Pistoja, was set\nup at the end of a shady avenue and crowned with laurel, and, after a\ngrand repast, they all gathered around it and sang cantos in his honor.\nFicino even pretended to find in Plato\u2019s writings the doctrines of the\nTrinity, Incarnation, Eucharist, etc. He used to address his audience as\n\u201cMy brethren in Plato,\u201d and he makes Christ, in his descent into Limbo,\nsnatch Plato from the jaws of hell to place him among the blessed in\nParadise. This reminds us of the great Erasmus, who says: \u201cThere are\nmany in the society of the saints who are not in the calendar. I am\nevery instant tempted to exclaim: _Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis_, and\nto recommend myself to the Blessed Flaccus and Maro.\u201d\n\nAnother of these academies that sought to revive the antique spirit was\nthat of Pomponio Leto at Rome, which has brought so many unmerited\nreproaches on Pope Paul II. because it was for a time suppressed by him\nfor carrying its passion for antiquity to a pernicious degree. One\nhistorian after another has declared him an enemy of the sciences on the\nprinciple of their tending to heresy! Hallam, Roscoe, and Henri Martin\nall echo the calumnies of Platina against this pope. M. de l\u2019Epinois has\nproved the falseness of this accusation. As if a pope, as he says, who\nwas all his life an amateur of ancient manuscripts, a numismatist of the\nfirst class, and an able judge of painting and sculpture, who took\npleasure in doing himself the honors of his collections, and provided\nliberally for the education of poor children that showed an aptitude for\nstudy, was an enemy of science! Francesco Filelfo did not think so when\nhe thus wrote to Leonardo Dati: \u201cWhat do not I and all learned men owe\nto the great and immortal wisdom of Paul II.?\u201d\n\nAs for the Academy of Pomponio Leto, there was a general conviction that\nit was pagan and licentious in its tendency, if not in actual practice.\nCanensius, in his life of Paul II., says explicitly: \u201cThe pope dissolved\na society of young men of corrupt morals, who affirmed that our orthodox\nfaith was not so much founded on the genuine basis of facts as on the\njugglery of the saints, and maintained that it was permissible for every\none to indulge in whatever pleasure he liked.\u201d And the Chevalier de\nRossi, in the _Roma Sotteranea_, quotes the following passage from a\nletter of Battista de Judicibus, Bishop of Ventimiglia, written to\nPlatina a short time after the affair in question: \u201cSome call you more\npagan than Christian, and affirm that you follow pagan morals rather\nthan ours. Others circulate the report that Hercules is your deity.\nAnother says it is Mercury, a third that it is Jupiter, a fourth that it\nis Apollo, Venus, or Diana. They say you are in the habit of calling\nthese gods and goddesses to witness, especially when in the company of\nthose who give themselves up to like superstitions\u2014people whom you\nassociate more willingly with than others.\u201d M. de Rossi has also found\nseveral inscriptions which prove that a secret hierarchy was established\nby this society, of which it is reasonable to suppose Pope Paul II. was\nas aware as of their other anti-Christian practices. Additional\nsuspicion was excited by their secret meetings from the report at this\nvery time that a conspiracy was formed against the life of the Sovereign\nPontiff\u2014the more readily credited because only nine years previously the\nstreets of Rome had been deluged with blood by an insurrection. However,\nthe pope, so far from being the _farouche_ and sanguinary ruler M.\nMartin styles him, let off the academicians with a short confinement,\nand in 1475 Pomponio and his companions were once more quietly pursuing\ntheir studies, having profited by so beneficial a lesson. The academy\nbecame more flourishing than ever, and counted among its members a great\nnumber of bishops and prelates of the church.[87] Pope Leo X. himself,\nbefore his elevation to the papacy, was in the habit of attending its\nreunions. Arch\u00e6ology, poetry, and music all had a part in them, as well\nas other sciences, and all these Leo X. sincerely loved. \u201cI have always\nloved letters,\u201d wrote he to Henry VIII. \u201cThis love, innate in me, age\nhas only served to increase; for I have observed that those who\ncultivate them are heartily attached to the dogmas of the faith, and are\nthe ornaments of the church.\u201d Notwithstanding this love of literature,\nespecially ancient, Leo X. himself realized that too excessive an\napplication to such pursuits might be prejudicial to the spiritual life.\nThough at Florence he participated in the general admiration for Plato,\nafter his elevation to the Papacy he recommended to the pupils of the\nRoman College to give themselves up to serious studies, and renounce\nPlatonic philosophy and pagan poetry as tending to injure the soul. So\nalso St. Odo, Abbot of Cluny, was so fond of Virgil that it finally\nbecame injurious to his spiritual interests, and, falling asleep one day\nwhile reading one of his Eclogues, he saw in a dream a beautiful antique\nvase full of serpents. He understood the allusion and gave up profane\nreading.\n\nFootnote 87:\n\n  See essay of M. de l\u2019Epinois.\n\nSannazzaro\u2019s poem, therefore, is only an expression of the tastes of his\nage. It may also be considered in harmony with those of the primitive\nchurch, which adorned the very walls of the Catacombs with pagan\nsymbols, and blazoned them in the mosaics of their churches. There we\nfind Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur, beside David slaying Goliath. The\nJordan is represented as a river-god leaning on an antique urn, his head\ncrowned with aquatic plants and his beard dripping with moisture; Cupids\nflutter among the vines around the form of the Good Shepherd; and\nOrpheus is made the emblem of our Saviour.\n\nThe _De Partu Virginis_ is like one of those beautiful Madonnas so often\nmet with in Italy, not seated in a humble chair at Nazareth, but robed\nlike a queen, occupying a throne covered with mythological subjects and\nantique devices\u2014an emblem of the church enthroned on the ruins of\npaganism.\n\n\n\n\n                           A BIRTH-DAY SONG.\n                              TWENTY-ONE.\n\n\n            Bright summer sun, to-day\n    Mount with thy glancing spears, a cohort proud,\n    O\u2019er cliff and peak, and chase each threatening cloud,\n            Each gathering mist, away.\n\n            Fair, fragrant summer flowers,\n    Lily and heliotrope and spicy fern,\n    Exhale your sweets from leaf and petaled urn\n            Through all the golden hours.\n\n            Thou deep-voiced western wind,\n    The stately arches of the forest fill,\n    Till oak and elm to thy _andante_ thrill\n            As mind replies to mind.\n\n            Take up the song and sing,\n    O summer birds! until the joyous strains\n    Ring through the hills, chant in the blooming plains,\n            Gurgle in brook and spring.\n\n            And thou, O river deep!\n    Send from the shore thy message calm and plain,\n    As, bearing ship and shallop to the main,\n            Thy mighty currents sweep.\n\n            Sing, while the golden gate\n    Swings open, and reveals the thronging hopes,\n    Wing\u00e8d and crowned, that crowd the flowery slopes\n            Of Manhood\u2019s first estate.\n\n            Yet soft and low! The door\n    Is closing, as ye sing, on Childhood\u2019s meads;\n    The garrulous trump of Youth\u2019s heroic deeds\n            Is hushed for evermore;\n\n            And shining shapes, that blaze\n    Like loadstars, with occasion wait to lure\n    The dazzled soul o\u2019er crag and fell and moor\n            From Wisdom\u2019s peaceful ways.\n\n            Tell him, O sunshine bright!\n    How clouds of lust and mists of evil thought\n    By Chastity\u2019s white beams are brought to naught\n            Through Virtue\u2019s silent might.\n\n            Tell him, ye blossoms sweet,\n    How Charity divine her perfume rare\n    Exhales alike in pure or noxious air,\n            With holy love replete.\n\n            O brook and bird and spring!\n    Babble your simple sermon; say, Behold\n    Contentment, better far than gems or gold,\n            Or crown of sceptred king.\n\n            Tell him, thou deep-voiced wind,\n    How a brave, earnest spirit may awake\n    Responsive thought, till distant cycles take\n            Their orbits from his mind;\n\n            And thou, O river wide!\n    Tell how a steady purpose gathers strength\n    From singleness of aim, until at length\n            On its resistless tide\n\n            It bears both great and small\n    With equal, silent, comprehensive love\n    To that great sea whose calm no storm can move,\n            God\u2019s grace o\u2019er-arching all.\n\n            So may his spirit clear,\n    Untroubled by the scoff, the sneer, the sting\n    Of clashing creeds, find heaven a real thing,\n            And walk with seraphs here.\n\n            Thou great Triune! thy sign\n    Is on his forehead. May he, manful, fight\n    Under thy banner, till upon his sight\n            Fair Paradise shall shine;\n\n            Till, crown and palm-branch won,\n    He shall before thee stand without a fear,\n    Wearing the bright and morning star, and hear\n            The Master say, _Well done_.\n\n\n\n\n                            JANE\u2019S VOCATION.\n\n\n    \u201cO amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum pervenire.\u201d\u2014ST. AUGUSTINE.\n\nShe sat upon an enormous sea-washed cliff of granite, in a flood of\ngolden light from the stooping western sun behind her. Beneath her the\nsea-waves rippled lightly against the cliff. Far out before her the\nbroad expanse of sea extended till it met the sky. But on neither sea\nnor sky were the girl\u2019s eyes fastened. She was looking steadily across\nthe narrow gulf that separated the high promontory where her home was\nfrom the fishing town on the mainland. Behind her was a farm-house with\nits prosaic surroundings, and a few huts for drying fish were close at\nhand. Not far beyond these the stage-road ran, and coming over the brow\nof the promontory was the lumbering stage.\n\nShe did not hear the wheels as they went rumbling by, and did not know\nhow closely she was scanned. Next the driver a youth was sitting, whose\nface bespoke the artistic temperament as plainly as did the portfolio\nand hastily-traced sketch upon his knee. Like a flash he caught the\nloveliness of the picture\u2014its glorious framework of nature\u2019s beauties,\nits central point of that girlish figure in its graceful _pose_: the\nupraised head, the hands clasped round the knee as she sat bending\nslightly forward, the sense conveyed of absorbed, pathetic yearning for\nsomething more and higher than the farm life of her home.\n\n\u201cWho lives there?\u201d asked the young man of the driver; and the driver\nmade answer, glancing for very pleasure at the boyish, handsome face,\nstamped, in spite of its vanity, with the impress of a singularly clean\nand happy heart:\n\n\u201cNobody much, mister: old Jake Escott and Marm Escott and Jane. That\u2019s\nJane sitting there. She\u2019s their niece, and the best o\u2019 the lot.\u201d\n\n\u201cJane!\u201d repeated the youth to himself; but to the driver he said: \u201cDo\nthey take boarders there?\u201d\n\nThe man chuckled, as if the very idea was absurd.\n\n\u201cMuch as they can do to board themselves, _I_ guess. Shiftless set.\n'Tan\u2019t so much lack of money, though, as of go-aheadativeness. \u2019Twould\nbe too much trouble.\u201d\n\n\u201cThink I\u2019d be a trouble?\u201d\n\nThe man laughed again. \u201cDon\u2019t know 'bout that. You\u2019re as clever a chap\nand as taking a chap to talk with as I\u2019ve seen this many a day. You\u2019re a\nreal true, good-hearted gentleman, you be, sir; but you\u2019re city-bred for\nall that. Reckon you\u2019d want white napkins every meal, and all sorts of\nfinified stuff. Marm Escott couldn\u2019t give you such. 'Cause why? She\u2019s no\nidea what they are.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll try it,\u201d the traveller said, shutting his portfolio decisively and\nspeaking like one who always had his way. \u201cCan\u2019t you stop at the\nturn\u2014there\u2019s a good fellow\u2014and let me and my traps down?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well! You never meant to come here; that\u2019s certain. Where ye\nbound?\u201d\n\n\u201cNowhere.\u201d Then, seeing the driver\u2019s puzzled look, \u201cAnywhere,\u201d the youth\nadded merrily. \u201cI\u2019m come to do what I please, and stop where I please,\nand stay as long as I please. This is the loveliest place I have seen\nyet, and I must sketch it. Why, surely you have carried passengers\nbefore who had no settled destination, but liked to stop where it suited\nthem.\u201d\n\n\u201cYe\u2014es,\u201d was the doubtful response. \u201cYes, mister. But never one quite\nlike you. You\u2019re a wide-awake chap and a merry, but you look as dainty\nas any city lady I ever met.\u201d\n\nThe words were evidently taken as a compliment, in whatever way they\nmight have been meant. The youth slung his knapsack over his shoulder,\nconcealing the long name which had puzzled the driver for the whole\njourney\u2014Van Stuyvesant Van Doorm\u2014leaped lightly down from the coach\nalmost before it stopped, doffed his cap courteously, and with a gay\nfarewell was on his way along a narrow path to the house.\n\nA woman, remarkable for nothing except her curiously total lack of\nanything noticeable, opened the door, but into that dull face an actual\nsunny gleam of pleasure came as soon as she saw the blithe young face\nbefore her. The descendant of all the Vans doffed his cap courteously\nagain, with an answering gleam in his very brilliant eyes. He had been\nused all his life to know that people admired him, but it is to be\nacknowledged that this oft-repeated fact had never lost its charm.\n\n\u201cIs this Mrs. Escott?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cI be,\u201d was the succinct reply.\n\nNo faintest shadow of a smile betrayed her hearer\u2019s amusement. He knew\nhimself master already of the field. \u201cIf you please, Mrs. Escott,\u201d he\nsaid audaciously, in his most captivating tone and with his most\npleading, obstinate look, \u201cI\u2019m come to board with you.\u201d\n\nMrs. Escott stared as one taken by storm and unable to collect her\nscattered forces. \u201cBut\u2014but,\u201d she stammered, \u201cwe never take boarders, we\ndon\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis exception will prove the rule, then,\u201d quoth Van. \u201cOh! for shame,\nMrs. Escott. You never would have the heart to turn me away from such a\nview as this. I want to sketch it, and I will give you a sketch of it,\nand pay you the highest board into the bargain.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut we an\u2019t got nothing fit to board ye on.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh? No eggs, then, I suppose,\u201d suggested Van mildly, pointing at the\nhens cackling in the yard. \u201cNo milk, either,\u201d he added as the lowing of\na cow sounded near by. \u201cNo berries to be had for love or money, eh? And\nof course there are no fish to be found in the sea.\u201d\n\nThe woman actually laughed. \u201cI\u2019ll speak to Jake,\u201d she said, then\ndisappeared, and Van seated himself on the doorstep and waited her\nreturn without fear of disappointment.\n\n\u201cJane and I can pick berries,\u201d he said to himself; and then he trilled\nforth gaily, in a voice that was the envy and admiration of city\ncircles:\n\n    \u201cIn the days when we went gipsying,\n              Long time ago.\u201d\n\nThe melody pleased him; it chimed in well with the birds\u2019 blithe song in\nthe trees and the faint dash of the waves along the shore. He began the\nsong and went through it all as blithely and carelessly as they.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s handsome, now,\u201d an uncouth voice behind him said when he stopped\nat last with a sense of buoyant delight in his own power. \u201cThat\u2019s\nhandsome, stranger. Sing like that, and you\u2019re welcome here, and no\nmistake.\u201d\n\nThis was \u201cJake,\u201d then, shuffling, untidy, uncouth as his voice. A\nmisgiving arose in Van\u2019s mind. Would the house, the table, his room, be\nlike Jake and Marm Escott? But he need stay no longer than he chose\u2014no\nlonger than one night; and it was now nearly six o\u2019clock in the\nafternoon. So, all necessary arrangements being concluded, Jake trundled\na dilapidated wheel-barrow, in some vague, slipshod fashion, to the road\nto \u201cfetch the stranger\u2019s traps,\u201d and Mrs. Escott, going to the gate,\ncalled loudly, \u201cJane! Jane! I want ye, child.\u201d\n\nVan, waiting in the parlor for her coming, looked attentively about him.\nThere was almost nothing in the room to show that any one ever came\nthere who cared a whit more for beauty than Jacob Escott himself did.\nRag mats of discordant hues covered squares and ovals and rectangular\nparallelograms of the pine floor; the walls were decorated with coarse\nprints of General Washington and of the prize ox of twenty years ago; on\nthe table was a big family Bible and a Farmer\u2019s Almanac illuminating the\nsombre cover with its sickly yellow, and on this was a half-knitted blue\nyarn stocking.\n\nThere was a cheap piano in one corner, but it looked as though it was\nnever opened. The windows were not uncurtained, but, of all other things\nthere, they set Van\u2019s teeth on edge with their execrable attempts at\nsome sort of a painted landscape; he seized the tassels vindictively,\nand pulled the curtains out of sight, thus letting in the superb view\nbeyond.\n\nSome one, he discovered then, had had taste enough to put flowers in the\nroom. A great handful of daisies and clovers and delicate grasses stood\non the sill of the window that looked out to where the narrow gulf\nseparated the promontory from the mainland.\n\n\u201cJane\u2019s work,\u201d said Van to himself; and as he thought it, he heard a\nslow, calm step coming through the entry, and Jane herself stood in the\ndoorway.\n\nInvoluntarily he bent his head with such a reverence as he had never\npaid to woman before. He was the cynosure at home among all ladies, but\nnone yet had won from him the reverent greeting of an utter\nself-forgetful absorption in another\u2019s presence. The girl who stood\nthere was not beautiful, though there was nothing in her features to\ndisplease the artist\u2019s eye; indeed, the absence of mere material beauty\nmade more marked the impression conveyed in movement and feature and\nface. Of all colors in the world\u2014and Van was passionately fond of\ncolor\u2014he loved best the gold that is sometimes seen in the western sky\nnear where the sun is setting: a clear, fair hue that does not dazzle\nbut rests the eyes that gaze upon it. Van thought of that color when he\nsaw Jane\u2019s face with its look of unclouded peace.\n\nShe lifted her eyes and glanced at him, at first with a tranquil,\nunmoved expression, as though it was quite indifferent to her who it was\nthat she was meeting; then she gave a quicker, keener glance that\nthrilled Van with an uneasy sense that she was reading him through and\nthrough. What was it that she read? he wondered.\n\nHe tried to talk with her as she moved about the room, engaged in the\nvery ordinary task of setting the supper-table. Her language showed some\nculture and refinement. He hazarded the question, \u201cAre there good\nschools about here?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not know,\u201d she said meditatively. \u201cThere is the district school.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy does she not say, 'I went there\u2019?\u201d thought Van. \u201cThat would tell me\nsomething about herself.\u201d\n\nBut more and more he found, as his talk went on, that Jane ignored\nherself. It did not appear to enter her mind that she was anybody to be\nthought of or talked about. He had at first to make conversation at the\nsupper-table\u2014the farm, the fisheries, the crops\u2014but presently Jacob\nEscott made bold to ask: \u201cWhat may be your occupation, sir?\u201d\n\nAnd, nothing loath, Van launched upon one of his pet topics\u2014art and\nartists. Even the plain farmer and his wife enjoyed it. How could they\nresist the fascination of the merry stories, the musical voice, the face\nthat spoke as clearly as the words? But Jane hardly listened, and\nsuddenly a thought struck Van: \u201cThis is mere surface-talk after all. Can\nit be that this farmer\u2019s girl cares for anything deeper, or is it only\nthat she has not depth enough to care?\u201d\n\nThey rose from the table, and Van followed Jane to the door. She did not\nsee or heed him. The tide was at the full; wave upon wave came heaving\ngently onward toward the land as a child, tired out with play, comes\nhome to its mother\u2019s arms to rest; through the twilight the dark,\nrestless mass of water and its ceaseless murmuring alike woke a sense of\nmystery and awe; above, in the darkening skies, a pale half-moon was\nshining and a few great throbbing stars. And in the dim light Van saw\nJane\u2019s face, and it seemed to him as beautiful and as full of mystery as\nsea and sky. Such a look of hunger marked it! He thought of Niobe, and\nof Cassandra, and of Mariana in the moated grange, but she differed in\nsome inexplicable fashion from them all, and then he heard her say below\nher breath: \u201cMy God! My God! My God!\u201d\n\nOver and over again\u2014not what Van had ever fancied a prayer could be, and\nyet to his ear more full of intense personal pleading than any prayer he\nhad ever heard. Faith, hope, love, expectation, keen desire, and\nsuffering were all summed up in two words; and though he knew nothing of\nher trouble, yet when the aunt\u2019s call for her came from the room within,\nVan started as if he had been struck. He could not bear to have her\nharried back into the dull life of her home.\n\n\u201cJust mend this, Janey, will you?\u201d Mrs. Escott said, exhibiting a coarse\nblue shirt. \u201cYour uncle wants it for to-morrow.\u201d\n\nThe girl\u2019s face was tranquil and happy again by some sudden\ntransformation. She took the rough work\u2014it was not clean work, either;\nit had evidently been worn once or twice, Van saw with mingled disgust\nand pity\u2014and, sitting down contentedly in the dingy room, she began her\nmending. She puzzled Van greatly, she interested him intensely. As he\ntalked to her uncle he watched with his artistically-trained eye each\nexpression of her face. It varied now and then, though the strange,\nyearning look did not return to it. The peace was there, and an\nexquisite happiness.\n\n\u201cShe is like a dove,\u201d thought Van. \u201cShe is like an innocent baby. Oh! if\none could take her away from this.\u201d\n\nBut one clue to her character he was certain that he had found. He rose\nup before she finished her work, and he flung open the old piano and sat\ndown before it. It was not so unfit for use as he had feared it would\nbe, and he knew how to glide skilfully over the worst notes. And then he\nbegan to try Jane. First he sang ballads, \u201cRobin Adair,\u201d \u201cJohn Anderson\nmy jo, John,\u201d \u201cOh! wert thou in the cauld blast.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s fine, Ph\u0153be,\u201d said Jacob, and Ph\u0153be said \u201cYes\u201d with an unwonted\nenthusiasm. But Jane worked steadily on, and if she heard or cared Van\ncould not tell, though he fancied the sweet, dove-like look deepened\nupon her face.\n\n    \u201cThe brightest jewel in my crown\n    Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.\u201d\n\nThe last tender notes of the song lingered under Van\u2019s fingers, as a\nknock was heard at the kitchen door, and Jacob went to answer it,\nfollowed soon by Ph\u0153be, who evidently recognized the voice of the\nnew-comer. There was a scraping of chairs on the kitchen floor\u2014the plain\nindication that somebody had come to stay awhile. Van leaned his head\nforward against the music-rack, and once again before his eyes was the\nscene he had witnessed in the twilight one hour before. Could the same\nperson who sat quietly at her rough work now be she whom he had seen and\nheard then in that passion of prayer? And while he mused there rang\nthrough his brain echoes that always thrilled his music-loving,\nart-loving nature with an especial power, and that seemed now like fit\nmates for the darkly-heaving sea, the star-lit sky, the girl\u2019s yearning\nface; and from the old ivory keys, that grew strangely full of power and\nsweetness beneath his magical touch, rang out Chopin\u2019s grand funeral\nmarch.\n\nThe work dropped from Jane\u2019s hands. He could not watch her face, for she\nturned it straight toward that eastern flower-decked window that looked\nout to gulf and sea; but he saw her fingers lock tightly into one\nanother and her form become rigidly still. When he ended she rose\nquietly and went away, and he did not see her again that night.\n\nBut long that night he studied her, while an unwonted shame of himself\nand a keen admiration for her grew steadily in him, and what he inferred\nof her then was confirmed each day more and more.\n\n\u201cShe does not know one-half the things that I know,\u201d he said, \u201cbut she\nhas it in her to care for the highest art and beauty. And she is so\nnoble by nature that she _couldn\u2019t_ spend her thoughts on a thousand\ntrifling things that I waste mine upon. Such a glorious creature\nimprisoned here! I\u2019ll do my best for her.\u201d\n\nNever used to early rising, he came down stairs the next day to find his\nbreakfast waiting for him and the morning of the family half over.\n\n\u201cYes, we be early risers,\u201d said Mrs. Escott. \u201cLeastways, Jake and Jane\nbe. I\u2019m a poor hand at it myself. Why, Jane here, she\u2019s across the gulf\nand home again afore six every day.\u201d\n\n\u201cAcross the gulf! Before six!\u201d exclaimed Van.\n\n\u201cCertain sure, Mr. Van. These Catholics are queer creatures. Jane\u2019s a\nCatholic, you know.\u201d\n\nHabitual courtesy quelled the words of surprise and of pain that rose to\nVan\u2019s lips\u2014surprise at finding a Catholic in this notedly Protestant\nfishing settlement, pain at hearing Jane\u2019s deepest feelings thus lightly\nexposed to view. But Jane showed not the slightest shade of annoyance.\n\nNow he thought he understood her better. One of the many marvellous\nspells of Catholicism had been woven about her\u2014some vision of beauty had\nthus come into her hitherto blank life; he would strive the more now to\nteach her of what he blandly deemed the freer, nobler lights of art and\nscience, but never should word or look from him throw scorn or jest or\ntrifling speech of any kind on that which was dear to her.\n\nLove at first sight\u2014Van had always maintained that he believed in it; he\nwas always falling in love with any pretty face that struck his fancy,\nand then just as easily falling out of love with an unwounded heart. But\nhere love and pity and real reverence all awoke together and made of him\ntheir willing slave. \u201cI\u2019ll go with her to Mass to-morrow,\u201d he said, and\non the morrow he stood in the early sunrise on the beach.\n\nSo early was it that Jane herself was not yet there. He watched her\ncoming towards her boat, her eyes cast down, and that hungry, longing\nlook stamped plainly on her.\n\n\u201cMay I go too?\u201d he said, the gay, trifling manner gone, and that\npeculiarly distinct imprint of a clean heart shining in his eyes.\nLifting her own sweet eyes, once again he felt that she read him\nthrough; then, saying nothing, she bowed assent and stepped into the\nboat. And still without a word she let him take the oars from her, and,\ndrawing her rosary from her pocket, she began to tell her beads. Van\nthought she never would stop, and she did not till they reached the\ntown. Still silent, she led the way from the shore through some dull,\nshell-paved paths to a small chapel, and, entering, forgot Van\naltogether and went with eager footsteps up the aisle. Van stationed\nhimself where he could see her; she sank on her knees before the altar,\nand crossed herself, and lifted up her face. The lips were parted in a\nsmile of ecstasy, the eyes were shining bright as though they saw\nunearthly loveliness.\n\nWhat Van saw was this: a square, low-studded, dingy room, poor prints of\nreligious subjects, mean tallow dips for candles, tawdry gilding and\nhangings, artificial tawdry flowers, a plain, small altar, a few squalid\nworshippers; presently an aged priest, who said Mass in a cracked and\nfeeble voice.\n\n\u201cWhat spell is over her?\u201d thought Van, marvelling. \u201cOh! if I could once\ntake her out of it all, home to wealth and beauty and tenderness, and to\nour churches. No need to tell her that Catholics have beautiful ones\nsomewhere.\u201d\n\nBut on their way back to the farm she did not speak, and he could not\nventure to break the intense calm in which she was wrapped. Every\nevening he read or sang and played, or talked his best, in the parlor\nwhere the household gathered, but she never again was there alone with\nhim, and in the daytime she was always busy just when he wanted her\nsociety most. Often he was conscious that what he said or read or did\nfailed to make any impression at all upon her; often while he tried to\ninterest her he found her gazing toward that eastern window, and knew\nthat she did not heed him. He longed to say: \u201cI cannot see what you find\nin that dull church to give your eyes and thoughts to,\u201d but he could not\nsay it.\n\nSometimes when he read, far oftener when he played grand music\u2014often,\ntoo, when they watched the sky and sea and listened to the waves, the\nnoble nature woke responsive to his call. But it stung him to the quick\nto feel his general powerlessness to move her except when he roused his\nbest and highest powers; it stung him to see how little she cared for\nthe comforts and luxuries and prettinesses, for knowledge even and the\nart, that were part of his daily existence, and which he deemed\nnecessary to him; it stung him to find that the meanest occupation never\nmade her discontented, but glad and bright instead; while what he\nconsidered suited to her condition or her needs was as nothing to her,\nand the yearning which he could not fathom seldom came into her face\nwhen at her daily labor, but often when he told himself she ought to be\ncontent and glad with him.\n\nShe talked very little to him; she never seemed to care whether he came\nor went, and he\u2014all his thoughts became engrossed in her.\n\nOne afternoon, near the close of a sultry day, as the first mutterings\nof thunder and the first far-off flashes of lightning shone and sounded\nfrom the dark depths of low-lying clouds above the sea\u2014when the winds\nwere rising, and the poplars showed their leaves\u2019 white faces, and the\nwhite-crested waves broke in ominously upon the shore; when Jane\u2019s\nsensitive nature was awake and quivering in sympathy with the gathering\nstorm\u2014Jacob Escott came hurrying his cattle home to shelter, bringing\nwith him a letter which the stage-driver had flung down to him as he\nraced his horses by to town. \u201cFor you, Mr. Van,\u201d he said.\n\nVan opened it carelessly, read it carefully, then came straight to where\nJane stood, watching with keen delight the seething sea and storm-tossed\nsky.\n\n\u201cJane,\u201d he said, \u201clisten to me. They have sent for me to go home at\nonce. My father is very ill. Jane, I love you. Will you be my wife?\u201d\n\nShe turned with great displeasure in her eyes. \u201cYou jest, sir,\u201d she\nsaid. \u201cSuch jesting pains me much. Even my uncle understands that now.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not jesting,\u201d he cried vehemently. \u201cI speak the truth. I love you.\nNone but you can ever be my wife. Give me your promise, Jane. I love you\nso.\u201d\n\nAt first her look of rebuke waxed sterner; then for a moment her eyes\nmet the pleading bright eyes fastened on her with the look peculiar to\nthem, that bespoke a singularly clean heart. She smiled as one smiles at\na child.\n\n\u201cIt is impossible,\u201d she said.\n\nTumultuously he hurried on: \u201cNo, no, not impossible. If I will promise\nto read, to study, to be a Catholic if I can\u2014will you think of it then?\nWill you try me?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is impossible,\u201d she repeated. \u201cYou pain me.\u201d And then, with an\neffort, as though she spoke of things too sacred for the common ear, \u201cBy\nthe grace of God,\u201d she said slowly, \u201cwhen he makes the way plain before\nme, I am to be a nun.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no!\u201d Van cried again. \u201cNo, no! Think\u2014listen. Think it all over\nagain. You do not understand. Your life has been cramped here in this\npoor, mean place. That is why you want to be a nun. Come away with me to\na life that suits a soul like yours. I have seen your craving for higher\nthings.\u201d\n\nThe sudden, jagged lightning cleft the skies. By its glare he saw her\nface distinctly, and a noble scorn was on it, and a righteous\nindignation.\n\n\u201cCome away with you\u2014from _God_!\u201d she said, and in the pause that\nfollowed Van felt himself more mean than the dust from whence he came.\n\n\u201cForgive me,\u201d she said gently. \u201cI forget. It is you who do not\nunderstand. I do not mind that this house is poor and mean; my Lord was\nborn in a stable, and he died upon a cross. And if I suffer here and\ncrave for higher things, it is a suffering which even the cloister can\nnever cure\u2014far less, then, you\u2014for I crave to see the face of God! To\nlove my God, to cease from sin, to come to my God and be for ever one\nwith him in his high heaven\u2014I hunger for it by night and by day.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd if this life suits you so well, and you must suffer anyhow,\u201d Van\nsaid curiously, \u201cwhy not stay here always? or why not come with me?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Van,\u201d Jane answered, \u201cto be a nun is my vocation. God himself calls\nme. I must do his will. Forgive me again, but I cannot talk any more to\nyou about it. If you did not seem so young to me\u2014so like a little\ninnocent child, in spite of all your knowledge\u2014I could not have said so\nmuch.\u201d And the next minute she was gone, leaving Van abashed and utterly\nignorant of the high meed of true praise which she had bestowed upon\nhim.\n\nHe went home to watch for two long days and nights beside a couch of\nfoolish delirium and lingering death; to see a mind of uncommon\nintellect and far-famed, exquisite taste reduced to folly; to see the\neyes stare vacantly at picture and statue and familiar face alike; and\nthen to follow the lifeless body to the grave, and hide it there, clay\nto its kindred clay. The young heir of enormous wealth and princely\npossessions paced alone in his father\u2019s halls that night, and found no\npleasure in the beauty that once had satisfied him. Even the memory of\nJane\u2019s face was a burden to him.\n\n\u201cShe would have to die too,\u201d Van muttered. \u201cAnd, after all, one could as\nsoon love a St. Catherine borne by angels as love her. I do not believe\nI ever did. And yet if I did not, I never really loved any woman.\u201d\n\nWherein he spoke the truth.\n\nYet one look of hers haunted him\u2014that look of settled, tranquil peace,\nlike the undazzling gold of the western sky; and while it shone before\nhim the steady, tranquil voice echoed through his memory, \u201cTo be a nun\nis my vocation. God himself calls me. I must do his will.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wonder,\u201d queried Van wistfully\u2014\u201cI wonder what my vocation is. I\u2019m\nsure it has never made any difference to me. I have sketched, and\nplayed, and read, just as I fancied.\u201d\n\nAnd, with that great grace vouchsafed him, of which he was so ignorant,\nhe said like a child: \u201cO God! what shall I do?\u201d\n\nThe answer did not come at once. He fretted and puzzled; by and by he\nbegan to wonder whether Jane\u2019s religion had anything to do with her\nchoice. Besides, if it was worth a man\u2019s while to think of changing his\nreligion because he fancied himself in love with a creature that some\ntime must die, had he not reason to think seriously about it anyhow?\nWhat did she mean when she said she craved to see God\u2019s face? What\ncaused that woman of so few words to speak with such power when she\nspoke of that?\n\nVan read and thought, but it was not the books that enlightened him. He\nwent one evening where he seldom went by day, when curious eyes could\nwatch him\u2014to his father\u2019s grave. It was a warm evening late in\nSeptember. As he passed the rectory adjoining the church, which his\nfather, and his father\u2019s father, and all the Van Doorms of the region\nhad religiously attended, gay voices and snatches of music caught his\near, and he looked up involuntarily.\n\nIt was a pretty sight. The gas had just been lighted, the curtains were\nstill up. Lonely, sorrowful Van, forgetful of his wonted courtesy, stood\nstill where he was and took in the whole picture with an added\nheartache.\n\nIn the pleasant parlor, not luxurious, but a _home-room_, the mother sat\nwith her baby on her knee. Van remembered her when she came a bride to\nthe parish, and he was only a child of five years old. It was one of his\nearliest memories\u2014that being taken to church with the promise of seeing\nthe new young minister\u2019s new young wife, if he would be very good. That\nwas twenty years ago, and there were lines of gray in Mrs. Charles\u2019\nhair, but her face wore the same kindly smile that had marked it then in\nthe freshness of her nineteen years, and at the piano a girl of nineteen\nmight have been taken for the bride brought back again in her youthful\nbloom. She was playing some familiar melody; five or six brothers and\nsisters clustered about her, sang blithely with her; a toddling child at\nthe mother\u2019s knee beat time with its chubby fingers on the younger\nbaby\u2019s chubby hand. Presently an inner door opened, and the pastor\nentered. There was a cry of \u201cFather! father!\u201d a general rush to meet\nhim, frantic, merry embraces from the children, while the mother smiled\ncontented, and the father stood tender and strong in the midst of his\nhappy flock.\n\nThe picture lasted for a brief space only; with a pretty gesture of\nhorror the eldest daughter sprang toward the window and drew down the\nshades, lest somebody should see, and Van stood alone outside in the\ngathering night.\n\nHe plodded on dreamily to the church-yard, and sat down near the new\ngrave among many, many older graves where the men and women of his race\nlay buried.\n\n\u201cWife and child,\u201d said Van, with a long, hard, envious sigh, \u201cfather and\nmother, and happy home. And I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWife and child\u2014father and mother.\u201d The words repeated themselves in\nthat curious, echo-like fashion which words have when they come to the\nmind as a part of a familiar saying, whose whole cannot be at once\nrecalled, and which for a time we vainly strive to place.\n\n\u201cWife and child\u2014father and mother.\u201d Ah! something else comes: \u201cHouses\nand lands.\u201d What is it? What is Van striving to get?\n\n\u201cHouses and lands.\u201d\n\nHe has it.\n\n\u201cNo man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or\nmother, or children, or lands for my sake and for the Gospel, who shall\nnot receive an hundred times as much, now in this time: and in the world\nto come life everlasting.\u201d\n\nHe does not see with his bodily eyes at all now, but the eyes of his\nsoul are wide awake, and they see clear and true.\n\nIn which church\u2014Catholic or Protestant\u2014were the men who, not by tens or\nby hundreds, but by thousands upon thousands, and through centuries upon\ncenturies, had carried out to the very letter the words of Christ, the\nBible words? Which, except through some exceptions that only served to\nprove the rule, had by loud-voiced declamation, and an action that spoke\nmore loudly still, set at naught the teaching of the Master\u2014set at\nnaught the example of Him who left all for them?\n\nVan seemed to hear it once again\u2014the missionary letters read from the\npulpit and published in Protestant magazines; the pleadings for clothes\nfor the missionary\u2019s wife and children; the appeals for money, or a\nmissionary must leave his important field because his family could not\nbe supported there; the vaunted heroism of missionaries who endured to\nsee their children suffer rather than desert their post. Where were the\nmen whose heroism was such that they had no home, no family, no earthly\ntie, but stood ready like the angels\u2014true messengers\u2014to go or to stay,\nundeterred by any human consideration, where God and his church asked or\nneeded them?\n\nAnd so it came to pass that Van understood the mystery of Jane\u2019s\nvocation; comprehended that men and women, young and old, rich and poor,\nignorant and lettered, heard, as the wedded Peter and the unwedded John\nheard once the voice of Christ call to them, and literally, like them,\nleft all and followed him. It came to pass also that he understood\nJane\u2019s suffering; knew that that call of God and the accompanying love\nof God were a hundred-fold more in this life than the earthly joys\nrenounced, and yet that the promise of the everlasting life spoke of\nsuch ineffable bliss that the longing awakened for it could only be\nappeased in heaven.\n\nVan found his vocation too. He threw himself, heart and soul, into true\nChristian art. His pictures were seldom seen on the walls of rich men\u2019s\nhouses, but churches and convents owned them free of price. That part of\nhis work, however, was the smallest part. Money and time and strength\nwere lavished nobly with and in aid of those who are successfully\nlaboring in our day to show, by research in catacombs and ruined sacred\nbuildings and among old missals and breviaries and parchments, that the\nCatholic Church of to-day is the church of the early Christians and\nmartyrs.\n\nIn Italy he met and married some one very different from Jane\u2014a very\nlovely and good and noble woman\u2014and Jane to him became more and more a\nSt. Catherine borne by angels, and more and more he wondered that he\never had presumed to think of offering her an earthly love.\n\n\u201cHad I been a Catholic then, I never could have done it,\u201d he told his\nwife. \u201cGod had called her for himself, and set his seal upon her.\u201d\n\nAnd the happy wife said humbly: \u201cHers was the higher calling, dear.\u201d\n\nSo when, one day, their only daughter came to them\u2014a strong,\nhigh-spirited, brilliant girl, the sunshine of their home\u2014and told them\nthat God\u2019s call had come to her to leave her home for Christ\u2019s poverty,\nand all human love for his love alone, she found no weak resistance.\n\n\u201cThank God,\u201d they said, \u201cfor the honor he has done us! For him we gladly\nbid thee forget thine own people and thy father\u2019s house.\u201d\n\nBut of Jane they never heard, except that, when God\u2019s time came, she\nleft the farm beside the sea. What need to know more of her, who was\nwhere she longed to be\u2014one of the great number who lose all to find All,\nand, having Him whom their soul loveth, need nothing more?\n\n\n\n\n                  COUNT FREDERICK LEOPOLD STOLBERG[88]\n\n\nFootnote 88:\n\n  Frederick Leopold, Count Stolberg, since his return to the Catholic\n  Church, 1800-1819. From hitherto unpublished family documents. By John\n  Janssen. Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder & Co.\n\nCount Stolberg, a well-known statesman and writer, a minister of the\nDuke of Oldenburg, the friend of Goethe, Schlegel, Klopstock, Lavater,\nStein, John and Adam M\u00fcller, La Motte Fouqu\u00e9, K\u00f6rner, and others as\ndistinguished, the correspondent of most of the German historians,\nphilosophers, and _savants_ of his day, became a Catholic, after seven\nyears\u2019 anxious seeking for truth, on the 1st of June, 1800, at M\u00fcnster,\nin Westphalia, in the fifty-first year of his age. He immediately\nretired from public life, although circumstances afterwards brought him\nbefore Germany as a representative man; and his writings spread through\nall classes of his countrymen as a worthy and dignified exposition of a\nreligion at that time much reviled, misunderstood, and in some cases\npersecuted. His example in home-life was as powerful in a smaller circle\nas his writings were in a wider one; and his relations with his wife and\nchildren (he had eighteen children by his two marriages) were such as to\nmake it true of him that he was a model for all Christian heads of\nfamilies. His own tastes were simple and domestic; he was fond of the\ncountry, and was a childlike companion even to his youngest children,\nwhile to all, as they grew up, he was a wise friend and teacher. All his\nchildren, except Mariagnes, his eldest daughter by his first marriage,\nbecame Catholics with him; those born after his conversion were of\ncourse brought up in the church. His second wife, Sophie, Countess von\nRedern, had shared his doubts and his experiences during those seven\nyears of eager search after religious certainty, and became a Catholic\nalso; but while he remained in intimate and sympathetic relations with\nhis brothers and sisters, he never influenced any of them far enough to\nmake them follow his footsteps. His brother Christian and his wife Luise\nwere his most constant and intimate correspondents; with the former\nreligion seemed to make no difference, as his admiration for, and\nsympathy with, Stolberg was proof against anything\u2014indeed, Stolberg\noften called him his \u201cother self\u201d; and the latter, to judge by her\nletters, was a woman of more than common understanding, a student of\nscience, an observer of the times, whose mind was open to receive any\nnew impression that had the semblance of truth or real progress in it;\nan investigating and impartial searcher, better versed than most women\nin classic learning, and eager for knowledge in any shape. To give up\nconstant intercourse with his own family and remove to a Catholic city\nwas the hardest sacrifice Stolberg had to make on leaving the Lutheran\ncommunion; but he considered the change imperative for the proper\neducation of his children. In a letter to Luise announcing this resolve\nhe says: \u201cThere is no dilemma, but, even if there were, you will agree\nwith me that a tender conscience, in a doubtful case, must always choose\nagainst its wishes\u2014I mean its natural wishes, which are always\nsuspicious to upright morals, let alone to Christianity.\u201d To his friend\nPrincess Gallitzin, the mother of the zealous missionary in America,\nDemetrius Gallitzin, he says: \u201cIt is an unspeakable joy to me that my\nbrother and sister-in-law remain bound to me in the fullest and most\nunreserved love, and that not even the shadow of a misunderstanding has\ncome between them and me, however painful to them is the separation from\nme, from Sophie, and from the children.\u201d\n\nHe took a house in M\u00fcnster and made it his home for thirteen years,\nliving there through the winter and spending his summers at a\ncountry-house a few miles out of the city, at L\u00fctjenbeck. His children\u2019s\nstudies were his first care. Greek being his favorite study, he made\neach of his sons a good Greek scholar, and kept up his own studies by a\nrepeated round of all the great authors, read successively with each of\nhis many boys. Ernest and Andrew, the sons of his first marriage, were\nhis first pupils, and his own teaching was supplemented in languages and\nhistory by a French _emigr\u00e9_, the Abb\u00e9 Pierrard, and in philosophy by\nsome professors resident in M\u00fcnster. Stolberg did not neglect the\nphysical education of his boys, and would no more dispense with the\ndaily walk, ride, or swim than he would with the studies. His sons were\ngood shots, too, and in the summer he and they spent most of their time\nin the open air. Their mother writes of them that they are \u201ctruthful,\ngenerous, and good-hearted,\u201d and \u201cthat their tender respect for their\ngreat father increases day by day.\u201d She was herself a patient and\njudicious teacher, and fully recognized how much harm is done to\nchildren, and the \u201cquiet workings of God\u2019s influence disturbed in them,\nby the expectation of hurried development and individuality.\u201d Stolberg\nwas already beginning his literary work in the interests of religion and\neducation, and in 1801 was translating St. Augustine\u2019s _De Vera\nReligione_. The early Fathers were his favorite spiritual reading; also\nthe Greek Testament and the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. He\nwisely resolved to lead a retired life, and not enter into what is\ncalled society; but he gathered round him a circle of real friends, in\nintercourse with whom he spent many hours, especially in the evenings.\nAmong these were Princess Gallitzin, to whom we owe the suggestion that\nproduced Stolberg\u2019s great work, _The History of the Religion of Jesus\nChrist_; Prince F\u00fcrstenberg, an old man of very exemplary life;\nKellermann, his friend and pupil, and the tutor of his younger sons for\nsixteen years\u2014a priest who was the model of his order; some of the\ncathedral chapter, learned and enlightened men; and many young people,\nfriends of his children, among whom the latter afterwards found wives\nand husbands, in all cases happily acceptable to their parents. Whoever\nhas read the real-life idyl of _A Sister\u2019s Story_ will see some likeness\nbetween the home of the La Ferronays and Stolberg\u2019s happy home. Indeed,\nhis friends were part of his family, and admission to his intimacy\nbecame the ambition of all such in M\u00fcnster as had minds beyond the\ncommon run, and aspirations beyond those of fashion, politics, and\nfrivolity. Stolberg\u2019s dislike to the loss of time involved in ordinary\nvisits and the inanities of society is thus described by himself in\n1810:\n\n    \u201cI am growing more unfit from year to year for large gatherings.\n    Intercourse with friends, like the leaves of the Sibylline books, is\n    more precious the less time it occupies and the less often it\n    recurs. To hear social chatter for more than an hour affects me so\n    that I feel much like a dead donkey.... How true are Lavater\u2019s\n    words: 'Even the circle of good souls seldom gives me a new impulse,\n    and a thousand trivial pleasures rob me of true enjoyment. Only\n    solitude can shadow and cool my spirit, thirsty and weary from the\n    company even of loved ones; only solitude can give what no friend\n    can offer\u2014a new consciousness and new life, and a feeling that God\n    loves me.\u2019\u201d\n\nThis country life which was such a relief and yearly joy to the whole\nfamily is charmingly described in Stolberg\u2019s letters. His garden, his\nhay-field, his children\u2019s play; his walks in the beech, oak, and maple\nwoods; the squirrels in the trees, the favorite kid of his little girls,\nthe nightingales, the blossoming fruit-trees that suggested to him the\nsaying that the \u201capple-tree did not eat of the apple\u201d; the grottos,\nrocks, valleys, castles, torrents of the neighborhood of Stolberg; the\nold family house which he had not seen for twenty-eight years, and upon\nwhich he prided himself as a possession that had been in the family for\na thousand years; the beauties of the Erzgebirg, and the Bohemian hills\nthat lean against it; the Scotch or Norwegian-like scenery, wild and\ngrand, of these mountains with their narrow, fruitful valleys and green\nmeadows, fringed with dark pine woods\u2014are all described with that\nheartiness and enthusiasm which real lovers of the country know, but\nwhich, as Stolberg says, so many others pretend to, while in reality\nthey see in nature nothing but a cold show, a theatre decoration. \u201cThey\nlook complacently as into a peep-show at the sunrise and the heavens,\nbut their heart does not swell within them nor their eyes grow dim.\u201d He\nwas as fond of childish games, especially of blowing soap-bubbles, as he\nwas of beautiful scenery, and counted it a sign of soul-health when he\nwas in the frame of mind to enjoy such games. And now that we have\nbefore us the picture of the man in his domestic life, who in his\npublic, political, literary, and social life was of so much importance\nand had so wide an influence, we will keep mostly to his own letters,\nwhich give full vent to his opinions on the important events of the\ntime, and show him forth as emphatically of the old school, a model\nChristian, a thorough gentleman, but a man of his own generation;\nimpatient of novelty, a great admirer of the English constitution, but a\nscornful contemner of the mushroom constitutions of the Continent; a hot\n_L\u00e9gitimiste_, but a patriotic German; an uncompromising and somewhat\nirrational foe of Napoleon, over and above his mere national antagonism\nagainst the great and successful warrior\u2014for instance, he believed that\n\u201cNapoleon\u2019s greatness was kneaded out of the abjectness of Europe,\u201d\nforgetting that a man\u2019s greatness may lie precisely in the art of taking\nadvantage of a weakness inherent in an adversary, and seizing the right\nmoment to overwhelm small minds with his stronger one; a firm believer\nin the necessity of his own order, but an \u201caristocrat\u201d with lofty and\nbeautiful theories of what aristocracy consists in; in a word, a great\nChristian and a thorough man.\n\nBesides his Greek and Hebrew studies, he was fond of English history and\nliterature, and knew French and Italian well; Milton and Young were his\nfavorite English poets, though he often quotes Shakspere too, and one of\nhis works, second only to the _History of Religion_, was the _Life of\nAlfred_\u2014a man whom he looked upon as a heroic model, and whose example\nhe wished to dwell upon as a guide to his sons through life. He also\ntranslated the whole of Ossian. His letters relating to his home-life,\nhis losses and those of his relations, the death of his sons and\nson-in-law, and of many dear friends, full as they are of Christian\nmanliness and resignation, and of moral axioms that might be taken as\nmottoes, we will pass by, as they have less of individuality than his\nletters containing opinions on religion, politics, and literature, as\nwell as expositions of theories of his own, all strongly and\nconscientiously held. He firmly contradicted a current misconception in\nhis time\u2014and, indeed, a not unfrequent one now\u2014of the intolerance of the\nCatholic Church.\n\n    \u201cOnly for those who confess Catholic truth,\u201d he writes, \u201cand yet\n    consciously keep aloof from the Catholic communion, is there no hope\n    of salvation. Of others who err in all good faith, my church teaches\n    me to believe that they are her members, though unknowingly. God\n    allows many honest Protestants to remain in error, and to fancy that\n    the Catholic Church, that truly merciful mother, is intolerant\n    against those outside her pale. It is not the true spirit of that\n    church to persecute, curse, or burn the erring. Infallible in her\n    doctrine, as were also the teachers who sat in Moses\u2019 seat, she\n    still cannot preserve all her members free from imperfections in\n    their acts\u2014not even the pope, nor, in the old dispensation, the\n    high-priest.\u201d\n\nIn another letter he says:\n\n    \u201cFar be it from me, as it is from every Catholic who knows the\n    spirit of his church, to doubt that among Protestants also there are\n    and have been holy souls\u2014holy in the sense in which all true\n    children of God are holy; ... but my church teaches me to look upon\n    these as unconscious members of the true, though to them unknown,\n    church.\u201d\n\n    \u201cOverberg, of whose rarely beautiful catechism thirty thousand\n    copies have been sold, especially for schools and children,\n    expresses himself very pleasingly on this subject. No\n    well-instructed Catholic has any objection to make to this, but even\n    no half-taught Catholic can, on the other hand, mistake other altars\n    for that altar of sacrifice which Malachi prophesied of, and will\n    hold all other altars only for such as they really are.... Among\n    unlearned Protestants (and, as I said before, among a few learned\n    ones) there are very many whom the spirit of Protestantism as such\n    has not touched, who have never been disturbed, because they have\n    found in Holy Scripture a full rest and contentment, and lean with\n    heartfelt love on Jesus Christ, doing for love of him all they do,\n    in fullest confidence, and what flesh and blood would never teach\n    them to do. Plants that bear such fruit as this I can only hold to\n    come from roots watered by the Heavenly Father himself. You believe\n    [he is addressing Sulzer, of Constance] that the number of such\n    souls is small; and such a belief grieves me, for I think that it\n    drives many away and discourages them. And, indeed, such hard\n    suppositions as you make and insist upon having categorically\n    answered lead to embittering results. I speak from experience. For\n    seven years did I seek for truth with an upright heart, after God\n    first put it into my heart to seek. After seven years\u2019 search was I\n    led, through circumstances that God overruled, to know and confess\n    the truth. Others have sought longer and more anxiously, and have\n    not found what I did, but they serve God in the simplicity of their\n    hearts better than I do, and will assuredly find the truth in the\n    kingdom of light and truth....\u201d\n\n    \u201cYou see,\u201d he says to his brother, \u201cthat I am not intolerant. But I\n    hope to God that I shall never be tolerant in the _newest sense_ of\n    the word\u2014that is, indifferent, lukewarm, fit to be spat out of the\n    mouth of Jesus Christ.\u201d... \u201cDo not let,\u201d he says to his son Caius at\n    G\u00f6ttingen University, \u201cyourself be led away from the rock-founded\n    church by the many good and worthy Protestants you meet. Among all\n    in error are many who are individually children of God, but they\n    have no church, no sacrifice, no priesthood, no Eucharist. The\n    helter-skelter union of both Protestant bodies (the Lutheran and the\n    Calvinist) must give serious scandal to the earnest souls in both,\n    and will, I hope, lead many into our church.\u201d\n\nOf the difference between feeling and truth he says:\n\n    \u201cCertain sensations may be real to one person and unreal to another.\n    Not so with facts and doctrine. It is the peculiar character of the\n    true religion that as it must be the same in all ages, so must every\n    man be equally able to understand and embrace it.... I could not\n    believe in a true religion which it would not be possible for every\n    human being to believe in.... He leads some through rough paths,\n    others through smooth ones; some towards truth, some through error.\n    The way of error, _as such_, is not His way, although he is always\n    ready to unfold the truth, to be beforehand with, and to meet half\n    way, the upright soul who in all simplicity holds an erring belief.\u201d\n\nIndeed, in Stolberg\u2019s experience, the difference between lukewarm and\nconscientious Protestants was fully shown; for the former reviled him\nfor his change of religion, while the latter approved of his following\nwhat he looked upon as truth. Other misconceptions of Catholic doctrine\nhe also combated, and greatly enlightened many of his friends on the\nCatholic belief in the justifying merits of Christ. Holy Scripture was a\nsource from which he considered spiritual light to come, but, as he\nobserved, \u201cthe learned have not yet been able to see that the healthy\neye, like the concave mirror, gathers into one point all the scattered\nrays, while _they_ split and split until the last particle of light is\nlost in shadow.\u201d Elsewhere he says:\n\n    \u201cHe who is careless of Holy Writ is careless of the life of the\n    soul, and he is happy if he becomes conscious, were it only now and\n    then, of the fact that the world, whether with its pleasures or its\n    wisdom, offers him nothing but what is poisonous to the immortal\n    spirit.\u201d\n\nHis advice to his son Ernest, who left home in 1803 to join the Austrian\narmy, is full of the true Christian spirit. He recommends him to\npractise every virtue that would make a man perfect, and goes into many\ndetails which, of course, we cannot follow here, but this sentence is\nalmost a compendium of the whole:\n\n    \u201cA true Christian cannot find true freedom nor true unsolicitude but\n    in the possession of a good conscience. Where the conscience is\n    tender and watchful it watches alike over every act; and the more we\n    pay attention to it, so much the more does it become,\n    notwithstanding the violence it at first does to nature, a principle\n    of our life which puts us in harmony with ourselves, and therefore\n    makes us truly free.\u201d\n\nElsewhere he says, speaking to another youth, a friend of his sons:\n\n    \u201cLassitude and a want of courage increase the strength of the enemy;\n    and discontent concerning the post to which God has appointed us is\n    unseemly in any brave man, much more in a foremost fighter. Not the\n    wish that 'everything were otherwise,\u2019 but the resolve always to act\n    well and bravely\u2014or, as Holy Writ says, 'to walk before God and be\n    perfect\u2019\u2014can make men of us. That wish unnerves us; this resolve\n    strengthens us and gives us a might which remains with the weapons\n    of the fighter even on the other side of the grave. He who has done\n    and suffered much does not dream of soiling his crown with tears,\n    while he who has as yet found no opportunity of doing or suffering\n    has still less a right to weep.\u201d\n\nThe melancholy which the French have aptly called \u201c_la maladie du\nsi\u00e8cle_\u201d[89] was abhorrent to Stolberg\u2014that unmanliness and cowardice of\nmind which became fashionable through the writings of atheists, and\nwhich in many phases has spread itself into our present literature as\nwell as our practice. He also writes concerning the same thing:\n\nFootnote 89:\n\n  The disease of the age.\n\n    \u201cEvery human being has his own history to work out, and that this\n    should be thoroughly done does not depend upon the amount of talent\n    he has, but upon the will which few bring to it unconditionally and\n    in a cheerful spirit.\u201d\n\nStolberg was of a healthier school and generation; he did not see the\nbeauty and sentiment and romance of passion running riot, misunderstood\nnatures, morbid hearts, vain strivings, and all the paraphernalia of a\nmoral sick-bed. For instance, the baneful and unreal excitements of the\ntheatre were very dangerous in his eyes, and the evil custom which even\ngood and well-meaning people fell into of countenancing private\ntheatricals, and letting even their young children take part in them,\nwas a great sorrow to him. One of the evils he deprecated was the\nrousing of a false sympathy with imaginary woes, which ended by\nundermining true sympathy with our neighbor\u2019s actual troubles; another,\nthe vanity which play-acting fostered in young people, and the\nexcitement which rendered them unfit for serious study and work. It also\ndestroys the simplicity of the soul and that modesty which is the chief\nadornment of young souls, especially of a girl\u2019s soul.\n\n    \u201cYoung girls,\u201d he says, \u201cwhen they have once overcome their shyness,\n    long after the same excitement, and are always wishing to be playing\n    a part. The truthfulness of their nature is soon lost; seeming\n    overcomes being, every acted feeling destroys real feeling; the\n    heart becomes cold for reality, and is only to be aroused by\n    supposed passion.\u201d\n\nPublic theatricals he looked upon as equally dangerous, and even wrote\nagainst them, praising Geneva for having, until it became French,\nrefused to allow the erection of a theatre within the limits of its\nterritory. \u201cThe special charm of the stage,\u201d he says, \u201clies in its\nflattery of our lusts, our vanity, and our laziness.\u201d We have often\nheard fine theories advanced as to the mission and morality of the\ndrama, but as long as practice belies these theories it is impossible to\nlook upon them otherwise than as a well-meaning Utopia. Stolberg saw the\nreal harm done, and not the imaginary good which some high-minded and\nexceptional artists would fain do.\n\nThe atheistical and deist philosophy of the eighteenth century and early\npart of the nineteenth were naturally repugnant to such an upright mind\nas Stolberg. He hated the wilful groping in the dark after a truth which\nthe \u201cphilosophers\u201d might have found in the Gospels, had they had the\nfairness to admit these on an equality, at least, with other so-called\n\u201cproofs.\u201d He called Steffen and Schleiermacher at Halle the \u201cnew\nGnostics,\u201d and compared their systems to the vain effort of the fabled\nDanaides to pour the ocean through a sieve.\n\n    \u201cThe name of Gnostics sounds ominous,\u201d he says, \u201cand brings to mind\n    the Gnostics of the first centuries, with many of whose beliefs,\n    indeed, the wisdom of our newest sages astonishingly coincides.\n    Under their treatment even realities dissolve themselves in shadow,\n    while they give to shadows the form and appearance of realities.\u201d\n\nJacobi was at that time a very prominent leader of philosophy in\nGermany, and Stolberg mentions him many times in his correspondence with\nvarious persons, evidently as a representative man. At one time this\nteacher, the friend of Goethe, a sort of Medici among his disciples near\nD\u00fcsseldorf, where he had a beautiful house, and still more beautiful\ngarden\u2014now the property of the town and the appropriate scene of\nartists\u2019 banquets and popular _f\u00eates_\u2014confessed himself, in the midst of\nhis philosophy, \u201ca very beggar\u201d in the true learning of the Spirit.\nStolberg often alluded to this, and, when the master\u2019s pride had long\ndistanced the frame of mind in which this acknowledgment had been made,\nwrote of him: \u201cPoor Jacobi! he was richer indeed when he called himself\npoor as 'a beggar.\u2019\u201d In 1812 he writes:\n\n    \u201cI have just read Jacobi\u2019s last pamphlet. The one before the last\n    _On a Wise Saying of Lichtenberg_, seems to me in the highest degree\n    satisfactory. That on _The Recension_ (Jacobi cannot help putting\n    odd and often trivial titles to his works) has also excellent\n    points, but the whole seems to me loose, and a windy toying with\n    views which he borrows from Christianity, the whole system of which,\n    however, he, as far as in him, the puny mortal, lies, seeks to\n    weaken and annihilate. While he praises the god-like Plato, he seems\n    to forget that this philosopher, or rather Socrates in his platonic\n    _Ph\u00e6drus_, evidently longs, as a hart after the fountains of waters,\n    for a god-given revelation whose very possibility itself Jacobi, on\n    the contrary, strives to reason away.\u201d\n\nSchelling\u2019s answer to Jacobi, however, equally displeased Stolberg, and\nhe accuses him of making Jacobi appear, \u201cthrough certain wiles of\nspeech, now an atheist, now a fanatical dreamer,\u201d and of taking credit\nto himself for\n\n    \u201cHaving been the first clearly to prove the existence of God. His\n    God has been from all eternity the greatest Force, which contained\n    within itself, _in potentia_, but not _in actu_, that goodness and\n    wisdom which it developed in later ages. He falls thus into Count\n    Schmettau\u2019s error, of a god who has raised himself from a lower\n    state to the highest, which theory one might compare with the career\n    of a field-marshal who has risen by degrees from the ranks....\n    Evidently Schelling is a man of much mind, but of overweening\n    vanity. He speaks of Christianity with respect, and probably\n    believes in the divine mission of Christ, whose system, however, it\n    was reserved for him\u2014Schelling\u2014fully to explain. He sent this paper\n    of his to Perthes (Stolberg\u2019s publisher), and told him he wished me\n    to read it, and that I should then have quite another idea of what\n    his philosophy was, and discover that he did not hold the views I\n    attributed to him.\u201d\n\nAt another time he writes:\n\n    \u201cThe deplorable frivolity of these times is one of their worst\n    signs. I find it the saddest of all. Would that one could hope,\n\n        \u201cWhen the hurly-burly\u2019s done,\n        When the night is past and gone,\u201d\n\n    that things would come right again. But moral nights are not as\n    physical ones. The latter bring us dreams which the dawn of day\n    dispels. The moral nights are full of the feverish dreams of\n    mankind, and they have no certain limit as to time. They go\n    _crescendo_ from error to folly, until the awakening at the end of a\n    completed, comet-like course of misery.\u201d\n\nWe have mentioned Stolberg\u2019s warm love of his country. Prince Francis\nF\u00fcrstenberg said of him during the time of the humbling of Germany under\nthe yoke of Napoleon: \u201cI know, and have known in my long life, many of\nthe noblest men in the nation, but I saw none surpass Stolberg in\ngenuine love for the Fatherland. His German and imperial heart is pure\nas gold and shines like a diamond.\u201d The epithet imperial sounds odd to\nour ears; it is an allusion to his belief that the Empire of Germany,\nsuch as it existed just before the Congress of Vienna, was the proper\nrepresentative and bulwark of the nation. He blamed the Emperor Francis\nvery strongly for laying down his time-honored dignity later on, and\ncontenting himself with a local title which severed his interests\nmaterially from those of Germany at large. He also saw in this\nwithdrawal of imperial authority and protection over non-Austrian\ncountries a danger to the Catholic faith, and a possible interference of\nProtestant powers in the communications between Catholic German states\nand the Holy See. But concerning the ever-vexed question of the Rhine\nfrontier his patriotism was quick and hot; he wished that in the new\npartition at the Congress Alsace and Lorraine should be given back to\nGermany, and lamented the injudicious behavior by which some of the\nGerman troops had spoilt the evidently favorable state of mind of the\nAlsatians during part of the disturbances on the frontier.\n\n    \u201cEighteen months ago,\u201d he writes in 1815, \u201cthe Alsatians were very\n    well disposed, came to meet our troops with flags and received them\n    with ringing of joy-bells; then came the Bavarians, the Badeners,\n    and so on, and behaved so as to make them hate us. We all talk of\n    our wish to reunite our once torn-away brethren with Germany, but we\n    have angered them instead and are burning their towns and villages.\n    My hair stands on end and I could weep tears of blood at the\n    thought.\u201d\n\nEarly in the century, a few weeks after his conversion, Stolberg wrote\nthus to Princess Gallitzin:\n\n    \u201cTrue patriotism embraces the highest good of the people in all\n    things: the blessings of faith, those of law, of freedom, and of\n    morals. It can never follow the path of forcible overthrows and of\n    revolution, nor covenant with an outside enemy, nor lend itself to\n    the service of injustice, even when a seeming and momentary\n    advantage is to be gained by such service. What a disgrace for us\n    Germans is the Franco-mania that reigns among us\u2014the cap-in-hand\n    alliance with the Corsican adventurer, who is spreading horror and\n    desolation among us and knows no right but that of the sword. What\n    undermines all our strength, and will sink us even lower and lower,\n    is not only the jealousy and spirit of aggrandizement current among\n    the German states against the empire and the emperor, the fawning on\n    the French with the hope of getting their help to win new slices of\n    territory, but far more the weakened character of the whole people,\n    and their want of moral energy and good feeling\u2014the result of the\n    unbelieving philosophy and immoral literature that have unnerved the\n    nation.\u201d\n\nJust as impartially he condemned in after-years, when German patriotism\nhad spread with a sudden rush from the field into literature, the\n\u201ccoarse Teutonism\u201d which rejected every refinement of foreign origin,\nmaligned every foreign custom, and made patriotism ridiculous by\nenjoining upon it to be no less than rabid. He then defended all that\nwas reasonable and applicable to German life, all the praise-worthy\ncustoms, books, and improvements that fashion had turned suddenly\nagainst. He had earned a good right to be independent; for four of his\nsons fought in the different German armies that overwhelmed Napoleon\nafter the retreat from Moscow, and one, his son Christian, a brave boy\nof eighteen, died at the battle of Ligny. His two sons-in-law also,\nfathers of large families of young children, were in the national army,\nand the greatest enthusiasm was felt by all the members of the family,\nold and young, for the cause which Stolberg called \u201cours, God\u2019s,\nEurope\u2019s, mankind\u2019s, and the right\u2019s.\u201d\n\nIn 1815 he wrote: \u201cTrue German feeling it is to welcome all that is\nnoble and good, out of all ages and nations, as our own. Every one now,\nwith narrow minds, is Nibelungen-mad, barbaric-mad\u201d; and concerning his\n_Life of Alfred_ he says:\n\n    \u201cAlfred belongs to us, and therefore do I wish to hold him up to the\n    veneration and imitation, and for the teaching, of my children. But\n    not only do Alfred and his people belong to us; we should also make\n    our own all that is great and noble in the life of all nations, yet\n    without losing thereby our own individuality.\u201d\n\nIn 1805 the decree freeing the serfs in the Duchy of Holstein went into\neffect, and Stolberg congratulates his brother Christian on this happy\nevent; naturally, the greater event of the abolition of negro slavery in\nthe British West Indies was a great joy to him, and he rejoiced the more\nthat the _Illuminati_, his special aversion, lost thereby their best\nweapon against England, and that the French Declaration of the Rights of\nMan could be unfavorably compared with the English constitution, on\naccount of a contradictory law, at that time still in force, forbidding\nthe liberation of the negroes in French colonies to be even mentioned\nbefore the legislature. The alliances, dictated by fear or by interest,\nof German sovereigns with Napoleon were a subject of great grief and\nindignation to him, and he looked upon England with almost exaggerated\nadmiration because she withstood the conqueror. He said \u201cPitt would save\nEngland against Europe\u2019s will,\u201d and his confidence in the general policy\nof the English statesman was unbounded. He had, too, a kind of\nhistorical admiration, if we may so call it, for the English form of\ngovernment, which alone he thought proper for freedom, but which he did\nnot believe fit for the wants of every nation, indiscriminately, on the\nContinent. It strikes us, however, that the fact of the English\nconstitution, in its then state, being nearly a hundred and fifty years\nold had somewhat blinded his mind to the facts\u2014according to his theory,\nrather suspicious, to say the least\u2014of the change of dynasty in 1688;\nfor the Stuarts in England were surely as legitimate sovereigns, from\nhis point of view, as the Bourbons in France, whose least advances, in\nthe person of Louis XVIII., towards the modern spirit so incensed and\ndisgusted Stolberg; and when he said that \u201cEngland alone stood in the\nbreach\u201d against Napoleon, he forgot that she considered it her interest\nto withstand him, and that a deeply-rooted prejudice egged on the nation\nagainst him. If he had seen anything of the unreasoning panic which the\nthreatened invasion caused among the English, he would have been less\nready to jest at the falling through of the scheme, which he called \u201can\nexpedition to gather mussels along the British shores.\u201d It has often\nbeen so, we think, among Continental statesmen and thinkers: they look\nupon England with exceptionally favorable eyes and weigh her doings in\nspecial balances, forgetting the lawless and riotous disturbances that\nshe experienced earlier than other countries, after which she settled\ninto the solid, steady, conservative, law-abiding, slow-to-be-moved\nnation which she had been for over a hundred years when the French\nRevolution suddenly broke out. Stolberg, much as he praised England,\nalmost refused to see any good in the chaos of new ideas that were\nseething pell-mell together; he saw nothing but the evident godlessness,\nselfishness, pride, and cruelty which marked that era; and, indeed, he,\nthe man of another age, the lover of a lofty ideal which we shall\nmention presently\u2014the man who said that \u201call politics hinged on the\nFourth Commandment\u201d\u2014could hardly be expected to allow that out of such\nconfusion God could glean anything worthy of being offered to himself.\n\nStolberg often called Germany the \u201cheart of Europe,\u201d and wrote an ode\nwith that title; but he would not allow with the innovators that the\n\u201cphilosophy\u201d of the age was the true source of the influence his country\nshould have on the Continent. Allied to this false idea of many Germans\nwas the affected custom, in the early part of the century, of using the\nFrench language instead of the mother-tongue, even in the nearest\ndomestic intercourse\u2014a fault which the Russians also fell into, but\nwhich at present they have seen the folly of and have nearly\nsuccessfully remedied. Stolberg heartily hated and despised this foreign\nintrusion into German home-life.\n\n    \u201cEven in my younger days,\u201d he says with scorn, \u201cI can remember\n    hearing of a gifted German girl being reproached by German women\n    with being 'affected\u2019 enough to write 'German\u2019 letters.... Germans\n    now write to each other, brother to brother, husband to wife, in\n    French.... Is that not to estrange one\u2019s self from one\u2019s nearest and\n    dearest? nay, even from one\u2019s self?\u201d\n\nHis relations and correspondence with well-known people of his day\nfurnish us with his opinions on many of the writers, _savants_,\nstatesmen, and philosophers, the reigning and rising public men. Of the\nhistorian Johann M\u00fcller he says:\n\n    \u201cNo one ever seized the true spirit of history so early in life as\n    he did.... His life is very interesting; it is true he showed a good\n    deal of vanity, but also so much cheerful good-humor that one does\n    not feel inclined to be hard upon him for the former. His plan of\n    study, as he arranged it for himself, and the scrupulous way in\n    which he followed it out, seem to me truly noteworthy.... What a\n    comprehensive spirit, what feeling and sympathy for the true, the\n    good, and the beautiful! How early, too, he broke loose from the\n    unwisdom of the philosophy of the times, and how deep a religious\n    spirit remained firm in him in the midst of many disturbances, since\n    he so clearly understood the history of the world by the light of\n    that Providence whose finger he was always tracing in it! He once\n    said very beautifully that Christ was the key to the world s\n    history.\u201d\n\nIn 1807 he gives the following opinion of Alexander von Humboldt:\n\n    \u201cI know Humboldt personally. He has much understanding, much\n    liveliness, much industry. But is he not inclined to be too much\n    enslaved by the German _\u00e0 priori_ tendency and by a love of the\n    scientific form? Is he strong enough not to let himself be carried\n    away by the method of modern criticism, which tends to violent\n    disruption from all that has gone before, instead of tracing out the\n    great analogies on the path of simple observation? Is he _quite_\n    free from a delicate and imperceptible charlatanism? Years may have\n    matured him, but such maturing seldom takes place when the quick\n    strides of science make it difficult for wisdom to keep up with\n    her.\u201d\n\nOf Frederick Schlegel\u2019s poetry, and that of others in the\n_Dichtergarten_ (or \u201cPoet\u2019s Garden,\u201d a collection of fugitive songs by\nvarious poets), he writes:\n\n    \u201cThe rarer and the more beautiful is the noble, religious spirit\n    that breathes through the _Poet\u2019s Garden_, the more do I wish that\n    its authors might put forth all their strength. And so it would be,\n    if it were not for a particular theory which lies at the bottom of\n    the poetry\u2014a theory whose foundation I do not know, but whose\n    evident peculiarity strikes the eye, bewilders the reader, forces\n    the Muse, and in its purposed negligence of language goes so far as\n    even to disfigure it. The Muse craves freedom above all things, if\n    she is to express what comes from the innermost of our heart or our\n    mind. Every trace of art lames poetry, and theory often misleads,\n    because it is born of human philosophy, while poetry is something\n    divine. Therefore poets always succeed best in rhythm where the\n    inspiration is great and noble, and the quickly-passing images,\n    thoughts, sensations only group themselves well and naturally when\n    they are conjured up by an infallible, all-subduing inspiration,\n    without the poet knowing how it happens.\u201d\n\nOf Niebuhr\u2019s Roman history he writes, in 1812\u2014not, perhaps, in the sense\nthat most of the readers of that work will endorse:\n\n    \u201cI marvel at the deep learning, and often at the penetration, of our\n    friend; but who will read him? What a bulwark of tedious researches,\n    the result of which is often nothing more than a learned outwork! It\n    is strange that, with this fault of historical pedantry, he could\n    not avoid the contrary one of reasoning _\u00e0 priori_, so common to the\n    German professors. There is much understanding in the book, and in a\n    few places one is pleasantly surprised at its spirit; but this\n    spirit is neither _a joyful nor a certain one_. He fails in\n    simplicity. From this springs his heavy style, despite his choice\n    use of words. He is too forward in making hypotheses and foregone\n    conclusions; for instance, his open partisanship with the plebeians\n    leads him to make false and hasty judgments. His pragmatical\n    tendency makes him unjust even to Livy, and he has no appreciation\n    of the noble amiability of Plutarch. Yet, with all these faults, he\n    must ever remain a valuable historian\u2014not a star of the first\n    magnitude, but still too good to be a mere _famulus_,[90] to gather\n    material for great historians. Among other things, he lacks the art\n    of managing his style so as to appear to be led by it and yet to\n    make it convey exactly what the writer pleases. But concerning his\n    principles, some of which, however, I do not endorse, his conscience\n    always appears as it is, noble and tender, while his love of truth\n    follows him even on his hobby\u2014hypothesis.\u201d\n\nFootnote 90:\n\n  Servant; meaning here a second-rate chronicler.\n\nIt may be interesting to give the opinion of some of the same men on\nStolberg himself as a historian and writer. The _History of Religion_,\nwhich was his great work, and which he mainly attributed to the\nsuggestion, encouragement, and interest of Princess Gallitzin, became a\ntopic of discussion and interest all through Germany. Many were brought\nby it to the Catholic Church, and of these most wrote to him first,\nasking advice and making confidences, before they read further or asked\ninstructions from a priest. It was a source of deep thankfulness to him\nthat he had thus been the means of making others share in the same\nblessings and peace which he had won through the grace and leading of\nGod. But his _History_ was no controversial work; it was very\ncomprehensive, and embraced the whole subject of true religion from the\nbeginning of the world, tracing the connection between Judaism and\nChristianity; the fulfilment of the prophecies in Christ; the spirit of\naloofness from the world, first symbolized in the national exclusiveness\nof the Hebrews, and then proved in the persecutions under the Roman\nemperors in the struggle between Christianity and heathendom; and,\nlastly, the gradual, onward sway which the truth at last won over error,\nand which, speaking in a certain sense, culminated in the conversion of\nConstantine. Here Stolberg ended his history, feeling that his life\nwould not be spared much longer, and that he had done his work, so far\nas he felt called upon by God to witness to the truth that was in him.\nThe unhappy struggles, rents, and abuses of later church history he left\nuntouched; surely there were counterparts to them in earlier days, but\nno such embittering could come from a relation of the old heresies and\ndivisions as would have sprung from even the most impartial discussion\nof recent and more local ones. Schlegel took the greatest interest in\nthis work, and of the least important part he spoke thus admiringly:\n\n    \u201cI am especially delighted at the strength and simple beauty of your\n    style; whoso compares it with what is called nowadays the art of\n    representing things will easily discover where is to be found the\n    true source of even this beauty.\u201d\n\nAgain, of the second part of the history (it was divided into fifteen\nparts) he says:\n\n    \u201cI found myself much steadied and strengthened by the whole, and\n    particularly enlightened by the exposition on the Hebrew belief in\n    the immortality of the soul and on the Mosaic code. May you in the\n    future of your work, as often as opportunity allows, return to and\n    dwell upon the immortality of the soul. It seems to me the path by\n    which mankind at present can best be led towards truth, better than\n    by any other teaching regarding the Godhead.\u201d\n\nHe then says that pantheism and a vague sentimentality had perverted\neverything distinctly Christian into an empty shadow-form, but that few\nwere so absolutely dead to all higher feeling as not to distinguish\nbetween the \u201creal personal immortality, and the mere metaphysical image\nof it, without a hereafter, and without a continuance of the memory.\u201d\n\n    \u201cBring vividly before them the true personal immortality, and you\n    will often find those whom you had thought most spiritually dead and\n    careless to be palpably roused. To me the doctrine of the Trinity is\n    the central point of Christianity, and therefore the foundation and\n    source of all my convictions, views, and aspirations.... The\n    unfolding and representation of this secret of love (the Trinity) I\n    have found to permeate every doctrine, principle, and even custom or\n    rubric of the Catholic Church; although even in her pale many good\n    individuals are less impressed with the divine spirit of the whole\n    than with some one or other literal regulation.\u201d\n\nJohann von M\u00fcller wrote thus of Stolberg\u2019s work:\n\n    \u201cIt is not a lukewarm, sham impartial church history, in which one\n    is uncertain what relation it bears to Jesus of Nazareth, but the\n    work of a man who knows what he believes, and would fain move all\n    men to believe as he does. Not a church history critically weighing\n    the Messiahship of Jesus from the Old Testament against his Godhead\n    from the New, but the work of a man who sees everywhere and at all\n    times Him who was and is, and is to come, and to whom all power is\n    given in heaven and on earth. Lastly, it is not a worldly\n    representation of the deceits and time-serving devices through which\n    Christianity crept into the world, and is still able to maintain\n    herself, the humble handmaid of statecraft, in these our enlightened\n    times, but the confession and outpouring of soul of a man to whom\n    the whole world is nothing in comparison with the Saviour of the\n    world. Of the latter he speaks so that whoever loves him must love\n    this book, and he who knows nothing of him will learn from this book\n    what Christians possess in him. Therefore, reader, if thou art a\n    reed, driven before the learned wind of our modern writings, look to\n    this rock, and see if it has not a foundation in the needs of\n    mankind and the love of the Godhead; and thou who knowest not\n    Christianity, come and see _what it is_, as thy forefathers felt it,\n    as it is yet, mighty in every childlike heart; and thou who\n    believest, come hear, and enjoy, and rejoice thy heart with the word\n    of life.\u201d\n\nClaudius spoke of the book being read by thousands, and of its\n\u201cundoubted influence in strengthening the Christian faith among the\nGerman people.\u201d A person in comparatively private life, Major B\u00fclow, a\nstanch Bible man, said that Stolberg\u2019s _History of Religion_ had been a\n\u201cwelcome surprise to him, although the style was not always clear to his\nunderstanding, and he was only fearful lest the author should not live\nlong enough to finish it.\u201d\n\nJoseph de Maistre spoke thus of the work in his _Recueil de Lettres_, p.\n23:\n\n    \u201cNew researches and discoveries, and the progress of the art of\n    tracing all up to the first sources, may correct or supplement much\n    in his history, may bring a new light to bear on many of his\n    opinions\u2014for the work, in spite of its foundation on, and\n    buttressing by, much study of a high order, is not meant to be an\n    exhaustive scientific work; but I doubt if any, in our century at\n    least, will surpass the author of this history in pure love of God\n    and mankind, love to Christ and his church, and in pure and truly\n    creative spirit. How striking also are his observations on the\n    circumstances of our time, his opinion on the persecution of the\n    church by the spirit of this world, on false teachers, on the\n    marriage tie, and the sanctity of oaths, and many like things!\u201d\n\nStolberg was rejoiced by these commendations, but more encouraged than\nrejoiced. Mere vanity was far from him; he thanked God that he had been\nable to supply \u201cwhat these oft-repeated praises of good and\nsingle-minded men proved to him to have been really a want.\u201d\n\nThe ideal which we have alluded to, and which was a great characteristic\nof Stolberg\u2019s mind, was that of the mission and duties of an\naristocracy. He believed that, in the abstract, the existence and\nallowed influence of such a class was an instinct inborn in man, and\nthat it was only when the aristocracy was false to its own principles\nthat the people could grow antagonistic to it. His theories on the\nsubject were beautiful, noble, poetic, but in his time there had been so\nmuch evil practice that such theories were nearly swamped under it. It\nwas natural to his character, however, to lean more on the theory than\nthe practice, and to consider the latter an excrescence and abuse which\nmight be done away with, and the ideal thereby reinstated in its first\ndignity. At first sight his theory seems simply a feudal, medi\u00e6val,\nromantic one, the dream of a man proud of his own order, and nursed in\nprejudices such as no change in political relations _de facto_ could\nuproot but if we look closer into it, it becomes a very different and\nfar more worthy thing\u2014namely, a belief in the essence of chivalry, a\nstandard of conduct such as King Arthur\u2019s, a translation into altered\nforms and circumstances of the Gospel rules of charity, courtesy, and\npatience. Here are some of his own sayings on the subject, on which he\nreasoned in a way so far removed from either fanaticism or vanity that\nwe place his explanations here as something wholly special to himself,\nand quite different from the ordinary rhapsodies about the necessity of\nvarious grades of classes:\n\n    \u201cThe ideal of the aristocracy[91] is not weakened through the\n    unworthiness of many who are of noble birth. On the contrary, the\n    just scorn which follows these men redounds to the honor of their\n    class, of which one cannot become unworthy without being despised by\n    all. Nature gives the aristocracy neither more understanding nor\n    more physical strength than she does to other classes; it takes its\n    worth wholly from an ideal, but not a mistaken ideal. This, like all\n    that is great in mankind, is founded upon the sacrifice of all that\n    is lower for the sake of attaining the highest.\n\nFootnote 91:\n\n      _Adel_, nobility, from _edel_, noble, our Saxon _Ethel_ and\n      _Atheling_. The word is here translated by aristocracy rather than\n      nobility\u2014the former being a word of wider signification, and\n      embracing the class of untitled gentlemen (which of course\n      Stolberg included), as well as that of strictly so-called\n      noblemen.\n\n    \u201cThe aristocracy must give up every mercantile and lower traffic.\n    Three things were entrusted to its keeping\u2014agriculture, of which\n    kings have not been ashamed, statesmanship, and the defence of the\n    Fatherland.\n\n    \u201cAs an ennobled countryman the aristocrat can pursue the most\n    necessary, the oldest, and the most innocent work with better\n    results than the peasant, because he has more means, more insight,\n    and can better afford the danger of an occasional failure. His\n    experience and example teach and encourage the common countryman,\n    whom it is the beautiful and holy duty of the nobleman to enlighten\n    and to protect, and whose well-being, morals, and temporal and\n    eternal good it is his duty to further by every means in his power.\n    This business is one which, if he wishes to be respected as a\n    nobleman, he has no right to evade or neglect; except temporarily,\n    if he is chosen as a representative of his province\u2014a business to\n    which he has also a special call as a citizen of the state. He must\n    and ought, however, to take part in the government, even if he be\n    not chosen by his province; and either as a magistrate or only as a\n    land-owner he can take a prominent part in it. The defence of his\n    country devolves upon no one so strongly as upon the nobleman. This\n    is a worthy and beautiful duty of knighthood. It is well for that\n    state where the aristocracy, as such, is called to the defence of\n    the Fatherland as leaders of their own country people, whose patrons\n    they are in times of peace, whose heads, judges, mediators, example,\n    and benefactors they should be at all times. The old, fair relations\n    have been rent by false representations, but they are not\n    effaced.... The aristocracy has an inner worth, no matter how\n    unworthy are many of its members. Neither royal nor priestly\n    anointing can preserve from moral corruption! Of how much less avail\n    are mere human, outward means to preserve the spiritual existence!\n    Indeed, they often soil it. Let every one who is of knightly\n    standing strive to prove by his actions that the ideal of knighthood\n    lives in him, in noble simplicity, in courteous behavior, in quick\n    willingness to give blood and lands for the Fatherland. His example\n    will not remain without fruit. He will be far from looking upon\n    certain virtues as virtues of his condition, and neglecting to\n    practise others or superciliously leave them to other classes. If we\n    hold fast to our knightly calling, the essence of knighthood will\n    remain to us. The shell of the thing renews itself from time to\n    time.... Whatever is worthy of respect in knighthood has come from\n    self-sacrifice.... In order to keep pace with the century, the\n    nobleman must be the equal of the citizen in knowledge, whenever the\n    two meet in the same field. If he neglects this, he will see the\n    burgher reigning as a cabinet minister and himself reduced to the\n    _honor_ of waiting in the king\u2019s ante-chamber by virtue of his\n    birth. And even in war, the knight\u2019s proper field, how can the\n    nobleman boast of his superiority to one who knows more than he does\n    of the science of war? If the knight covets intellectual\n    superiority, he must not seek it in emulation so much as in brave\n    and silent self-sacrifice. The life of his fathers must teach his\n    heart this lesson: _Be worthy of thy fathers, whether the world\n    acknowledge thy worth or no.[92]_ A thirst after approbation does\n    not behove a knight, but steady reliance on his strength and his\n    intentions.... The present hatred of the aristocracy is a fever\n    which will soon be spent.... It remains for us, each in his own\n    circle, to maintain a lofty ideal and to spread it abroad\u2014that is, a\n    true spirit of religion and that spirit of brave self-denial, of\n    earnest courage, and discreet worth which should mark the\n    aristocracy\u2014and at the same time to encourage among ourselves a\n    desire not to be behindhand in such knowledge and in such strivings\n    as elevate the heart, adorn the mind, and make us fitter for the\n    callings that specially beseem us.\u201d\n\nFootnote 92:\n\n  The italics are ours.\n\nIt will be readily understood from the foregoing quotations that\nStolberg had not much sympathy with a scheme which some German noblemen\nhad started\u2014that of a new knight-union or society. He deprecated the\npublicity such a step would necessarily bring upon them, and saw in it\nonly a hollow, childish plan of defiance, a foolish revival of old\ncustoms as powerless in practice as a return to the weapons of the\nancient knights, a protest against firearms and the altered arts of\nwarfare. His enthusiasm was always dignified and reasonable; it had no\ntouch of sentimentality and \u201cplaying at\u201d things. To the last his\ncharacter remained the same. Forgiving and temperate as regarded any\nwrong done personally to him, he could not brook the distortion of\ntruth, and was in the act of replying to a libellous pamphlet of Voss,\nof Heidelberg, destined to spread among the public distrust of\nStolberg\u2019s sincerity in his conversion, when his last sickness overtook\nhim. He had just finished the _Life of St. Vincent of Paul_, which he\nhad written instead of the autobiography that his friends strongly urged\nhim to write. He had objected that he felt no call from God to do so,\nand that, unless one wrote with the view of God\u2019s call, vanity and self\nwere too apt to become the leading motive in the work. He commended St.\nAugustine\u2019s _Confessions_ because they were evidently inspired by love\nof God\u2019s honor only, and a monument of thankfulness to the One who\ncalled such a sinner to repentance. In St. Vincent he saw a man of\nmodern times whom one could hold up as a model not too exalted and\nextraordinary, yet thoroughly humble, perfect, and holy, to men of his\nand future generations.\n\nStolberg died December 5, 1819, at the age of seventy, at Sonderm\u00fchlen,\na country-house for which he had, four years before, exchanged his\nfavorite L\u00fctjenbeck, when French domination was in the ascendant and he\nhad become an object of suspicion to the French spies in M\u00fcnster.\n\nWhat his death was to his family can be easily imagined; it was hardly\nless to a large circle of friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who\nknew him only by name and by his works, but whose reliance on his\nadvice, example, and opinion had long been their best and surest\nstandard of duty.\n\n\n\n\n                     FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES.\n                         _A free translation._\n                           BY AUBREY DE VERE.\n\n\n[_The Chorus of Trojan Women lament their Captivity._]\n\nSTROPHE I.\n\n    Breeze of the ocean, fresh and free!\n      Whither, O whither wilt thou bear\n      The Exile, and her great despair?\n    Thou speed\u2019st, and I must speed with thee!\n    Say, must some Dorian haven be\n      The home of Troy\u2019s unhappy daughters?\n      O unbelov\u00e8d home!\u2014or where\n      The father of most lovely waters,\n      Apidanus, goes winding by\n      The fruitful meads of Thessaly?\n\n\nANTISTROPHE I.\n\n    Or 'mid those isles of old renown,\n      Haply bright Delos\u2019 sea-born glades,\n          Where deathless palms and laurels spread\n          Above their own Latona\u2019s head\n        Green boughs (commemoration holy\n          Of that twin-birth that lit their gloom):\u2014\n          There must I weep a captive\u2019s doom?\n      There sing, with gladsome native maids,\n        Extorted song and melancholy\n          To Dian\u2019s silver bow and crown?\n\n\nSTROPHE II.\n\n    Perchance, a slave in Athens pining,\n      On tap\u2019stried walls these hands must trace\n        Minerva\u2019s awful steeds and car\n        Still radiant from the Ten Years\u2019 war;\n      Or blazon there the Titan race\n        Beneath the Thunderer\u2019s wrath oppressed,\n      And every godlike head declining\n        Upon the thunder-blasted breast.\n\n\nANTISTROPHE II.\n\n    Alas my people, and alas\n      My fathers, and my country\u2019s shore!\n    And thou, O Troy\u2014\u2019tis Fate\u2019s decree\u2014\n      Farewell! I see thy face no more!\n    Alas for thee, alas for me!\n      Above thy head the plough shall pass:\u2014\n    Worse fate is mine, o\u2019er ocean\u2019s wave,\n    The conqueror\u2019s plaything, and his slave.\n\n\n\n\n                       THE TRUE IRISH REVOLUTION.\n\n\nThe Irish people, albeit much given to intermittent spasms of\ninsurrection, are at present as peaceable, and apparently as contented,\nas the contending passions of local politicians and the intrigues of\nimperial statesmen will allow them to be. The constabulary, in their\nrifle-green and burnished accoutrements, continue to be the envy and\nterror of the unsophisticated peasant; the queen\u2019s writ runs\nunobstructed in the remotest parts of the island; \u201cthe castle still\nstands, though the senate\u2019s no more\u201d; and, save the sharp crack of a\nrifle at Dolly-mount or the more death-dealing fowling-piece of the\nsportsman, no warlike sound disturbs the quiet slumbers of the weary\nsentinel or the superserviceable stipendiary magistrate.\n\nAnd yet a revolution has been in progress in Ireland and in Irish\naffairs elsewhere for the last three-quarters of a century as beneficent\nin its effects and as tangible in its benefits as if blood had flowed in\ntorrents and the pure atmosphere from shore to centre of the land had\nbeen polluted by fumes of villainous saltpetre. We mean that within the\nmemory of men now living a radical though gradual change has taken place\nin the manners, habits, and tastes of the Irish people, but more\nparticularly in their literature, which after all is the best evidence\nof a nation\u2019s ability to think correctly and express accurately what\ntheir minds are capable of conceiving.\n\nLooking back to the condition of Ireland at the beginning of the\ncentury\u2014her domestic legislature annihilated and seven-eighths of her\npeople unrepresented in the imperial Parliament\u2014beyond broken relics and\ndim memories of a glorious past, it can be said truthfully that she had\nno literature whatever, or rather no literature save what was alien and\nhostile in tone and spirit. There were no native authors except those\nwho had earned pelf and unenviable notoriety by decrying Ireland\u2019s\nnationality, maligning her faith, and holding up to the contempt and\nridicule of the world the faults and foibles of her unlettered\npeasantry. But, even had there been men of a different character, they\ncould not have found either encouragement or patronage; for the mass of\nthe population, thanks to the Penal Laws, could not read English, and\none-half at least could not even speak it.\n\nThe consequence, therefore, was that every young Irishman who felt the\nspirit of literary ambition stir within him, as soon as he had attained\nmanhood, hastened to pack up his scanty wardrobe and turn his face\ntoward London\u2014then as now the great intellectual focus of the United\nKingdom. The pioneers of this movement were generally men little fitted\nto represent their country. They were merely adventurers, without\nprinciple or honor, facile and versatile, and in some instances even\neducated, but, from previous training and association, just such tools\nas Grubb Street publishers loved to handle and the lowest class of\nBritons delighted to patronize. They were the originators of the \u201cDenis\nBulgruddery\u201d and \u201cPaddiana\u201d school of so-called comic literature, and\nwere useless if they did not caricature in the grossest manner, on the\nstage and in the newspapers and periodicals, their Catholic\nfellow-countrymen. With them a priest was an ignorant and low-bred\ntyrant; the peasant his abject, superstitious slave. This worthless\nclass, while it did much to destroy the moral effect produced by men of\na preceding generation, like Goldsmith, Coleman, O\u2019Keefe, Sheridan,\nBurke, Barry, and other distinguished Irishmen, did more to instil into\nthe popular mind of England that utter misconception of Irish character\nand insensate hostility to the Catholic religion of which we find at the\npresent day such marked traces even among fairly intelligent men.\n\nThose mercenaries were followed by others of a higher order of intellect\nand of greater pretensions, of whom Crofton Croker and Sheridan Knowles\nmay be considered to have been the representatives. The drama, poetry,\nand prose fiction of every description employed their attention\nalternately, and in each they proved true to the baser instincts of\ntheir nature and the traditions of the faction whence they had sprung.\nThey were stanch no-popery men of the Orange stripe, and, having a\nProtestant, English audience to gratify, they were consistently and\nvirulently anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. When they wished to delineate\ntheir co-patriots, whether before the foot-lights or in the pages of\ncheap novels, they invariably divided them into two classes: the\nhigh-spirited, accomplished Protestant gentleman, and the low,\ngrovelling, ignorant papist. Thus for many years did they thrive on\nbigotry and fatten upon treason to the land that was unfortunate enough\nto have given them birth. It was only natural that England should have\nviewed with complacency the caricatures of a faith she had so long and\nso strenuously proscribed, and a people whom she had robbed of the last\nvestige of independence; but it is humiliating to reflect that the works\nof such libellers were up to a recent period popular in Ireland, and\nthat their comedies and farces \u201chave kept the stage\u201d even to our own\nday.\n\nThere were yet other candidates for fame, who, tired of the\nprovincialism of Irish towns, or impatient of the restraints which their\npeculiar calling in life had placed upon them, sought an English market\nfor their intellectual wares\u2014spoiled children of genius, men like Maginn\nand Mahony, of much learning and fascinating accomplishments, fitted to\nhave conferred lasting honor on their country, but who, lacking the true\nspirit of national dignity and personal respect, easily fell a prey to\none or other of the contending English parties, and sank to the level of\nthose who disgrace the noble profession of letters by making it\nsubservient to the base purposes of political factions. This class\ncontributed much of what is still to be found brilliant and entertaining\nin English literature, but little that reflects credit on their\ncharacter as Irishmen.\n\nFollowing or contemporaneous with them came another and a different\nschool of Irish writers, such as Lever, Lover, Maxwell, and even\nCarleton; for, though the latter in many of his later works showed a\njust appreciation of the vast improvement taking place in public taste,\nhis earlier and more popular productions, apart from their occasional\ntouches of true pathos and flashes of genuine wit, were devoted mostly\nto caricature and exaggeration. Charles Lever, who has written so many\nbooks, and who is yet the most read of all the Irish novelists of this\ncentury, has been called the best recruiting sergeant the British\ngovernment ever employed; while Lover may be styled a gifted and\nversatile buffoon in all save his lyrics. The first\u2019s highest conception\nof an Irish gentleman was one who broke his arm over a Galway fence, was\ncommissioned in the British army, blundered into all sorts of scrapes\nand out of them, hated Napoleon, worshipped \u201cSir Arthur,\u201d charged wildly\nat Ciudad Rodrigo or Waterloo, and finally\u2014married an heiress. His best\nIrish peasant does not rise above the grade of Mickey Free or Darby the\nBlast, while he seemed utterly unconscious of the existence of a very\nimportant social element in all agricultural countries\u2014the farming or\nmiddle class, always remarkable for their sturdy common sense and\npractical views of life. It was from this portion of his countrymen and\nfrom the hardy mechanics of the towns that Scott drew his best and most\nenduring portraits of Scotch manliness, shrewdness, and humor.\n\nLover, though tender and natural in verse, was singularly unfortunate in\nhis choice of subjects and altogether false in his attempts to develop\nthem. He also ignored the \u201cmiddle classes,\u201d and substituted for\ngentlemen sentimental non-entities, and for the free-spoken,\nlight-hearted, and withal poetical plebeian, blundering boobies full of\nchicane and deception. We can scarcely believe that the man who wrote\n_Treasure Trove_ and _Handy Andy_ could have conceived such pathetic\nsongs as \u201cThe Angels\u2019 Whisper\u201d and \u201cThe Fairy Boy.\u201d\n\nStill, the works of these authors, though exhibiting many glaring\ndefects, were a great improvement on those of their predecessors, and\nconsequently they have not yet been consigned to the oblivion which has\nenshrouded the productions of the bigots of the previous era.\n\nBut the revolution in Irish literature had commenced long before their\nadvent, and the credit of initiating it belongs to one who was not only\nuniversally admired and applauded during his life, but whose fame\ncontinues to augment as time rolls along, and the memory of his\nextraordinary efforts in behalf of his faith and country becomes\nbrighter and more enduring. That man was Thomas Moore, the son of humble\nCatholic parents, who, on account of his religious belief, was refused a\nfellowship in the only university of which his native country could then\nboast. Naturally disgusted at such ostracism, Moore, at the age of\ntwenty-three, went to London, and entered upon that brilliant career in\npoetry and prose which has indelibly stamped his name on the history of\nthe literature of the nineteenth century. Never was the force of genius\nbetter exemplified than in the life of Moore. A plebeian, a Catholic,\nand an Irishman in the strongest sense of those terms; without\ncondescending to apologize for, or attempting to palliate, the facts of\nhis station and belief; with scarcely a friend or acquaintance in the\ngreat metropolis, and no recognition in the world of letters, the poet\nrose amid an aristocratic, Protestant, and anti-Irish community to a\nposition equal to the most gifted of Scotland\u2019s and England\u2019s men of\ngenius, and in his _Melodies_ far surpassed any lyrics that have been\nwritten in our language since or before his time. In 1808 the first part\nof that unequalled collection of songs appeared, and each successive\ninstalment but added to the popularity of the preceding. From the first\nthey became fashionable, and consequently popular. They were sung in the\ndrawing-rooms of princes and in the cottage parlors of the shop-keeper\nand tradesman. Persons of every rank in life who knew little of Ireland,\nand that little not to her credit, listened entranced to \u201cRemember the\nGlories of Brian the Brave\u201d or \u201cOh! blame not the Bard,\u201d and began to\nthink that a country that could produce such airs and so sweet a poet\ncould not after all be considered very barbarous. It was but a poor\nconcession, yet under the circumstances a most valuable one. It was the\nfirst blow struck against the solid wall of prejudice with which English\nsociety had surrounded itself.\n\nNext to Moore we place John Banim, the principal author of the _Tales of\nthe O\u2019Hara Family_. Banim, like Moore, sprang from the ranks of the\nhumbler classes and sought in London a field for his rare genius which\nwas denied him at home. Though a dramatist of no mean order, his\nreputation rests principally on his novels, many of which, like the\n_Boyne Water_, _Crohoore of the Bill-Hook_, _The Priest-Hunter_, and\n_The Fetches_, are works of real power, interspersed here and there with\npleasantry and humor, but always moral, dignified, and true to nature.\nThe sale of Banim\u2019s tales and shorter stories from their intrinsic\nmerit, and perhaps somewhat on account of their novelty, was very\nextensive in England, and helped to increase the good feeling towards\nthe Irish people which the lyre of Moore had first called into being.\n\nIn Gerald Griffin, afterward the humble Christian Brother, Banim found\nnot only a friend but a powerful auxiliary. Griffin, of all the writers\nof fiction in the English language, was the purest and most actively\nmoral. If we search all his works\u2014and they fill nine or ten volumes\u2014we\nwill not find an expression or an innuendo to offend the most sensitive.\nThe writings of the great English novelists of this century, like those\nof Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, cannot be said to be positively\nimmoral, though the author of the justly-celebrated _Waverley Novels_\noften exhibited marked prejudice, and sometimes downright bigotry; while\nhis later rivals, when not satirical or trifling, can at best claim but\na negative morality for their teachings and tendencies. But the genius\nof Griffin sprang from a pure Catholic heart filled with love for all\nhis kind, and consequently he wrote with a sense of religious\nresponsibility, and in a spirit of justice and rectitude rarely to be\nfound so thoroughly developed in a writer of fiction in our days. His\nworks have had a great influence on the popular mind of both countries.\nBut, though he first wrote in England, his sole and absorbing object was\nto benefit his countrymen. When satisfied that the germ of his laurels\nhad begun to fructify in a foreign soil, he returned to his home, where,\namid domestic pleasures, and in daily communion with the characters he\nso admirably portrayed and the scenes of natural beauty he so loved to\ndescribe, he composed his more important and finished works.\n\nMeanwhile, another and not less important impetus had been given to the\nrapid change taking place in popular sentiment regarding Irish character\nand literature, and this was in Ireland itself. The letters of \u201cJ. K.\nL.\u201d\u2014the learned Dr. Doyle\u2014on Catholic Emancipation and the Tithe\nQuestion, and those of the present venerable Archbishop of Tuam on\nsimilar topics, had thrilled the Irish heart and evoked in it a feeling\nof national dignity and self-reliance that had long lain dormant; and\neven the great O\u2019Connell, amid all his professional and political\nlabors, found time to contribute his aid to the new movement. But it was\nnot till after 1840 that the various rivulets combined and assumed the\nproportions of a mighty flood, which, bursting through the barriers of\nignorance and prejudice, overspread the entire land. Then began to\nappear the theologians and ecclesiastical historians of Maynooth and the\nantiquarian writers of old Trinity; the fiery ballads of the _Nation_\nand the graceful and learned essays of the _Dublin Review_ and\n_University Magazine_. Arch\u00e6ological and Celtic societies were formed,\nthe hitherto neglected _Transactions_ of the Royal Irish Academy were\nbrought into public notice, and the musty tomes that were crumbling to\ndust and decay on the shelves of Trinity College library, after their\nsleep of centuries, were explored, collated, and vivified. The names of\nMurray, O\u2019Reilly, Petrie, Todd, O\u2019Donovan, O\u2019Curry, Graves, Wilde,\nMeehan, McCarthy, Mangan, and a host of other lesser lights, became\nfamiliar to the intellectual world by their profound, subtle, or\nbrilliant contributions to the literature of the age. One thing alone\nwas wanting to complete this grand national revival: a Catholic\nuniversity\u2014and even that soon came, not as a subordinate worker in the\ncommon cause, but as the leader of the movement.\n\nYet, though general education and popular instruction, in their own\nsphere, kept pace with the mental awakening in the higher departments of\nlearning, strange to say, the stage, generally considered the first to\nyield to popular impulse, was the slowest and last to acknowledge the\nimproved spirit of the times, and even to this day clings to many of the\nantiquated and bigoted so-called Irish dramas and comedies with\ninsensate tenacity. Theatrical managers still persist in presenting for\nthe amusement of patrons, a large portion of whom are Irish, the farces\nand low interludes which fifty years ago were written to gratify the\nanti-Irish and anti-Catholic feelings of the lowest class of London\nsociety. A partially successful effort has been made recently to redeem\nthis gross and fatal error; better, or rather less bad, Irish dramas\nhave of late made their appearance, and let us hope the reformation,\nonce set on foot, will be carried out. There is no reason why we should\nnot have Irish dramas as good as Irish poems, tales, and other works of\nfiction. If people will go to theatres, they ought not be compelled to\nbecome interested spectators of outrages on faith and morals, and\npatrons and supporters of those who commit the outrages.\n\nStill, casting our memory back over the history of Irish intellectual\nlife for more than half a century, it would be scarcely an exaggeration\nto say that since the _Renaissance_ epoch no country has given such\nevidence, in so short a time, of mental fertility and activity as that\nisland which was once almost as famous throughout Europe for her\nlearning as for the piety of her children. Ireland has at last a\nliterature which is not only rich in ideas and information, but which is\nboth national and Catholic. Her history, once so obscure and\nmisunderstood, can now be studied with as much ease and satisfaction as\nany in Christendom; her antiquities, formerly the spoil of the ignorant\nor the jest of the sceptic, have been collected, arranged, and\nscientifically explained in a hundred ways; while the lives and actions\nof her great and holy men, from the earliest ages, have received full,\ncritical, and impartial justice. And as yet we have only seen the\nbeginning! If that be so fair and full of promise, what may not be hoped\nfor from the intellectual future of a keen yet imaginative, brilliant\nyet conscientious, witty yet harmless in their wit, passionate in the\nwider sense, yet profoundly religious, people?\n\n\n\n\n                         THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.\n\n\n                                  IV.\n                             ST. CATHERINE.\n\n\n    \u201cWhom I shall wed,\u201d said Alexandria\u2019s princess, \u201crare\n      Of beauty must be, past imagining;\n      So great I shall not think I have made him king;\n    More rich, sweet-hearted more, than summer air!\u201d\n    In dreams she came where courts such state declare\n      Of Mother and Son enthroned, that worshipping\n      She knelt, though royal: the Child placed a ring\n    Upon her finger, and she woke\u2014\u2019twas there!\n\n    So Catherine became Christ\u2019s. Again she kneels:\n      With rose and lily, in white and purple clothed,\n      No shining host now hails the heaven-betrothed,\n    But God\u2019s bolt shatters the sharp torture-wheels.\n    Then Night and angels her pall-bearers are\u2014\n    The Bridegroom waits on Sinai lone and far.\n\n\n                                   V.\n                             ST. MARGARET.\n\n\n    Of all the virgins pure that bear the palm,\n      There is not any one more meek and mild\n      Than sweet maid Margaret. Tending while a child\n    The flocks, she drew near, in the mountain\u2019s calm,\n    To the Good Shepherd, like a trustful lamb;\n      She felt that God with man was reconciled;\n      She saw diurnal victory undefiled\n    Of light o\u2019er darkness hoist the oriflamme.\n\n    Of Morning. So flashed she, in dungeon drear,\n      The Cross uplifted, till the Dragon foul\n      Crouched at her feet, in fear of that white soul.\n    O Pearl of Antioch, so soft and clear!\n    O Daisy, with the chaste dew on thy lips!\n    Thou touchest Christ with stainless finger-tips.\n\n\n                                  VI.\n                              ST. BARBARA.\n\n\n    Dioscorus of Heliopolis\n      Shut his wise daughter in a lofty tower,\n      Jealous of lovers; therein, for her bower,\n    She caused three windows to be made, in this\n    Her father disobeying, but said: \u201cIt is\n      Through three clear windows that the Almighty Power,\n      The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, shower\n    Light on the soul\u2014with light immortal bliss!\u201d\n\n    Scourged, by the gold hair dragged, slain by thy sire\u2014\n      A turbaned heathen!\u2014soft as rosy May,\n      Yet resolute, and avenged by instant fire,\n    Christian Bellona! sweet-browed Barbara!\n    With the Red Mantle of thy fortitude,\n    Thy Tower and Cannon, be my soul endued!\n\n\n\n\n            MARSHAL MacMAHON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS.\n\n\nThe inconveniences resulting from the present system of transmitting\npolitical intelligence from Europe to this country for the use of our\ndaily journals are serious. An event of importance occurs to-day in\nLondon, Paris, Constantinople, or Rome; the same afternoon we read what\npurports to be an account of the event in our evening journals, and the\nnext morning we are furnished with a few more details, accompanied often\nby a leading article hurriedly written and based, as a rule, upon no\nother information than that contained in the despatches. In twenty-four\nhours afterwards the event is almost forgotten; and by the time that the\nletters of correspondents on the spot, or the journals of the locality,\ncan reach us, the incident has become an old story and the interest\nexcited by it in the first place has faded away. This manner of dealing\nwith matters of great importance would be lamentable, even if the\ninformation contained in the cable despatches were always correct, full,\nand uncolored by prejudice; but too often the despatches are models of\nwhat they should _not_ be\u2014that is, they are incorrect in matters of\nfact; marked by omissions of the truth and by suggestions of falsehood;\nand disfigured, in the majority of cases when the events reported have,\nor are supposed to have, some relation to the interests of the Papal\nSee, by an ingenious perversion of the real and natural meaning of the\nincidents which they purport to describe. A heavy responsibility rests\nupon the conductors of our daily journals in this matter\u2014a\nresponsibility to which we should be glad to see them more sensitive\nthan they now appear to be. They know well enough how it happens that\nthe bulk of their cable despatches from the Continent of Europe is\ncontinually affected by an evident animus against the Holy See whenever\nthere is an opportunity to display this feeling; they know well enough\nwhy it is that, whenever possible, a coloring hostile to the church, and\ncalculated to excite Protestant or non-Catholic prejudice against her,\nis given to events.\n\nThe greater part of the European despatches of the New York journals is\ntransmitted from London, being made up there chiefly from the despatches\nof the Reuter Agency, supplemented by the special despatches received by\nthe leading London journals. The Reuter News Agency, which has its\nramifications throughout all Europe, and is conducted with admirable\nskill and good management as a business enterprise, is in the hands of\nJews; its agents have peculiar relations with the governments which\nstand in need of their services, and a system of mutual benefit is kept\nup between them; in return for the monopoly of official news and other\nsimilar favors on the part of the governments, the agents of the Reuter\ncompany transmit only such intelligence as is agreeable to the\ngovernments, and with such coloring as the governments wish. The\nrelations existing between the Italian government and the Reuter Agency\nare understood to be especially intimate; and certain it is that from no\ncapital in the world has more false and distorted news been sent forth\nthan that which all the world has received from Rome since the Italian\noccupation of that city. As for the Continental despatches taken from\nthe London journals and sent to New York, it should be remembered that\nnot one of the London daily papers is in the Catholic interest, and that\nthose whose despatches are most frequently sent to us\u2014namely, the\n_Times_, the _Daily News_, and the _Pall Mall Gazette_\u2014are inspired by a\nvery lively hatred and fear of the church. We believe that the\nconductors of our own daily journals are for the most part actuated by\nhonest motives. Their heads are sometimes deplorably at fault, but their\nhearts are generally right; and, with rare exceptions, they are free\nfrom the guilt of wilfully misrepresenting facts and designedly\ndeceiving their readers. But too frequently they do permit themselves to\nbe deceived or misled, in the manner we have explained, with respect to\nthe true meaning and co-relation of political events on the continent of\nEurope.\n\nThe facts mentioned are, or should be, perfectly well known in the\neditorial rooms of all our journals; and it is certainly to be desired\nthat our editors should cease to take their opinions at second-hand, and\nshould begin to exercise their own good and honest judgment upon events\nas they occur abroad. If they were in the habit of doing this, and if\nthey were furnished with cable information of a correct and uncolored\ncharacter, they would not, we are certain, have fallen into the error of\nregarding the recent change of government in France as a wicked, base,\nand unprovoked conspiracy to destroy the republican institutions of that\ncountry, but would have recognized in Marshal MacMahon\u2019s action the\nwise, absolutely necessary, and not too rapid determination of that\nruler to save the republic, if possible, while it is still worth saving,\nand at all events to save France and society generally throughout Europe\nfrom the convulsion, anarchy, and destruction into which the\nrevolutionists were so rapidly and surely dragging them. It is by no\nmeans certain that Marshal MacMahon will now succeed in the task before\nhim; he may have waited too long. Nor are we concerned to prove that the\nmotives of the Marshal-President in his dismissal of M. Jules Simon, and\nin his selection of his present advisers, were unmixed; but we are\nanxious to show to our readers that his action was necessary, and that\nthe good wishes of Americans who reverence law and order, who detest\nred-republicanism and communism, who cherish religious liberty, and who\ndread and abhor tyranny, whether exercised in the name of many or of\none, should be on his side. \u201cI am conscious,\u201d said Marshal MacMahon nine\ndays after the dismissal of M. Simon\u2014\u201cI am conscious of having fulfilled\na great duty. I have remained, and shall remain, absolutely within the\nbounds of legality. It is because I am the guardian of the constitution\nthat I acted as I have acted. To attribute to me an intention of\nassailing the constitution is a misconstruction of my character. The\ncountry will soon comprehend that my sole aim is the salvation of France\nand of the government which she has given herself.\u201d\n\nWe believe that these are sincere and honest words; and we shall have no\ndifficulty at least in showing that Marshal MacMahon could not have\nacted otherwise than he did, unless he had been prepared to surrender\nthe virtual government of the republic into the hands of men who are\nleagued together to destroy the rights of property; to degrade marriage;\nto enslave, if not wholly to overturn, the church; to cut her off from\nher connection with her earthly head; to reduce her prelates, if they\nwere permitted to exist at all, to the condition of servants of the\ncivil power; to exile her contemplative and teaching orders; to take\nfrom her the right of educating her children; and to drag France, ere\nlong, into an alliance with the revolutionary associations in Germany,\nItaly, Belgium, Spain, and Russia, which dream of establishing on the\nruins of religion and of society a new confederation from which God\nshall be banished, and over which Satan shall rule supreme.\nComparatively few of the constituents of the Gambetta party in the\nFrench Assembly are aware of the designs of the leaders of this faction;\nbut enough light has within the past few weeks been thrown upon their\nmachinations fully to justify the President in making a firm stand\nagainst their further progress.\n\nM. Jules Simon refused to aid the President in executing this\ndetermination; and M. Simon was removed to give place to a minister who\nwould co-operate with his chief. So powerful had the Gambetta faction\nbecome in the Assembly that the whole of the cabinet followed M. Simon\nin his enforced retirement from office, and the President was for the\nmoment left alone. The men whom he called to his aid, however, and who,\nindeed, had encouraged him to dismiss M. Simon, were prompt in taking up\nthe fallen reins of office, and the government, without a day\u2019s delay,\nbegan its work of preserving France from her worst foes. The task before\nthem is a most arduous one, and it has been begun none too soon. Let us\nshow how it became necessary that it should be undertaken at all.\n\nThe French Assembly was re-convened at Versailles on the 1st of May\nafter the usual Easter recess. During the vacation events had occurred\nwhich made it probable that the long-threatened rupture between the\nGambetta faction, or Extreme Left of the Chamber, and the conservative\nelements in the executive department of the government, could not be\ndelayed much longer. The administration had indeed gone to the very\nfurthest point of concession in endeavoring to satisfy the demands of\nthe Left. The consent of Marshal MacMahon had been given to these\nconcessions, but it was known that this assent had been extorted from\nhim with difficulty, and that he was personally of the opinion that the\nmore was given to the Gambettists the more would they ask, and that the\ntrue and safe course was that of steady and uncompromising resistance to\ntheir unconstitutional and revolutionary demands. The Left, by skilful\nmanagement of the press in its interest; by the manipulations of the\nlocal public functionaries who had from time to time been appointed at\nits request, or whom it had been able to purchase; by adroit\nmisrepresentations and exaggerations of the policy of the conservative\nmembers of the Assembly; and by the not infrequent maladroit utterances\nand acts of certain of the imperialist and monarchical members, had\ncontrived to make an imposing show of their strength in the country as\nwell as in the Assembly. It is no doubt true that, all other things\nbeing equal, a large majority of the French people would prefer a\nrepublic to any other form of government. But the republic which would\nsatisfy them is not at all the republic which would satisfy M. Gambetta\nand his friends. The republic which the majority of the French people\ndesire is a republic in which property would be safe; in which law and\norder would reign; in which God would be respected; and in which the\nchurch would be free. The republic of Gambetta would possess none of\nthese characteristics; but Gambetta and his lieutenants had been allowed\nto assume the attitude of the especial friends and defenders of\nrepublican institutions, and many of their members in the Assembly owed\ntheir election to the votes of good Catholics and sober citizens. They\nnow felt themselves strong enough to advance further, and to wrest from\nthe administration a still greater share of power.\n\nMarshal MacMahon was himself irremovable for three years longer, only\nfour years of his Septennate having expired. But it might be possible,\nin the opinion of the Gambettists, to force him to accept a cabinet\nwhich should be dictated by themselves, and which would hand over to\nthem the virtual control of the government. One of the members of the\nthen cabinet, they believed, would be useful to them, and their plans\ninvolved his retention. What was the nature of the communications which\nare said to have taken place in secret between MM. Gambetta and Simon\ncannot at present be known. Nor can we unveil the mysteries of the\ncorrespondence which has been kept up during the last few years between\nthe controlling members of the French Extreme Left and the revolutionary\nleaders in England and throughout the Continent of Europe. The\noperations of the secret societies are seldom brought to light until\nafter their work has been accomplished\u2014and not always even then. The\nonce famous \u201cInternational Society of Working-men\u201d has ceased to exist\nfor all practical purposes; but it, at the best, was only an engine\ninvented and put in motion by men who still are laboring in the secrecy\nof Masonic lodge-rooms and in the caucus-chambers of hidden political\norganizations to accomplish the destruction of Christian society and\nChristian government. It cannot be doubted that a certain solidarity\nunites the socialists of France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Greece,\nHungary, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Portugal, and that they have the\nmeans of acting together. The Gambetta faction in France by no means\nstood alone in their recent attempt to gain the upper hand in the\nadministration of the republic; they had the active sympathy and the\nmoral support of their _confr\u00e8res_ throughout Europe.\n\nNow, the great bulwark of the conservative republic in France is the\nRoman Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic faith, the Roman Catholic\npeople. So long as the church is free and undisturbed in France\u2014free to\npursue her work of educating her children, preserving morality, and\nsaving souls\u2014the French people, of whom all but a small fraction belong\nto her, will remain tranquil and happy, and they would make short work\nof men who proposed to set up in France a communistic and atheistic\nrepublic. They are quite well contented with the republic as it at\npresent exists, and are hopeful of its future; under it the church for\nthe first time has been allowed full right of teaching; and the avidity\nwith which Catholics availed themselves of the privileges conferred by\nthe new university law sufficiently attests at once their intelligence\nand their zeal. Still, the Catholics in France, like the Catholics\nthroughout the rest of the world, have a sorrow and a grievance; and\nFrench Catholics, like all other Catholics, claim the right to express\nthis sorrow and to do what is in their power to redress this grievance.\nThe earthly head of their church is a prisoner in his own city; he has\nbeen despoiled of his patrimony and plundered of his crown; his jailers\nthreaten from time to time to deprive him of the little that is left to\nhim; there is positive danger that the freedom of the election of his\nsuccessor will be assailed, and that the church throughout the world may\nbe subjected, through the malice of her foes at Rome, to the gravest\nperils. The French Catholics conceive that it is their right and their\nduty to protest unceasingly against this state of things, and to inspire\ntheir government to speak in their name\u2014and, if occasion arises, to act\nin their name\u2014for the purpose of protecting the Holy Father from further\ninsults and oppression, and of seeking to bring about the peaceable\nrestoration of his independence. In all this they are strictly within\nthe limits of their constitutional rights as citizens of the French\nRepublic.\n\nLet us bring the matter home to ourselves. Suppose that a petition\nshould be drawn up praying President Hayes to instruct our minister at\nRome to represent to the government of Italy that nine millions of\nAmerican Roman Catholics felt themselves deeply aggrieved and injured by\ncertain acts of the Italian government towards the Pope, and that they\nconsidered these acts all the more unjustifiable because they were one\nand all in open and undisguised violation of the promises made by the\nItalian government to the whole Catholic world; suppose that this\npetition should be signed by every Catholic man and woman in the United\nStates and sent to the President; would it be said, then, that we were\nexceeding our rights as citizens, and that we should be punished for our\ntemerity? The President might do as he pleased with the petition; he\nmight act upon it or cast it aside\u2014that would be for him to decide; but\ncould we, as citizens, be blamed and punished for exercising the right\nof petition in order to make known our feelings upon a matter which\ntouches us so closely? Yet this is all that the French Catholics have\ndone; and it is because of the solidarity of interests and of purpose,\nof hope and of fear, which exists between the revolutionists and\nsocialists of Italy and of the other Continental nations that the\nGambettists in France were spurred up to make this perfectly legitimate\naction of the French Catholics the pretext for a new and desperate\nassault upon the liberties of the church in France\u2014an assault under\ncover of which, and aided by what seems to us very much like treachery\non the part of M. Jules Simon, they hoped to compel Marshal MacMahon to\ncapitulate to them.\n\nThe allocution of the Pope issued on the 12th of last March had moved to\nthe very depths the hearts of Catholics in France, as it had moved the\nhearts of the Catholics of every other land. They felt that it was\nimpossible for them to remain silent after hearing that most pathetic\nand powerful appeal; they wished that their reply should be as emphatic\nas possible, and that it should consist of acts as well as of words.\nThey resolved to draw up addresses to the Holy Father; to organize\npilgrimages to convey these addresses, with their gifts, to Rome; and to\ndevise means whereby they could express to their own government their\nanxious wish that it would use its influence with the government of\nItaly in behalf of the restoration of the independence and freedom of\nthe Pope. Each of these projects was entered into with commendable zeal;\nand early in April the Bishop of Nevers addressed a letter to Marshal\nMacMahon, asking him, in the name of his flock, to use the influence of\nFrance at the court of King Victor Emanuel and at other courts for the\nprotection of the Pope and for the restoration of his rights. The\nmarshal\u2019s cabinet at this moment were greatly under the influence of M.\nJules Simon, the President of the Council; they were imbued with the\nidea that it would not be safe for them to exasperate the Gambetta\nfaction; and they persuaded the marshal to approve a letter addressed by\nthe Minister of Public Worship to the bishop, in which entire\ndisapproval of his appeal was expressed, with the remark that \u201cthe\nmarshal, as a sincere friend of religion, saw with pain the clergy\nintervening in internal, and still more in foreign, politics.\u201d The\nGambettists were encouraged by this mark of weakness on the part of the\ngovernment, and prepared to push their advantage. But the Catholics did\nnot choose to take their views of duty from the dictates of a Council\nwhereof M. Simon was the chief; and they continued to organize their\npilgrimages and to draw up and circulate their addresses to the Pope. On\nthe 19th of April the Bishop of Nevers, not at all disconcerted by the\nrebuke which he had received from the Cabinet, addressed a letter to the\nMayor of the Ni\u00e8vre, in which he explained to that official what, in his\nopinion, was the duty of all good Catholics occupying influential\npositions.\n\n    \u201cThe Pope being no longer free in Rome,\u201d wrote the bishop to the\n    mayor, \u201cthe result is that we ourselves are no longer free in our\n    consciences, and we consequently should use all our influence to\n    obtain a change in such an abnormal state of things, and the\n    restoration to the sovereign of our souls of the independence which\n    he absolutely requires in order to guide us. We must first instil\n    these views in the minds of the population whose interests are\n    confided to us. We must then concert together to cause similar\n    convictions to prevail in the various councils of the country.\u201d\n\nOn the 20th, at a cabinet council, the general petitions of the\nCatholics addressed to the government were taken into consideration, and\nit was proposed that, in order to silence the complaints of the\nGambettists, who were declaiming violently that the circulation and\npresentation of such memorials would embroil France in a difficulty with\nItaly, the bishops should be ordered to forbid the further exposure of\nthese petitions in their churches for signature. But the marshal on this\noccasion displayed a little more firmness and the matter was passed over\nwithout action. A few days before this an event had occurred in Italy\nthat served to increase the distrust with which Marshal MacMahon already\nregarded the secret intentions of the leaders of the Left. In Benevento,\nnear Letino, and again near Rome, the government had arrested a number\nof socialists who, it appears, were engaged in a conspiracy for the\nestablishment of a Red Republic. The papers found on the persons of the\narrested men were of the usual inflammatory character, and set forth,\namong other things, that \u201cman ought not to be subjected to any tyranny,\nhuman or divine; that the principle of private property is the climax of\ninfamy, because it creates inequality between men; that the union\nbetween men and women ought to be free; and that the state is the denial\nof the most sacred principles.\u201d The chief leader of the band, who was\narrested with about fifty of his adherents, was a young Milanese named\nCaffiero, a man of wealth and position; and an examination of his papers\ndisclosed the fact that his association was only one of a large number\nof others spread throughout Europe, and that the names of some of the\nleading radical republicans of France appeared upon a list which was\nbelieved to enumerate the advisers and real leaders of the conspirators.\nOn the 28th of April, however, the cabinet again induced the marshal to\nmake another effort to conciliate the Gambettists, who had redoubled\ntheir agitation against the Catholic movement, which had by this time\nbecome very general throughout the whole country. On that day the\nMinister of the Interior issued a circular to all prefects, directing\nthem to discourage the signature of the Catholic protests and petitions\nby not allowing them to be publicly circulated within their respective\njurisdictions. The circular\u2014to which Marshal MacMahon assented after\nmuch pressure\u2014instructed the prefects to regard these petitions and\nprotests as \u201can unjustifiable and illegal interference in the\nlegislative and domestic affairs of a friendly foreign state,\u201d and to do\nall in their power to suppress them. Gambetta himself could scarcely\nhave said more; but the marshal was quite correct in his opinion that\nGambetta would still ask for more. Meanwhile, the _mot d\u2019ordre_ to the\nGambettists had gone forth to strike terror into the hearts of their\nopponents by public manifestations. The students of the Sorbonne were\ninstigated into making violent assaults upon the Catholic universities;\non the 1st of May five hundred students assembled in front of the\nCatholic university in the Rue de Vaugirard, where they insulted the\nCatholic students and professors by indecent harangues and by singing\nblasphemous parodies of a hymn to the Sacred Heart; dispersed by the\npolice, they separated only to assemble again before the Jesuit school\nin the Rue de Shomond, where the same disorderly and disgraceful scenes\nwere repeated until the police arrived and arrested the ringleaders of\nthe mob. In all the cities where the Gambettists were sufficiently\nnumerous manifestations against the church and her liberties were\norganized; and in some cases the zeal of the disciples so far outran the\ndirections of the leaders that it was with difficulty the latter\nprevented the former from outrages which would have alarmed and\ndisgusted the whole country.\n\nAffairs were in this condition when the Chambers reassembled on the 1st\nof May. The Left lost no time in bringing forward their guns and forcing\nthe fighting. M. Leblond was put up by them in the Chamber of Deputies\nto give notice of a question addressed to the government \u201cas to the\nmeasures which it proposed to take to repress Ultramontane intrigues.\u201d\nM. Jules Simon, hastening to comply with the demands of the men with\nwhom, as it now appears, he was secretly in accord, at once replied that\nthe debate on the proposed question could take place on the next day.\nThe Catholic members of the Chamber seem to have already distrusted the\nsincerity of M. Simon. One of them\u2014the eloquent and fearless Count de\nMun\u2014announced that he and those who acted with him insisted upon a clear\nunderstanding of the position of the government.\n\n    \u201cWe shall insist upon knowing,\u201d said he, \u201cwhether the government\n    accept the responsibility for the campaign that is being waged by\n    means of impure calumnies against the Catholics of France. The\n    patriotism of French Catholics cannot be called in question; it is\n    above suspicion. In what we are doing\u2014in what we wish to do\u2014we are\n    claiming but our rights. We demand, however, that the government, to\n    which we give our support, should free itself from the\n    responsibility for the attacks made upon us, which render our\n    position intolerable.\u201d\n\nM. Simon seems to have perceived that matters were growing serious, and\nthat he could not much longer continue to pretend to serve two masters;\nbut he resolved to struggle still to maintain his position. On the\nfollowing day, after M. Leblond had put his question and supported it by\na harangue in which he urged that the government should at once proceed\nto repress by the most stringent means \u201cthe Ultramontane intrigues,\u201d M.\nSimon addressed the Chamber in a speech highly disingenuous and full of\ndouble meanings. It was virtually an appeal to the Gambetta faction to\npermit him to remain in power in order that he might do their work;\nwhile at the same time it was an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of\nthe Catholics by hypocritical professions of respect for religion and\nits rights. The government had been blamed, he said, for permitting\nCatholic newspapers to assail Italy; but the government could not\nprevent this; the law would punish the writers, if what they wrote was\npunishable under the law. On the other hand, the government would not\ntolerate any attack upon the Catholic religion\u2014\u201cwhich it sincerely\nrespected\u201d\u2014and would protect the rights and liberties of Catholics. In\nfact, the church in France enjoyed to-day more freedom than at any\nprevious time. But it was necessary to limit this freedom. For instance,\nthe government \u201ctolerates\u201d the existence of Catholic societies so long\nas they are used only for the purposes set forth in their statutes, but\nit had interdicted the Catholic committees which were employed in\npolitical undertakings and which had \u201cformidable ramifications.\u201d Having\ngone thus far, M. Simon thought he might as well go a little further,\nand he proceeded to make a statement which was a direct insult to the\nintelligence of the whole Catholic world. \u201cThe Catholic petitions and\nthe demonstration made by the Bishop of Nevers,\u201d said he, \u201c_were based\nupon a fiction\u2014namely, that the Pope is a prisoner in the Vatican_\u201d;\n\u201cthe law of guarantees has taken every care of the spiritual\nindependence of the Holy Father\u201d! And he then went on to condemn the\npetitions as \u201can interference in the internal affairs of a neighboring\ncountry,\u201d and to remind the Chamber that the government had done all in\nits power to suppress these lawful manifestations of Catholic feeling.\nThe government, he added, would continue to protect the clergy as long\nas they confined themselves to their spiritual duties, but would in the\nfuture punish them severely \u201cif they encroached upon the civil\npower\u201d\u2014that is, if they continued to exercise their freedom and to\ndischarge their duty by protesting against the acts of the Sardinian\nrobbers, and by seeking to enlighten the public mind and conscience as\nto the real condition of the head of the universal church.\n\nThis speech of the President of the Council was a virtual surrender to\nthe Extreme Left; but M. Gambetta was determined to force a more formal\nand complete capitulation. On the following day, May 4, he resumed the\ndebate in a speech which he had carefully prepared, and which he\ndelivered with great eloquence and animation. Its spirit is expressed in\nthe sentence which was received with the loudest applause by the Extreme\nLeft: \u201cIt is time that lay society should drive back the church to that\nsubordinate rank which belongs to her in the state.\u201d M. Gambetta, our\nreaders will perceive, is very far in advance of M. Cavour. The Italian\nstatesman dreamed of \u201ca free church in a free state\u201d; the French\nrevolutionist demands an enslaved church in an atheistic and communistic\nstate. Listen to him:\n\n    \u201cThe church has set citizens by the ears, alarmed France, and\n    troubled Europe. It is always thus: the monarchy was often compelled\n    to resist the encroachments of the church, but the republic must do\n    more, for now the state is assaulted on all sides in the name of\n    religion and her very existence is threatened. The Catholic\n    leaders\u2014ex-ministers, senators, and members of this Chamber\u2014have\n    exalted the Pope as the supreme ruler of France and of the world;\n    when the Pope has issued an order they exclaim: 'Rome has spoken and\n    must be obeyed.\u2019 The Pope on the 12th of March commanded that an\n    agitation in his favor should be everywhere set on foot; immediately\n    we behold deputations of Catholic royalists calling upon the\n    Minister of Foreign Affairs, convocations being held, and petitions\n    circulated in spite of the feeble pretences of the government to\n    suppress them. It will not do to say that the church in France must\n    have the liberty which she enjoys elsewhere; she shall not have it,\n    for the reason, among others, that here the church is bound to the\n    state, and the state is responsible for the language and the acts of\n    the bishops. No longer must it be permitted that the Pope may\n    address himself directly to France, without having first obtained\n    the sanction of the civil power, and without first submitting to it\n    his bulls, briefs, and allocutions. No longer must the bishops be\n    allowed to address themselves to mayors and prefects, conveying to\n    the civil functionaries of the republic orders received from Rome.\n    It is useless to say that only a few of the bishops have done these\n    things; for these bishops represent the whole hierarchy, the church\n    is unanimous, and its submission to Rome is complete. There is no\n    such thing as resistance or opposition in the church; the old\n    Gallican liberties have been swept away by the Syllabus and by the\n    Vatican Council. The Pope must not be permitted again to usurp the\n    rights of the state, as he has recently done in appointing one of\n    his bishops chancellor of a French university and giving him the\n    right of conferring degrees. I cannot understand how it happened\n    that the papal instrument making this appointment was ever permitted\n    to enter France! We must no longer endure these things; we must\n    drive back the church to the place where she belongs. We need not\n    fear that the people will not be on our side; if there is one thing\n    more than another that is repugnant to France, it is the yoke of\n    clericalism; and it cannot be too strongly said that clericalism is\n    the enemy of the country.\u201d\n\nTo this bitter harangue M. Jules Simon had no reply; he contented\nhimself with declaring that he and the cabinet were not subject to the\ndictation of any power behind the throne, and that perfect harmony\nexisted between the marshal and himself. He hastened to add that he\nwould accept, in the name of the government, the order of the day\nproposed by M. Leblond, which was in these words:\n\n    \u201cThe Chamber of Deputies, considering that the recrudescence of\n    Ultramontane manifestations constitutes a danger to the domestic and\n    foreign peace of the country, calls upon the government to make use\n    of the lawful means which it has at its disposal.\u201d\n\nThis was adopted by a vote of 361 against 121; thus M. Gambetta won his\nvictory, and, so far as M. Simon could pledge it, the government was\npledged to carry out the demands of the foes of the church. This was on\nthe 4th of May. Marshal MacMahon, it appears, hesitated as to his future\ncourse; but it appears also that he was conscious he had been betrayed\ninto an intolerable position. He seems to have determined, from that\nmoment, to dismiss M. Simon, and to appeal to the country to sustain him\nin his refusal to comply with the unconstitutional and tyrannical\ndemands of the revolutionists; but, with what may seem to some an unwise\ntimidity, he resolved to wait for some other act on the part of M. Simon\nwhich might be made the immediate ground for his dismissal.\n\nHe had not long to wait. During the next few days the sittings of the\nChamber were characterized by great excitement and tumult. M. Simon was\nmade the target of continual attacks; he was accused of having formerly\nbelonged to the International Society, and of having been morally in\nleague with the Communists who assassinated the Archbishop of Paris. He\ndefended himself with vehemence, but his affiliation with the Gambetta\nfaction became daily more apparent. He promised to draw up and send to\nthe bishops a stringent circular, warning them that they would be held\nto a strict responsibility for all their future acts. The Committee of\nthe Budget, on the 12th of May, reported in favor of according the sum\nannually paid for the support of the church, $10,626,199; but it\naccompanied this recommendation with the remark that it was now the duty\nof the government to revive and enforce a number of obsolete and almost\nforgotten laws which had been enacted, from time to time, by various\ngovernments which had desired to enslave the church. If these obsolete\nenactments should now be enforced, no French bishop could visit Rome\nwithout the consent of the government; no subscriptions for the Pope\ncould be raised in France; no papal brief or bull could enter France,\nand no council or diocesan synod could assemble, without the consent of\nthe government; and the ecclesiastical seminaries would be compelled to\nteach that the civil government is supreme in all things. M. Simon, it\nwas understood, was about to enforce these unjust and virtually\nabrogated restrictions, and the Gambettists were in high feather. But\ntheir exultation was soon to be changed into disappointment and rage.\n\nThe Chamber of Deputies had before it a bill modifying the organization\nof municipalities, and another measure for the repeal of the law on the\nrestrictions of the press which had been passed two years ago to secure\nsocial order. The cabinet had consulted upon these measures and had\nagreed upon the line which the ministers should take in opposing them.\nTo this agreement M. Simon was a consenting party; it was well\nunderstood between him and the marshal that when these measures came up\nfor decision M. Simon should explain that the government could not\nconsent to them. But the new masters of M. Simon held him to the\nengagement he had made with them; and when these measures were brought\nforward M. Simon found it convenient to be absent from the Chamber, and\nthe government was again betrayed. The patience of Marshal MacMahon was\nnow exhausted; he was perhaps glad that M. Simon had so soon furnished\nhim with a sufficient reason for his dismissal. Early on the morning of\nMay 16 the marshal, having, it is said, passed a sleepless night,\naddressed the following note to M. Simon, and sent it to him without\nconsulting with any of the other members of the government:\n\n    \u201cI have read in the _Journal Officiel_ the report of last night\u2019s\n    proceedings in the Chamber of Deputies. I observed with surprise\n    that neither you nor the Keeper of the Seals put forward from the\n    tribune the reasons which might have prevented the repeal of a press\n    law, passed less than two years ago on the motion of M. Dufaure, and\n    which you yourself quite recently wished to see applied in the\n    courts of law. And yet it had been decided in several meetings of\n    the cabinet, and indeed in the council held yesterday morning, that\n    you and the Keeper of the Seals should undertake to oppose the\n    motion for the repeal of the law.... In view of such an attitude on\n    the part of the chief of the cabinet, the question naturally arises\n    whether he retains sufficient influence to assert his views\n    successfully, An explanation on this point is indispensable; for I\n    myself, although not, like you, answerable to Parliament, have a\n    responsibility towards France which to-day more than ever must\n    engross my attention.\u201d\n\nM. Simon, upon receiving this note, saw that between his two stools he\nhad fallen to the ground; but he made one more effort to again deceive\nthe marshal. He repaired to the Elys\u00e9e with a letter of resignation in\nhis pocket; but before presenting it he asked the marshal if it were not\npossible that they should continue to act together. \u201cNo,\u201d was the reply.\n\u201cI have gone as far as I can possibly go in the wake of you and your\nallies; I shall go no further.\u201d M. Simon then presented his letter of\nresignation, which was composed mainly of rather lame excuses for his\nabsence from the Chamber on the two occasions complained of by the\nmarshal. Immediately afterwards the other members of the cabinet\nresigned, in order to leave the marshal full liberty of action; and by\nthe time the Gambettists had eaten their breakfasts they learned that\nthey had overshot the mark, and that, instead of forcing Marshal\nMacMahon to accept their revolutionary programme, they had driven him to\ndismiss from his councils the man on whom they most relied, and in all\nprobability to surround himself with men whom they could neither\nfrighten nor purchase.\n\nThe excitement among all the members of the Assembly was great as the\nnews spread; and a meeting of the Gambettists was called for the same\nevening, at which a line of action was laid down. One of the first\nthings to be done, it was agreed, was to use the machinery at their\ndisposal \u201cin order properly to inspire foreign public opinion,\u201d so that\nit might react upon France; and during the night \u201cthe republican leaders\nsent to foreign journals instructions to insert opinions upon the\ncrisis\u201d which would have the effect of alarming the marshal by holding\nup before him the threat of the displeasure of Germany and Italy. The\nLondon journals were especially inspired in this sense; and it was thus\nthat our own journals, re-echoing this echo of the Gambetta caucus, gave\ntheir readers the idea that Marshal MacMahon had dismissed his cabinet\nin order to destroy the republic and to engage at once in a war against\nItaly for the restoration of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. The\nsession of the Chamber of Deputies on the 17th was excited; and M.\nGambetta once more demonstrated the foolishness of those who, deceived\nby his affected moderation and calmness during the last two years, had\nbelieved that this _fou furieux_ had become a decent and practical\nstatesman. He moved the resolution which had been adopted at the caucus\nthe preceding night, and supported it in a speech full of fire and\nvenom. The resolution, which the Chamber accepted by a vote of 355\nagainst 154, simply declared that \u201cthe confidence of the majority can\nonly be enjoyed by a cabinet which is free in its action and resolved to\ngovern in accordance with republican principles, which can alone secure\norder and prosperity at home and abroad\u201d\u2014words with which no one can\nfind fault. But M. Gambetta, giving full vent to his rage at finding\nhimself foiled at the very moment when he was dreaming of victory,\ndeclared that the dismissal of M. Simon had been brought about by the\nintrigues of \u201ca secret influence with which no ministry could cope.\u201d\n\n    \u201cIt is not true,\u201d he cried, \u201cthat the President of the republic\n    bears a responsibility over and above that of the ministry. We must\n    recall him to an exact observance of the constitution, and deliver\n    him from perfidious counsels. The country wishes to be rid of the\n    nightmare of those men of reaction who show their livid faces at all\n    moments of uncertainty. If the Chambers are dissolved we have no\n    fear of the result, but the country may see in it a prelude to war.\n    Criminals are those who would provoke it.\u201d\n\nNo one thinks of provoking war save M. Gambetta and his friends, and\nthey are the only criminals. Marshal MacMahon was not at all dismayed by\nthis loud talk; on the same evening the new cabinet was announced. The\nDuke Decazes and General Berthaut, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of\nWar in the former cabinet, retained their portfolios; the Duke de\nBroglie was made President of the Council and Minister of Justice; M. de\nFourtou, Minister of the Interior; M. Caillaux, Minister of Finance; M.\nParis, Minister of Public Works; M. de Meaux, Minister of Agriculture;\nand M. Brunet, Minister of Public Instruction. The cabinet is a\nhomogeneous and a respectable one; as long as it remains in office the\ncountry may be certain, at least, that order will be maintained and that\nthe plots of the Reds will be frustrated. During the morning of the 18th\nthe Gambettists were very busy in preparing to give battle to the new\ncabinet. But they found themselves again disconcerted by the firmness of\nthe President, who, exercising his constitutional right, sent a message\nto both houses, adjourning their session until the 16th of June. In this\nmessage Marshal MacMahon explains that he has scrupulously conformed to\nthe constitution. He appointed the cabinets of M. Dufaure and of M.\nSimon with the object of placing himself in accord with the majority in\nthe Chamber; but neither of these cabinets were able to unite in the\nChamber a majority capable of causing constitutional and proper ideas to\nprevail.\n\n    \u201cI could not,\u201d the marshal went on to say, \u201ctake a further step on\n    the same path without making an appeal to the republican fraction\n    which desires a radical modification of all our institutions. My\n    conscience and my patriotism do not permit me to associate myself\n    even distantly with the triumph of these ideas, which can only\n    engender disorder and the humiliation of France; and so long as I\n    hold power I shall use it within legal limits to prevent that\n    consummation, for it would be the ruin of the country. But I am\n    convinced the country thinks as I do. It was not the triumph of\n    these theories which the country desired at the last elections, when\n    all the candidates availed themselves of my name. If it were to be\n    again interrogated it would repudiate such a confusion of ideas. I\n    am firmly resolved to respect and maintain the existing institutions\n    of the country. Until 1880 I can propose no modification, and\n    contemplate nothing of the kind. In order to allow the excitement to\n    calm down, I invite you to suspend your sittings for one month. You\n    will then be able to discuss the Budget. In the meantime we will\n    watch over the maintenance of public peace. We will suffer nothing\n    at home tending to compromise it; and it will be maintained abroad,\n    I am confident, notwithstanding the agitations which disturb a\n    portion of Europe, thanks to our good relations with all the powers\n    and our policy of neutrality and abstention. On this point all\n    parties are agreed, and the new cabinet holds the same views as the\n    old. If any imprudence in the language of the press compromises the\n    concord which we all desire, I shall repress it by legal means. To\n    prevent this I appeal to that patriotism which is wanting in no\n    class in France.\u201d\n\nViolent were the scenes in both Chambers when this message was read, but\nthey were cut short by the firmness of the new ministers. M. Gambetta\nattempted to speak; his voice was drowned by shouts of \u201cDown with the\nDictator!\u201d In the Senate M. Simon essayed to deliver an oration, but the\nDuke de Broglie announced that no one could speak, as the President had\nadjourned the session. The houses separated in confusion, and the\nGambettists occupied themselves during the next few days in issuing\ninflammatory appeals to the country. The new government began without\ndelay the task of strengthening itself by the removal of disaffected\nprefects, sub-prefects, and other department officials, and this work\nhas been carried out with the same thoroughness that is displayed in our\nown country after a radical administrative change.\n\nAll this is the prelude to an appeal to the country in the shape of a\ngeneral election for a new Assembly. The people will be summoned to\ndecide, not whether they wish a republic or a monarchy, but whether the\nrepublic shall be entrusted to the extreme radical party or to those who\ncan and will save France from the ruin into which Gambetta and his crew\nwould engulf it. The decision will be waited for with anxiety, but\nwithout fear on our part. The French people, we believe, are sound at\nheart, and have no wish to resign themselves into the hands of men who\nfear not God nor regard man save as a convenient tool for their own\nends. Meanwhile, however, the utmost circumspection should be exercised\nby the new government. Prince Bismarck is enraged when he sees France\nstrengthening herself; he is delighted when he beholds her weakening\nherself by internal dissensions. Thus growls of displeasure at the check\ngiven to the Gambetta party have already been heard from Berlin, and the\nGerman press has been instructed to represent that the new French\nadministration intends \u201cto restore the Papacy through the humiliation of\nGermany.\u201d The Italian government, troubled with a bad conscience,\nindulges in similar anticipations; and the first duty of the Duke\nDecazes has been to reassure these cabinets and to point out that the\nFrench government wishes simply to devote itself to the domestic\ninterests and safety of France. We believe that this is the plain truth.\nIf Marshal MacMahon and his present advisers are sustained, France will\nbe saved from domestic ruin, and her salvation will go far towards\nchecking the revolution in other countries.\n\nThe time will come, no doubt, when France will again assert herself in\nEuropean affairs, but with a wisdom gathered from her terrible reverses\nand humiliation. For those reverses she had no one but herself to blame.\nThey were the bitter fruit of an overweening pride, and of the desertion\nof those eternal principles of justice and right, and of the faith that\nembodies them, close adherence to which alone makes nations truly great.\nFrance is coming back to her faith, and with her faith will return her\ngreatness, her nationality, her life. Before, however, she can make her\nvoice heard in Europe she must speak in clear, calm, and not discordant\ntones. She must be united in herself, one nation, one people, with one\nheart and one soul. It is this that Germany dreads of all things, and\nconsequently the threats and intrigues of Germany and Italy will be\nexerted to the utmost in aid of Gambetta and his faction, who, indeed,\nhave much strength of their own. While we are far from thinking that the\ncontest will be an easy one, we have little doubt as to the final issue.\nThe republic of order in France is the Catholic republic. The French\nnation is Catholic. All the real glories of France are indissolubly\nlinked with the Catholic name. Her greatest disasters are as fatally\nlinked with the party of which Gambetta is to-day the ostensible leader.\nIt is time for Catholic France to gather herself together and arise in a\nstrength that she never before had the opportunity of possessing. The\nway is open. She stands now quite untrammelled from alliances with any\ndynasty or name. Her fate lies in her own hands, and the honest soldier\nwho has guarded so well her truest interests will not betray the trust\nplaced in him by his countrymen.\n\n                           NEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\n    LIFE OF THE VEN. CLEMENT MARY HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. By the Author of the\n    Life of Catharine McAuley, etc. New York: The Catholic Publication\n    Society. 1877.\n\nFather Hofbauer was a second St. Alphonsus in the Congregation of the\nRedemptorist fathers, and the founder of the institute as existing\noutside of Italy. He will probably be canonized; and it would not be a\nmatter of surprise if the veneration for his memory in Austria and the\nneighboring countries, in case this solemn recognition is accorded to\nhis sanctity by the Holy See, should equal that for St. Vincent de Paul\nin France. He was a plain, simple man, of humble origin, moderate parts\nand learning, but truly angelic purity and miraculous sanctity. The\ninfluence he obtained and the good he accomplished are simply wonderful.\nThe history of his life is graphically portrayed by the religious lady\nwho has written his biography. We could wish that every priest and every\necclesiastical student in the United States might read it. The scandal\nand mischief wrought by perverse men of brilliant intellectual gifts,\nlike Gioberti and D\u00f6llinger, by apostate princes, faithless prelates,\nand unworthy or careless priests, are best repaired by such worthy\nsuccessors of the apostles as the Venerable Father Hofbauer. The study\nof their characters and actions is better than the most thorough course\nof polemics, as an antidote to every kind of pseudo-Catholic liberalism.\n\n\n    THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. By Arthur George Knight, of the\n    Society of Jesus. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.\n\nChristopher Columbus is, and always will remain, one of the greatest\nfigures in history and one of the grandest of Catholic heroes. He may be\nsaid to have passed through all human experience. He was born in poverty\nand schooled in poverty. His days were cast in one of those eventful\nperiods in the world\u2019s history when \u201cthe old order changeth, yielding to\nthe new.\u201d With ideas in his mind just beyond his time, and convinced\nhimself of their truth and power, he had to struggle hopelessly for\nyears under the most adverse circumstances before he could imbue other\nminds with the ideas that possessed him. He could only think and talk\nand plan. He was powerless to act, for lack of means. He had the\nsatisfaction of being regarded as a dreamer by the enlightened men of\nhis time. At last his ideas prevailed, and resulted in the discovery of\na new world.\n\nThen came his hour of triumph\u2014a triumph unparalleled in history; and\nafter it, more bitter than his early struggles upwards, ingratitude,\ncontempt, chains, and misery. There is nothing more romantic than this\nstory, nothing fraught with more solemn lessons. Through all, through\ntriumph as through adversity, through poverty as through greatness,\nstands out the true Catholic, who cherished his faith above all things,\nwho in all things looked first to the greater glory of God, and who from\nfirst to last lived the life of a practical Catholic. Indeed he was\ntruly a holy man, and strong efforts are now being made for his\ncanonization.\n\nIt seems strange that this great Catholic figure should have fallen so\ncompletely into Protestant hands. There are admirable histories of him\nin English, works that have won deserved fame for their authors, but\nthey are all written by Protestants, who, however well disposed they may\nbe, must in the nature of things make mistakes when treating of Catholic\nsubjects. Grave mistakes have been made, not by Protestants alone, but\nby Catholics also, in the story of Columbus\u2019 life. It is with a view to\nrectify these mistakes, and to present to the Catholic reader the true\nstory of a most important, edifying, and interesting life that Father\nKnight has written the present volume. He has done his work thoroughly\nwell, and we have no doubt that the book will become a favorite with all\nclasses of Catholic readers.\n\n\n    BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF DISTINGUISHED MARYLANDERS. By Esmeralda\n    Boyle, author of _Thistledown_, _Felice_, etc. Baltimore: Kelly,\n    Piet & Co. 1877.\n\nThis little volume is replete with interest. It recalls in graceful\nlanguage the memory of men who have honored by their upright lives and\nheroic actions the gallant State that gave them birth. It is no small\nboast for Maryland that no State in the Union has produced more men\ndistinguished for their ability, patriotism, and, above all, a\nhigh-toned chivalry which could never stoop to aught having the flavor\nof dishonor about it. These were the men who first won for our country\nthe recognition of European scholars and statesmen. Their lofty\nprinciples, their graceful accomplishments, their scholarly attainments,\nand their dauntless courage drew on them the eyes of the world, and\nearned for their mother State the proud reputation she now enjoys. From\nthe time that Lord Baltimore landed on her shores to the present day no\npublic man has disgraced the fair record or blurred a page of the\nhistory of Maryland. And, indeed, the beginning of her civilized days\nwas an eminently fit prelude to her whole subsequent career. From out of\nthe first colony established on the banks of the Chesapeake flowed the\ndoctrines of religious toleration and equal religious rights to all men\nirrespective of clime and color, at a moment when witch-burning fires\nlighted up the settlements of Massachusetts. The Indians of those times\nfor once felt that Christianity and civilization were blessings and not\na cloak to avarice and tyranny. \u201cFrom the records left to us,\u201d says Miss\nBoyle, \u201cit is evident that these teachers endeavored by all mild and\nlawful means to elevate the hearts of the Indians to a knowledge of the\ntrue God. The Indian of the present day, dwelling on the border-lands of\ncivilization, deems the white man a traitor to his word, an enemy to the\nIndian race, and a breaker of compacts, whose perfidy must be retaliated\nupon the innocent by fire and _tomahawks_. This is rather a sad\ncommentary upon the savage or the Christian of our times. Which is it?\u201d\n\nMiss Boyle appropriately begins her series of biographical sketches with\na notice of that truly grand historic figure, Daniel Dulany, the Nestor\nof the Maryland bar. The unflinching advocate of probity and truth, and\na strong friend of freedom, he distinguished himself fitly for the first\ntime by counselling opposition to the famous Stamp Act. His eloquence\nand fearlessness greatly helped the cause of the Revolution; for\nalthough he opposed immediate separation from England, his burning words\nkindled the fires of opposition to British rule. The name _parce\ndetortum_ is the same as Delany and indicates the Irish stock whence he\nsprang.\n\nThe paper on Charles Carroll of Carrollton is extremely interesting. It\npresents a very life-like picture of that great patriot, statesman, and\ndevout Catholic. We behold the courtly and polished gentleman, tinged\nwith the airs and manners of an education acquired in the gay capital of\nFrance. And though fashionable Paris was at that time the hotbed of\ninfidelity, and Voltaire ruled supreme, young Carroll never became so\nimbued with the madness of the hour as to abandon the strong Catholic\nprinciples and spirit pious parents and teachers had early implanted in\nhis heart. His name will ever remain an honor to his native State, and\nhis virtues and loftiness of character an incentive to her children to\ncling to the highest standard of a true gentleman\u2019s life.\n\nIt is evident that Miss Boyle had abundant materials at hand, for she is\nconstrained at times to sacrifice method to condensation; and this,\nperhaps, is the worst that can be said of her interesting volume. The\nsketch of the Most Reverend John Carroll, first Archbishop of Baltimore,\nis illustrative of this defect. The writer labored under an _embarras de\nrichesses_, and passes too brusquely from one incident to another.\n\nIt is not generally known, nor does Miss Boyle make mention of the fact,\nwhich has been already announced in this magazine, that at the time when\nJohn Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was supplicating George III. to\nsend more troops to America for the purpose of suppressing the unholy\nrebellion against his majesty\u2019s benign sway, Father John Carroll, the\nJesuit priest, was on a mission to Canada, seeking the non-intervention\nof that colony in the efforts of the States to free themselves from the\nyoke of British tyranny. And yet it is almost a Methodist article of\nfaith that the Jesuits have ever been the enemies of the republic, and\nthe sons of John Wesley its warmest friends.\n\nWilliam Pinkney, one of Maryland\u2019s most gifted sons, whose eloquence\nranks him with Pitt, Fox, and Burke, receives a most fitting tribute\nfrom the pen of Miss Boyle. The history of this wonderful man should be\nknown and closely studied by the young men of our time; for few lives\nexhibit a more perfect pattern of true manliness. His struggles against\nearly poverty and the numerous difficulties attending the efforts to\nacquire knowledge in those times gave earnest of his future success in\nlife. The late venerable Chief-Justice Taney spoke of him in these\nwords: \u201cI have heard almost all the great advocates of the United\nStates, both of the past and present generation, but I have seen none\nequal to Pinkney.\u201d Rufus King, having once listened to him exclaimed in\na burst of enthusiasm \u201cthat the speech of Pinkney had enlarged his\nadmiration of the capacity of the human mind.\u201d Of such men is Maryland\njustly proud, and Miss Boyle has performed a timely and praiseworthy\ntask in having brought us face to face with the heroes of a past\ngeneration, whose memory their native State should ever delight to\nhonor.\n\n\n    SIDONIE. (Fromont Jeune et Risler A\u00een\u00e9.) From the French of Alphonse\n    Daudet. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. 1877.\n\nWe understand that this story has had an enormous circulation in France.\nThis circulation we are inclined to attribute rather to the author\u2019s\nname than to any special excellence in the book itself. Alphonse Daudet\nis one of the pet French novelists of the day, and it takes much to\ndestroy a well-earned reputation. _Sidonie_ is a repulsive story, told\nwith great skill, and embellished throughout by those thousand and one\ndelicate artistic touches, lights and shades, of which French writers\nalone seem to possess the secret. M. Daudet is actuated by the very\nlaudable design of punishing vice, and showing in a very strong and real\nlight the awful, the tragic misery it brings upon the vicious and the\ngood alike. All very well. Novelists, however, who take up this kind of\ntheme\u2014and many are very fond of it\u2014have an unpleasant and untrue habit\nof making their good people fools or simpletons. It seems to us that, as\na rule, good people, particularly good women, are remarkably keen in\ndetecting falsehood and scenting rascality. In _Sidonie_ it is all the\nother way. One detestable little wretch of a woman, who has not half an\nounce of good in her whole system, sets all the good people by the ears,\ndestroys the peace of happy families, ruins a great business-house,\ncauses the suicide of several excellent and very charming characters,\nand ends by retiring to that kingdom from which she should never have\nbeen called\u2014Bohemia.\n\nIt seems to us a pity that an author of such real power and skill in\ndelineation of character and plot as M. Daudet should waste himself on\nthe unutterably mean. We are not of the opinion that this world is given\nover to the dominion of the devil and his servants. It is not heaven to\nany of us; yet as between the good and the bad, all things considered,\nwe believe that the good have the best of the battle even in this life.\nOf course novel-readers must have their villain, male or female; and the\nfemale villain must, of course, be very, very bad. Their viciousness,\nhowever, could be shown sufficiently, and the lesson it entails\ninculcated, without making them the pivots on which the world turns. It\nis the noble, not the ignoble, who really move the world; and until the\nrace of the noble is exhausted, novelists may as well draw their heroes\nand heroines from that class. At least we object to their being for ever\ndepicted as fools.\n\nThe translation of _Sidonie_ is admirable. It is from the graceful and\ncultivated pen of Mrs. Mary Neale Sherwood.\n\n\n    LEGENDS OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. Gathered from the History of the\n    Church and the Lives of the Saints. By Emily Mary Shapcote. London:\n    Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)\n\nThis is in every sense a most beautiful and attractive volume. The\nauthor has collected a large number of legends connected with the\nBlessed Sacrament. These are abundantly and very handsomely illustrated,\nand the letter-press itself is admirable. There is much more, however,\nthan legends in the volume. The devotion of the church to the Blessed\nSacrament is traced down to the very days of the apostles, verified by\nample quotations, and illustrated by pictures taken from the Catacombs\nand the earlier monuments of Christian art. This is indeed an excellent\nand most valuable feature of the work. The whole is in keeping. The\ndevotion is brought up to our own days, and its wonderful growth and\ndevelopment brought out in a clear and most interesting manner. The\nauthor has done her work skilfully, gracefully, and reverently. The\nadmirable preface shows how much she is inspired by real love for and\ndevotion to the Blessed Sacrament. The last picture in the volume is a\nlarge and admirably-executed portrait of our Holy Father Pope Pius IX.\n\n\n    THE DISCIPLINE OF DRINK: An Historical Inquiry into the principles\n    and practice of the Catholic Church regarding the use, abuse, and\n    disuse of alcoholic liquors, especially in England, Ireland, and\n    Scotland, from the sixth to the sixteenth century. By the Rev. T. E.\n    Bridgett, of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. With an\n    introductory letter to the author by His Eminence Cardinal Manning,\n    Archbishop of Westminster. London: Burns & Oates. 1877.\n\nThe best notice we can give of this valuable work will be to make a few\nextracts from Cardinal Manning\u2019s letter. His Eminence says it is \u201cthe\nfirst attempt to collect the counsels and judgments of Catholic pastors\nand writers on the use of wine and on the sin of drunkenness.\u201d He\nbelieves the book will be \u201cof signal use in clearing away a multitude of\nprejudices, and perhaps some more reasonable censures, which have\nimpeded the efforts we are making to check the spread of intoxication.\u201d\nThese \u201cmore reasonable censures\u201d have been called forth by the words and\nacts of associations not in the unity of the Catholic Church, and\nparticularly by Catholics having joined such societies and adopted their\n\u201cwild talk, worthy of the Manichees.\u201d Father Bridgett\u2019s book, then,\n\u201cwill show how broadly the Catholic Church has always taught the\nlawfulness of using all things that God has made, in all their manifold\ncombinations, so long as we use them in conformity to the law of God.\nDrunkenness is not the sin of drink, but of the drunkard.\u201d On the other\nhand, \u201cin every utterance of the church, and in every page of Holy\nScripture, wine is surrounded with warnings,\u201d says his Eminence, and\nadds that our author has \u201cdone well to point out that a new and more\nformidable agent of intoxication even than wine has in the last three\ncenturies confirmed its grasp, chiefly upon the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon\nraces.\u201d So that \u201cno exact precedents can be found in the past action of\nthe church as to the way of dealing with an evil new in its kind, and so\nfar more formidable both in its spread and in its intensity\u201d; while at\nthe same time \u201cthe principles of the church are always the same, and, in\nbringing forth things new and old, forms may vary, but the mind and\naction are immutable.\u201d The cardinal then proceeds to give his own views\nof what should be done. He is in favor of \u201ca widely-extended\norganization,\u201d and advocates total abstinence as the only hope for\nmultitudes, and a specially meritorious act of self-denial in those who\ndo not need it themselves, but embrace it for the sake of others.\nBut\u2014and to this we would call particular attention\u2014the \u201cwidely-extended\norganization\u201d should comprise, in his opinion, those who are not total\nabstainers. He expresses satisfaction at Father Bridgett having quoted\nin the appendix some words of his own. We quote them, too, because we\nmost heartily agree with them: \u201cNow, my dear friends, listen! I will go\nto my grave without tasting intoxicating liquors; but I repeat\ndistinctly that any man who should say that the use of wine or any other\nlike thing is sinful when it does not lead to drunkenness, that man is a\nheretic condemned by the Catholic Church. With that man I will never\nwork. Now, I desire to promote total abstinence in every way that I can.\nI will encourage all societies of total abstainers. But the moment I see\nmen not charitable attempting to trample down those who do not belong to\nthe total abstainers, from that moment I will not work with those men. I\nwould have _two kinds of pledge_: one for the mortified who never taste\ndrink, and the other for the temperate who never abuse it. If I can make\nthese two classes work together, I will work in the midst of them. If I\ncannot get them to work together, I will work with both of them\nseparately.\u201d\n\nFather Bridgett has given in his appendix \u201ca summary of the principal\nCatholic organizations which have lately been set on foot in these\ncountries\u201d (England, Ireland, and Scotland). Some of these organizations\ninclude _partial_ abstinence in their rules. Another society is\nmentioned as existing in some parts of Germany, and approved by His\nHoliness Pius IX. and enriched with indulgences. The members of this\nlast promise total abstinence from _distilled_ liquors, and _sobriety_\nin the use of _fermented_ drinks.\n\nWe hope this labor of love from the pen of Father Bridgett will have the\ncirculation it deserves.\n\n\n    SPIRIT INVOCATIONS; or, Prayers and Praises publicly offered at the\n    _Banner of Light_ circle-room free meetings by more than one hundred\n    different spirits, of various nationalities and religions, through\n    the vocal organs of the late Mrs. J. H. Conant. Compiled by Allen\n    Putnam, A.M., author of _Bible Marvel-Workers_, _Natty: a Spirit_,\n    etc. Boston: Colby & Rich. 1876.\n\n_Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat_ would be an appropriate motto\nfor this hodge-podge of nonsense and lunacy. Imagine a sane man being\ncalled on to believe that he is listening to prayers offered by the\nspirits of Tom Paine and Cardinal Cheverus through the same set of\n\u201cvocal organs\u201d! It is evident that the \u201cprayers\u201d were all ground from\none mill, as there is the utmost sameness pervading them. Tom Paine\ncondescending to come down from the pedestal of his celestial greatness,\nand praying with unctuous fervor to the God he blasphemed on earth, is a\nspectacle highly refreshing; but more astonishing still is it to find\nhim surpass Father de Smet and Cardinal Cheverus in the ecstatic\nintensity of a mystical devotion. \u201cWe pray not for more blessings,\u201d\nexclaims the pious Thomas; \u201cwe only pray that we may appreciate those\nalready received; and when we lift up our souls in prayer, asking that\nthy kingdom may come on the earth, we do but ask that thy children in\nmortal may know themselves and their relations to thee.\u201d\n\nIt is evident that the author of the _Age of Reason_ has materially\nchanged his \u201cspirit\u201d since he exuviated his mortal coil, or perhaps he\nhas deftly substituted that of Mr. Putnam, A.M., for his own. This, we\nrather suspect, is the case. Theodore Parker, too, has been to\ncamp-meeting up above; for a great change has come over the \u201cspirit\u201d of\nthe frigid founder of New England transcendentalism. He prays with a\n_vim_ that no leader of a revival at Sea Cliff or Sing Sing could ever\nhope to emulate, and appears shamefully unlike the Rev. O. B.\nFrothingham\u2019s ideal of a hero. Some of the prayers are quite touching,\nand sound as if they had been pilfered from Catholic books of devotion.\n\n\n    KNOWN TOO LATE. By the author of _Tyborne_, _Irish Homes and Irish\n    Hearts_, etc., etc. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1877.\n\nThis little volume bears the impress of patient and painstaking care.\nThe author is the happy possessor of a pure and pleasant style, and yet\nthrows off nothing carelessly, as too many with facile pens are disposed\nto do. The narrative is done in subdued colors, and nowhere is good\ntaste shocked by the utterance of extravagant or whimsical sentiments.\n\nThe plot of the story unfolds itself quite naturally, and, though the\n_d\u00e9no\u00fbment_ is a hard one to bring about, it is done so ingeniously as\nnot to appear at all violent. We can conscientiously say of this little\nbook that it is a shade in advance of Catholic stories generally and is\nwell deserving a perusal.\n\n\n    THE PARADISE OF THE CHRISTIAN SOUL. By James Merlo Herstius, of the\n    Church of the B. Virgin Mary in Pasculo Pastoris, at Cologne. A new\n    and complete translation. By lawful authority. London: Burns &\n    Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)\n\nA most complete manual of prayer for ordinary use. One cannot tire of\nit. The present edition is illustrated; but the illustrations might\neasily have been improved.\n\n\n\n\n                          THE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n                   VOL. XXV., No. 149.\u2014AUGUST, 1877.\n\n\n            THE POLITICAL CRISIS IN FRANCE AND ITS BEARINGS.\n\n\n                          I.\u2014QUESTION STATED.\n\n\nThe attention of the world at large is at present fastened on two\nimportant movements\u2014the war between Russia and Turkey and the recent\npolitical changes in France. Both of these have the same origin, but the\naspect of each is different. No one will dispute that both are fraught\nwith most momentous interests, that their development will be watched\nwith great concern, and that it is not impossible that their final issue\nmay change the religious features no less than the territorial limits of\nEurope.\n\nOur purpose in this article is to confine the attention of our readers\nto the affairs of France; not with the design of narrating the\nsuccessive events which brought about the present crisis,[93] but with a\nview to the principles involved in the struggle and their bearing on the\ngreat interests of Europe, actual and prospective.\n\nFootnote 93:\n\n  See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877: \u201cMarshal MacMahon and the French\n  Revolutionists.\u201d\n\nWhat agitates France at this moment is not an \u201cultramontane\u201d and\n\u201cclerical intrigue\u201d to restore \u201cthe temporal princedom of the Pope,\u201d or\nan \u201canti-republican\u201d plot of legitimists to place Henry V. on the throne\nof his ancestors, as our daily newspapers of all political parties and\nthe weekly Protestant journals of every sect would have the public\nbelieve. The real political leaders in France today are representative\nof none of these parties, nor are they champions of their distinctive\nprinciples or advocates of their cherished measures. They have other\nfish to fry. Some of the newspaper writers and correspondents would\npersuade their readers that the change of front in France by the\ngovernment is owing to the influence exerted by Madame MacMahon over the\nPresident of the Republic, her husband. Drowning men catch at straws,\nand men who lack common sense clutch at any flimsy pretext to bolster up\na foolish project.\n\nThe day of the supremacy of such influence in great state affairs is\ngone by; and, even were it not, the character of the men engaged in this\nweighty piece of political strategy is not made of stuff that would\nincline them to be led by the nose by a woman, whatever may be her\nreputation for piety or her supposed or declared inclinations for\nlegitimacy. We venture the opinion that the most estimable Christian\nwife of the Marshal-President of the Republic of France is not wasting\nher time in fruitless political intrigues, but employs it better in\ntelling her beads, in taking care of her children, and in works of\ncharity to her neighbor. All these are random shots.\n\nThe raising of such false issues, however, serves the purpose of their\ninventors in throwing the public attention off the true scent, and\nthereby prolonging the opportunity for them to invent new schemes\nagainst public order and society under the restored leadership of the\noctogenarian, M. Thiers. This was their man\u0153uvre in 1871, and \u201cPrince\nBismarck regretted the fall of M. Thiers, because he would have\ninfallibly thrown France into the arms of M. Gambetta and anarchy.\u201d[94]\nThey also afford them additional chances of escape from the due and\ncertain punishment which is impending over them.\n\nFootnote 94:\n\n  See Count von Arnim\u2019s pamphlet, _Pro Nihilo_.\n\nThese pretexts show also the craft of those who make them and the\nsimplicity of their dupes. For they are well aware that there is a large\nclass of persons, especially in Protestant communities, whose\nprepossessions are stronger than their attachment to Christianity, and\nthere are no absurdities too great for them to swallow, provided only\nyou bait them with the cry of \u201cPopery!\u201d \u201cVaticanism!\u201d \u201cClericalism!\u201d As\nfor those who are caught by the cry of \u201canti-republicanism,\u201d they appear\nnot to understand that a king without the popular instincts of a people\nin his favor is a mere cipher, and that the age is past and never again\nto return, at least in Europe, when, as an Eastern despot, the king dare\nsay: \u201c_L\u2019Etat, c\u2019est moi_.\u201d\n\nThe transformation that has taken place in the nations of Europe, the\nexpansion of their narrow lines of policy into broader political\nprinciples, has been so rapid and powerful that its force in our day has\npassed beyond all possible human control. These principles have become\nprofound convictions, and for not heeding them the people of France\ndethroned Charles X. and Louis Philippe; and were Henry V. placed to-day\nupon the throne of France with the intention of attempting to restore\nthe ancient _r\u00e9gime_, it would be as vain, even though he should have\nMarshal MacMahon and the army at his command to back him, as an effort\nto stem and throw back the mighty torrents that pour their waters over\nthe precipice of Niagara.\n\nThe tendency of modern society to a political equality, without\ndistinction of the privileges of birth or rank, has its root in the\nspirit of Christianity. The Catholic Church, in this sense, is the most\ndemocratic institution that has ever existed upon this earth. There is\nno barrier in the path for its humblest member to become its chief in\npower and dignity. It is not seldom, too, that those who have risen from\nthe lowest walk in life have been elected to this high position. The\nspirit of an age, rightly interpreted, is the breath of the Almighty\nstirring within men\u2019s souls, which finds its utterance in their voices,\neven in spite of themselves. Nowhere has the Catholic Church been given\nsuch fair play, though this is yet imperfect, as in the democratic\nrepublic of the United States. This fact has been recognized by the\nsupreme pastor of the faithful, Pius IX., and again and again he has\ncalled the attention of the world to it.\n\nFrance has the opportunity under the presidency of Marshal MacMahon, if\nshe only knew how to profit by it, of forming a political government\nadapted to the genius and character of her people and in harmony with\nher present wants and future greatness; to govern herself, if she wishes\nit, independently of an emperor or a hereditary monarch; and this task\nwill be accomplished, unless hindered by that enemy of all rational\nliberty\u2014a destructive radicalism. If the young Napoleon, or the Count of\nParis, or Henry V. ascends the throne of France, it will be due to the\nThierses, the Simons, and the Gambettas and their abettors.\n\n\n                    II.\u2014TWO MOVEMENTS IN THE WORLD.\n\n\nThere have been from the beginning only two fundamental movements in\nthis world, and these are becoming in Europe more and more distinct,\npowerful, and antagonistic. The one has its source in the Catholic\nChurch, which is the concrete form of the direct action of God on\nsociety in view of man\u2019s true destination. The other consists in\nrebellion against this divine action, and finds on earth its\nheadquarters and expression in heresies, in despotisms, and, more\nparticularly in recent days, in organized secret societies.\n\n\n                          III.\u2014FIRST MOVEMENT.\n\n\nThe order and stability of modern society and civilization are based\nupon the truths which find their root and support in the doctrines\nunswervingly taught and uncompromisingly upheld by the Catholic Church.\nAmong these great truths are the divinity of Christ and the divine\nestablishment and perpetuity of his church upon earth; the\nunquestionable responsibility of both kings and peoples to the law of\nGod; the indissolubility of the marriage tie and the sacredness of the\nfamily; the reign of the law of justice between man and man, and, when\nviolated, the strict obligation of restitution; the sacredness of oaths\nand the equality of all men, without distinction of rank, color, or\nrace, before God. By the undeviating application of these and other\ngreat first truths of divine revelation and of human reason, at the cost\nof the lives of millions of her children; by withstanding the fierce\nattacks of the barbarians of the northern forests of Europe; by her\ncontest with Mahomet and his followers; and by her resistance to the\nerrors and vices of her inconsistent and disobedient children, the\nCatholic Church formed the conscience of modern society, founded the\nnations of Europe, united them in a universal commonwealth called\nChristendom, in view and as the means of establishing the reign of God\nin men\u2019s souls and upon earth, as preliminary to the kingdom of heaven\nhereafter, issuing finally into the Christian cosmos.\n\nSuch has been the work of the first movement.\n\n\n                          IV.\u2014SECOND MOVEMENT.\n\n\nAll heresies, all despotisms, all secret societies have this postulate\nin common: that the overthrow of the Catholic Church is a _sine qua non_\nto their attaining ultimate success. Hence there is an instinctive and\nunanimous sympathy among their adherents whenever there is an attack\naimed against the Catholic Church\u2014an unmistakable sign of their common\norigin and an unquestionable proof of their parentage. Peoples of\ncountries distinguished for their profession of universal toleration and\nchampionship of the right of every individual to the enjoyment of his\nown religious convictions will applaud to the skies the violation of\nthese principles, provided the persecuted be only Catholics! Every right\nguaranteed by constitutional law, every principle of divine and human\njustice, may be trampled under foot\u2014yea, with sympathy and\napplause\u2014provided those who do so are animated with hatred for the\nCatholic Church! Witness the public sympathy, both in England and the\nUnited States, with the war of imprisonments, fines, and banishments\nwaged against Catholics, with murderous intent against their church, by\nthe \u201ciron and blood\u201d chancellor of the Hohenzollern Empire; witness the\nconfiscations and sacrilegious spoliations by the crew of infidels of\nItaly, led by a Mancini, against the church; witness the banishment of\nall the Catholic priests without exception from its district, in\nviolation of the federal constitution, by the canton of Berne, and the\nrobbery of the churches built by the sacrifices of loyal Catholics,\nwhich are given over to the use of a rebellious and insignificant\nfaction by the authorities of the Swiss so-called republic; witness, to\ncome nearer home, the assassination, by the agents of secret societies,\nof the President of Equador, and, within a few weeks, the poisoning of\nthe Archbishop of Quito at the altar! There are none to raise a voice,\nnot to say a cry of horror or indignation, among these sticklers for\nliberty and justice, in condemnation of this wholesale tyranny, these\ncruel persecutions, and this secret and deadly violence. This is well\nknown by the atheists, who aim at the ruin of all Christian\ninstitutions: that to delude a large class in these so-called\nliberty-loving countries, and gain their sympathy, material aid, and the\nuse and support of their press, all that is required to make them run\nlike an enraged bull at a red rag is to shout lustily, \u201cUltramontanism!\u201d\n\u201cVaticanism!\u201d \u201cPopery!\u201d\n\nHerein lies also the interpretation of the assertion of the governments\nactuated by an anti-Christian spirit and under the influence of members\nof secret societies, to whom they are bound to trim, that the present\nattitude of France is dangerous to the peace of Europe. That is, the\nsecret designs of radicalism are detected, and their plots are in danger\nof being checkmated. \u201cLet the galled jades wince.\u201d At the same time it\ngives the explanation of the motives of Marshal MacMahon, which is\nnothing else than to head off the efforts of these anti-Christian\nconspirators, and prevent France from falling into their hands and the\ncivilized world from witnessing the repetition of the atrocities of the\nCommune of the _petroleuse_ notoriety of 1871. A large portion of the\npeople, and with them the press, of England and the United States, is\nduped by cunning and designing men; and probably, if all were known, a\nportion of Bismarck\u2019s Reptile Fund has found its way to their shores and\ndone some service.\n\nThe present crisis in France is fraught with her deliverance as well as\nthat of Europe from the most desperate and wide-spread organized\nconspiracy that has ever existed in the world. They fail to interpret\nrightly public events and to discern the signs of the times who take it\nto mean anything less than the saving of Christianity and modern\ncivilization in Europe.\n\n                    \u201cLet order die!\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Let one spirit of the first-born Cain\n    Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set\n    On bloody courses, the rude scene may end\n    And darkness be the burier of the dead.\u201d\n\nSuch is their aim, and it is also their undisguised and outspoken word;\nfor these men \u201cknow not how to blush.\u201d[95]\n\nFootnote 95:\n\n  If any of our readers wish authentic information on this point, they\n  will find it abundantly in a book entitled _Les Lib\u00e9raux Peints par\n  Eux-M\u00eames_. Par G. Lebrocquez. Paris: Victor Palm\u00e9, 1876.\n\nAnd these are the chief characteristics of the second movement.\n\n\n                        V.\u2014THE LINES OF BATTLE.\n\n\nThe explosion of the first mine laid by secret societies has been heard\nin the outbreak of the war between Russia and Turkey, if we are to\ncredit Disraeli, than whom no man is in a position to be better informed\nof the decisions gone forth from their secret revolutionary\nheadquarters. Unless thwarted by a counter movement, prompted by the\ninstincts of self-preservation on the part of all the Christian and\nconservative elements of European society, we may expect to hear, as in\n1848, the successive explosions of revolution in Paris, Vienna, Rome,\nMadrid, and Berlin; and being more skilfully planned, and more\nextensively spread, and more powerful, a revolutionary upheaving of the\npopulations in St. Petersburg and London as well as in the lesser\ncentres of Europe, is not improbable.\n\nMen who read in consequences their causes will not fail to see the\nsignificance of the position taken by the President of the Republic of\nFrance; for, whatever may be his reputation as a politician, his\nmilitary sagacity and strategical genius are unquestioned. President\nMacMahon\u2019s change of cabinet is the first declared, earnest, and decided\nstep taken to avert from France and all Europe this great and\nthreatening catastrophe. For Jules Simon surreptitiously attempted to\ninsert the edge of the radical wedge, whose butt end is made up of\nsocialism, communism, and anarchy, into the Republic of France, which M.\nGambetta, his aspiring and designated successor, would have\nenergetically and logically driven home and riven her asunder, to the\ndelight of her enemies and to the advantage of her foes. Let us hope\nthat the President of France has taken time by the forelock.\n\nThe die is cast; there can no longer be any neutrality or secondary\nmotives to divide one\u2019s allegiance between these two distinctly-drawn\ncamps. He is a traitor to Christ and a renegade Christian who stands\naloof or hesitates which side to take when a battle is fairly drawn\nbetween Christianity and atheism. Every Christian, whatever may be his\npeculiar tenets, will make common cause when the primary truths of\ndivine revelation and the first principles of morality are at stake. All\npolitical party designations will be sunk into oblivion by men who\nintelligently and disinterestedly love their country and their race,\nwhen both society and civilization are endangered.\n\nThe present crisis in France is a call to both religion and patriotism,\nin their best and widest sense, to unite in a common defence of their\ntruest and highest interests.\n\nThere is no alternative, and he who does not see this battle imminent in\nEurope is like an officer on board of a ship, lulled in a dream of false\npeace or disputing about the rigging of his vessel when the enemy is\nfastening a torpedo to its bow that will in a few seconds blow them all\ninto atoms and send their vessel to the bottom of the ocean.\n\nThe conservative elements, if not from higher motives, will be forced to\nunite from the instinct of self-preservation to save their property from\nthe _petroleurs_ and their necks from the guillotine.\n\n\n                      VI.\u2014THE ISSUE OF THE BATTLE.\n\n\nThis movement in its weak beginnings in France, regarding only impending\ndangers to the state, will not exhaust itself until it has restored the\nCatholic Church to her normal position in Europe. This final result is\nno more intended by the leaders of the movement than it was the design\nof the Allied Powers to restore the Papacy at the downfall of the first\nNapoleon. It is a divine law that man acts, but God directs.\n\n    \u201cThere\u2019s a divinity that shapes our ends,\n    Rough-hew them how we will.\u201d\n\nThere is, then, this increasing purpose running through the history of\nGod\u2019s dealings with the human race: to bring into clearer light the\ndivine character of his church, his spouse, rendering it less and less\npossible for men to recognize his existence and not be Christians, and,\nbeing Christians, not to be Catholics. This is the key of universal\nhistory.\n\nThere is not an \u201cultramontane,\u201d a \u201cclerical,\u201d or a \u201cpapist,\u201d in the\nsense in which these words are used by those hostile to the actual\nmovement in France; and if its final outcome be favorable to the\nCatholic Church, it is because this is the nature of things.\n\n\n                   VII.\u2014ERRORS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY.\n\n\nEurope for the past century has been in the state of transition to a new\nepoch\u2014a renewal of Catholicity. This statement is in flat contradiction\nwith the assertions of some modern thinkers who claim the title of\nphilosophers. They would have us believe that religious motives\u2014or, as\nthey term it, \u201ctheological motives,\u201d which is the same thing; for\ntheology is nothing else than the scientific statement of religion\u2014are\nexhausted. This is equivalent to saying that human nature is exhausted;\nfor religion is what lies deepest in human nature, and consequently all\nother motives will be exhausted before those of religion.\n\nReligion is the very essence of man\u2019s nature; for it springs from the\nintellectual sense of his entire dependence for existence on an absolute\ncause. Religion is, in its last analysis, reason\u2019s recognition of God\nand man\u2019s fulfilment of his relations to God. Religion and reason are,\ntherefore, correlative.\n\nMen who pretend that religious motives have ceased to have a strong hold\nupon human nature labor under a complete hallucination. First they fancy\nthat those faculties through which God acts on the soul, and which bring\nthe soul in contact with God, have by some strange freak suddenly become\ndefunct. That religious motives to an almost incredible extent have\nbecome extinct in some men\u2019s souls we, with pain and pity, admit; that\nthis is the case with the bulk of mankind is an egregious mistake. There\nhas seldom been an age when religious questions occupied so large a\nshare of intellectual attention as our own; and religious motives still\ninfluence the bulk of mankind in their conduct.\n\nIt is too true, however, that a class of men have fatally succeeded, by\na false education and an erroneous philosophy, in paralyzing the action\nof the noblest faculties of the soul; but this disease is confined to a\nsmall class. Deluded men! they would have the rest of mankind to esteem\ntheir descent as a privilege and count their defect an honor.\n\nThe second form in which the symptoms of this malady manifest themselves\nis the eschewing of the first principles of sound logic. As \u201cGod is a\nprovisionary idea,\u201d or \u201cman\u2019s intuition of himself projected into\nspace,\u201d or \u201cthe creation of a wish\u201d\u2014so runs their premise; and the\nreligious faculties of the soul having become extinct, they jump to the\nmost absurd of all conclusions: \u201cGod is extinct,\u201d \u201cthe soul\u2019s\nimmortality is a fable,\u201d and \u201creligion is a worn-out superstition\u201d! The\ninspired Psalmist wrote in his day that none but \u201cthe fool said in his\nheart, There is no God.\u201d Were he now to come upon earth, he would be\nsurprised to see the fools of his time dressed in the garb of\nphilosophers and proclaiming from the house-tops as the highest wisdom,\n\u201cGod is extinct!\u201d These delirious minds are like the ostrich, which,\nwhen on the point of being captured, blinds its eyes by thrusting its\nhead under the sand, and foolishly fancies, because of its incapacity to\nsee, it has destroyed its pursuers and escaped all danger.\n\n                  \u201cLe nid n\u2019a pas cr\u00e9\u00e9 l\u2019oiseau.\u201d\n\n    \u201cI tell thee, friend, a speculating churl\n    Is like a beast some evil spirit chases\n    Along a barren heath in one perpetual whirl,\n    While round about lie fair, green pasturing places.\u201d\n\nThe eternal God is, and in him is all that lives, moves, and exists, and\nhis providence directs all things to the end for which he called them\ninto existence.\n\nThe world is not out of joint, nor is the responsibility of setting it\nright placed upon the unsteady and feeble shoulders of inventors of\nabsurd religions, the cogitators of false philosophies, or the dreamers\nof sterile Utopias.\n\nGod is not ousted from his creation as easily as these ambitious\nphilosophers, who are so ready to occupy his place in the universe,\nwould have the world believe.\n\n\n                 VIII.\u2014MISTAKE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS.\n\n\nThe mistake of a class of speculative thinkers consists in regarding the\nstate of transition of society from one epoch to another\u2014in interpreting\na phase of religion\u2014as the change and vanishing of the indestructible\nelements of all religion.\n\nA certain class of truths suits one age, awakens the greatest enthusiasm\nand profoundest devotion, and in another epoch falls dead almost upon\nthe ears of men and hardly calls forth an audible response. Epochs\ndiffer from epochs in their aspirations and instincts, like those of\nindividuals; and this is a law of the providential education and growth\nof the human race. One race of men differs from another in its capacity\nto seize hold of, appreciate, and give the proper expression to certain\ntruths, and in turn is brought to the front ranks in the providential\nmarch of humanity. And this is the intention of the Author of the human\nfamily. Men of the same race differ also greatly from each other; for in\nthe wide universe there are no two things in all respects precisely\nalike, and in this is seen displayed God\u2019s creative power.\n\nThese separate epochs, this variety of races, and these differences\namong men afford to Christianity the opportunities and means of giving\nexpression to the great truths contained in all religions of which she\nis the adequate representation. For Christianity is the synthesis of all\nthe scattered truths of every form of religion which has existed from\nthe beginning of the world, and the Catholic Church is its complete\norganic, living form. Christianity is the abstract expression of the\nCatholic Church, which, in the successive centuries of her existence,\nhas come in contact with every race of men, and has known how to\nChristianize and retain them in her fold in harmony with their natural\ninstincts. She has met humanity in every stage of its development, from\nthe intellectual and refined Greek to the man-eating savage, and, by\nworking on the foundations of nature, she has captivated them to the\neasy yoke of Christ. The Catholic Church alone has known how to supply\nthe defects of human nature and correct its vices while giving free play\nto its instincts and retaining the charm of its native originality\u2014not\nby a superior human sagacity or a preternatural craft, as sophists would\nmake the world believe, but because in her dwells that divine Spirit\nwhich breathed into man\u2019s nostrils the breath of life, and made him a\nliving, rational, immortal soul, and in whom he lives, moves, and has\nhis being.\n\nGod is not extinct nor are religious motives effete. The mistake of\nthese theorizers consists in supposing that the present is the finality\nof Christianity, whereas the hand of God is opening the way by purifying\nhis church, by directing the movements of nations and the issues of the\nworld, in order that she may shape the coming future beyond all past\nexperience in her progressive approach to the perfect realization of her\ndivine Ideal.\n\n    \u201cAn age comes on, which came three times of old,\n    When the enfeebled nations shall stand still\n    To be by Christian science shaped at will.\u201d\n\n\n                      IX.\u2014NEW UNITED CHRISTENDOM.\n\n\nAre the intelligent Christians of our day sufficiently aware of the\nserious character and the extent of the dangers which are now impending?\nDo they appreciate the import of the questions which engage and agitate\nthe active intellect of their contemporaries? Are they sensible of the\nweight of their responsibilities, and ready to lift their minds and\nhearts to the grandeur of the mission of the age in which their lot is\ncast?\n\nHe who can see things as they are throughout the world where the\nChristian faith has spread, and appreciate them rightly, cannot help\nseeing that a fresh unfolding of the great design of Christianity in all\nits simplicity, vastness, and splendor, and a stricter application of\nits principles in the several spheres of life, alone are adequate to\nmeet all the genuine aspirations and satisfy the honest demands of this\nage.\n\nThe attack is against the primary truths of reason no less than the\nessential truths of divine revelation, and the defence, to be adequate\nand victorious, must at least be equal to the attack. Thus the law of\nreaction is forcing upon the leading Christian minds a reaffirmation of\nnatural and revealed truths with a completeness and a force which the\nworld has not up to this time witnessed. There can be no compromise with\nthe false principles of atheists in religion, revolutionists in the\nstate, and anarchists in society. Their errors must be refuted and their\nmovements counteracted. The positive side of truth must be brought out\nand clothed in all its beauty. The true picture must be presented and\ncontrasted with the false, so as to captivate the intelligence and\nenlist the enthusiasm of the active minds of the youth of the age. This\nis the great work that, in the economy of God, is mainly left to the\ninitiative of individual minds of the members of his church. It is the\nwork of Catholic genius illuminated by the light and the interior\ninspirations of the working of the Holy Spirit. The Church, in every\ncritical or important epoch in her history, has always given birth to\nprovidential men; these are her Gregories, Augustines, Benedicts,\nBernards, Francises, Neris, Ignatiuses, Vincents of Paul.\n\nAs in the past, so in the present, a new phase of the church will be\npresented to the world\u2014one that will reveal more clearly and completely\nher divine character. \u201cIt is the divine action of the Holy Spirit in and\nthrough the church which gives to her organization the reason for its\nexistence. And it is the fuller explanation of the divine side of the\nchurch, and its relations with the human side, giving always to the\nformer its due accentuation, that will contribute to the increase of the\ninterior life of the faithful, and aid powerfully to remove the\nblindness of those\u2014whose number is much larger than is commonly\nsupposed\u2014who only see the church on her human side.\u201d[96]\n\nFootnote 96:\n\n  _An Exposition of the Church, in view of recent Difficulties and\n  Controversies and the present Need of the Age._ London: Pickering.\n  1875. THE CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1875, p. 128.\n\nThe reintegration into general principles of the scattered truths\ncontained in the religious, social, and political sects and parties of\nour day would reveal to all upright souls their own ideal more clearly\nand completely, and at the same time present to them the practical\nmeasures and force necessary to its realization. By this process sects\nand parties and antagonisms would become as far as possible extinct\u2014not\nby way of antagonism, but by the power of assimilation and attraction.\nJust as the lesser magnet is drawn to the greater by cords of attraction\nidentical with its own, only more intense, more powerful, and\nall-embracing, so the fragmentary truths contained in error, when\nreintegrated in their general principles, will be drawn to them and\ntheir division disappear. Christianity once more will be perfect in one,\nand, uniting its forces for the conversion of the world, will direct\nhumanity as one man to its divine destination.\n\n\n                    X.\u2014THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.\n\n\nIs not such a consummation the answer to the devout aspiration of all\nsincere Christian souls? Is it not also the promise of Christianity, and\nwas it not the object of the most earnest prayer of its Founder when\nupon earth? The Son of God did not pray in vain.\n\nUnderneath all the errors and evils found among men of all times is the\nprime desire for the knowledge of the truth and the native hunger for\nthe good. Now, the absolute truth which contains all truth, and the\nabsolute good which contains the supreme good, is God. God is therefore\nthe ideal of the rational soul, the term of all its seeking, and the end\nof all its wishes. The perfect union of the soul with God is bliss.\n\nAgain, Christianity does not confine itself to the reign of God in the\nsoul; it seeks to establish the reign of God upon earth. \u201cThy kingdom\ncome; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,\u201d was the petition of\nChrist to his heavenly Father. His life was not confined to\ncontemplation and preaching; he \u201cwent about doing good.\u201d\n\nGenuine contemplation and action are inseparable. He who sees truth\nloves truth, and he who loves truth seeks to spread the knowledge and\nthe practice of truth. Divine love is infinitely active, and, when it\nhas entered the human heart and has set it on fire, it pushes man to all\noutward perfection and visible justice. No men have labored so zealously\nand so efficiently for their fellow-men, for the establishment of God\u2019s\nkingdom upon earth, as the saints of God.\n\nThe love of God and the love of man are one. God promises his reward not\nto the ignorant, or to the indolent, or to the indifferent, but to those\nwho visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty,\nclothe the naked, to the doing of good works as the evidence of the true\nfaith.\n\nThe Catholic Church teaches to men their true relations to God and to\ntheir fellow-men, and by the practical application of the principles\nwhich govern these relations are removed the errors and vices which\nhinder the establishment of the reign of God in men\u2019s souls and\neverywhere upon earth. The history of civilization since the moment of\nthe church\u2019s institution on the day of Pentecost is nothing else than a\nrecord of the several steps of progress of society, under the guidance\nof the Catholic Church, in reaching this goal. Whatever elements the\nnineteenth century possesses superior to Judaism, paganism, barbarism,\nand Islamism are due to the uninterrupted action of Christ upon the\nworld through the Catholic Church. Modern civilization may be defined as\nthe result of nineteen centuries of action of the Holy Spirit dwelling\nin the Catholic Church in establishing the reign of God in men\u2019s souls\nand the kingdom of heaven upon earth. \u201cGod is now taking the dross out\nof the crucible, so as to render his people free from all alloy, and\nonce more to clothe the church for which our Lord delivered himself up\nwith beauty resplendent with glory. And when God shall have accomplished\nthis, he will remove the rod of his justice from the church, and, that\nhis divine name may no longer be blasphemed, he will give her victory, a\nvictory far more brilliant than her sufferings have been terrible. May\nthis triumph not be delayed!\u201d[97]\n\nFootnote 97:\n\n  Letter of Pope Pius IX. to Mgr. Lachat, April 27, 1876.\n\n\n                    XI.\u2014THE CATHOLIC IDEA OF HEAVEN.\n\n\nThe Catholic Church teaches that the road to a blessed hereafter is by\nstriving to establish the kingdom of heaven upon earth; it is after a\nlife spent in practical good works that the soul merits to hear the\nwords, \u201cWell done, good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of\nthy Lord.\u201d But then do all the soul\u2019s interests cease the moment it has\nleft this world and entered upon its future life? Is it true that the\nonly thought of a true Christian is to get well out of this world and\nall that belongs to it, and give it no further concern? Is this the\nCatholic idea?\n\nNot at all. The Catholic idea is that as our transformation in God is\nperfected, so do all the faculties of the soul increase. The soul knows\nmore, loves more, and does more infinitely in the blessed land than when\nupon this earth. The lives of most of us while here are only a little\nbetter than a sleep. The soul\u2019s vision of the divine Essence, and its\nparticipation in the divine Nature, render it, like the angels, \u201cGod\u2019s\ncoadjutor\u201d in the realization of his ideal in the vast universe. So far\nfrom the knowledge of this globe, and the affection towards its\ninhabitants or interests in its concerns, being lessened or lost by the\ncitizens of heaven, the knowledge acquired and the affections formed\nduring their life upon earth are essentially retained, and are enlarged\nand intensified; and on this truth is based the Catholic doctrine of the\ncommunion and invocation of saints. Hence to this knowledge and\naffection and constant interest taken by the souls in heaven in the\nwelfare of this world, and of those from whom they are corporally but\nnot really separated, and to their power to aid them, is owing the\nadoption of angels and saints as patrons by Catholic nations, cities,\nvillages, towns, and by every individual Catholic. He who is ignorant of\nthe Catholic doctrine of the communion of saints, and who is not within\nthe Catholic fold, can have no conception of the intimate and intense,\nuninterrupted spiritual intercourse between the soul of a truly devout\nCatholic and the angelical and saintly inhabitants of heaven. The church\nmilitant and the church triumphant are substantially one, form one\ncommunion, and their action is inseparable. The Catholic idea, then, is\nthis: that the power of the soul, on entering into heaven, to aid man\nupon earth in the realization of his true destiny is redoubled; and that\nthis power is most efficaciously employed in our favor by the souls of\nthe eternally blessed. The retrospective action of the inhabitants of\nthe other world on the welfare of this world greatly accelerates its\nprogress, and, compared with their direct action while upon earth, it is\nimmeasurably greater and free from all alloy.\n\n\n               XII.\u2014FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF MODERN INFIDELS.\n\n\nThe Catholic Church places no gulf between God and humanity, or divorce\nbetween heaven and earth, or antagonism between revelation and reason,\nor religion and science; and she repudiates the doctrine which\nemphasizes faith at the expense of good works. Hence the accusation of\nmodern infidels against Christianity, as confining itself exclusively to\nman\u2019s happiness hereafter\u2014\u201ca post-mortem happiness\u201d\u2014while ignoring his\nactual, present good\u2014\u201cante-mortem happiness\u201d\u2014may have some show of\nreason as against Protestant sects, especially of the Calvinistic sect;\nbut it is altogether false, and must be set down to defective knowledge,\nwhen made against the Catholic Church.\n\nIt is through the faithful reception of the divine action of the\nCatholic Church by individuals and society that the highest good\npossible for man here and hereafter can be surely attained; and this\nneeds only clearly to be seen to restore to her true and visible fold\nall the descendants of the members separated from the Catholic Church by\nthe religious revolution of the sixteenth century, who are in good\nfaith.\n\nAnd it is the bringing out into a clearer light the divine side of the\nchurch, and to the front those truths which eliminate the errors rife in\nour day and their stricter application to present evils, that, by the\ninstinct of the Holy Spirit, now preoccupies the active intelligent mind\nof Catholics throughout the world, especially in countries where the\ndangers are most imminent, such as France, Germany, and Italy.\n\n\n                    XIII.\u2014PROMISES, FALSE AND TRUE.\n\n\nThere are two controlling forces, explain their origin as we may,\nvisible in the conflicting movements of human affairs in this world. The\none places man in possession of the Supreme Good, and makes him a\nco-worker with his Creator in the realization of the ideal for which God\ncalled this great universe into existence. The other is instigated by\nthe enemy of God and the human race, seeking by false promises to lead\nman astray.\n\n\u201cYou shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,\u201d was Satan\u2019s promise to\nour first parents. This promise contained what was desirable for man;\nGod had implanted in the human soul the aspiration for its fulfilment.\nBut what the enemy promised he had not the power to perform, and the\nroad that he pointed out as leading to the fulfilment of the promise led\nin a wrong direction.\n\nThe right answer of our first parents to Satan would have been: \u201cWe know\nthat God has made our souls in his own image and likeness, and that we\nshall be made participators of his divine Nature, and thereby deified;\nand as our Creator has endowed us with the gift of intelligence, we\nshall also gain the knowledge of good and evil\u2014for this is its proper\nobject. And we know also with certitude that we shall gain these great\nrewards by following the paths which God has pointed out to us.\u201d Had\nthey thus spoken, they would have, in the strength of their innocence\nand conscious rectitude, added: \u201cBegone, tempter! Thou art a liar; for\nwhat thou dost promise it is not thine to give; and instead of wishing\nour elevation, thou seekest to accomplish our fall and utter ruin!\u201d\n\nAs in the beginning, so now, Satan seizes hold of the noblest\naspirations of the soul, and, by deceiving men under the guise of a real\ngood, leads them quite astray. For what underlies the promises of\nProtestantism and its innumerable sects; and rationalism, so-called, and\nits different phases; and the secularists, positivists, scientists,\natheists, radicals, materialists, spiritists, revolutionists,\nevolutionists, socialists, pessimists, free-religionists, communists,\ninternationalists, optimists, theists, nihilists, _kulturk\u00e4mpfer_,\nagnostics, intuitionists, transcendentalists, and other sects and\nparties too numerous to mention\u2014for their name is legion, and their\nconfusion of tongues is as great as that of Babel\u2014what underlies their\npromises is in one aspect true and in a sense desirable. The right\nanswer to all their fine promises is this: \u201cYou affirm undoubted truths\nand you hold out a desirable good; but the way that you point out for\nrealizing the one and attaining the other is subversive of all truth and\nthe supreme good, and it will not reach even what you aim at, but end in\nentire disappointment and anarchy. Put together the fragmentary truths\naffirmed by each of your different religious sects, and you will find\nthem all contained in Catholicity. Make a list of all the honest demands\nfor ameliorations and reforms in man\u2019s social, industrial, and political\ncondition\u2014it will not be a short one\u2014and you will discover that they\nhave their truth in the spirit, and are justified by the teachings and\nthe practice, of the Catholic Church.\u201d O sincere seeker after truth! did\nyou but know it, the path lies open before you to a perennial fountain\nof truth, where you can slake to the full that thirst which has so long\ntormented your soul. O sincere lover of your fellow-men! there is a\nliving body which you may see and co-operate with, whose divine action\nis realizing a heavenly vision for the whole human race, brighter and\nmore beautiful than the ideal which so often haunts your lonely dreams!\n\nThe divine ideal is a God-given aspiration to your soul, but the way to\nrealize it is not by building up a tower of Babel.\n\n\n                            XIV.\u2014CONCLUSION.\n\n\nThe evolution of Catholicity which is now coming slowly to the light\nwill gather up all the rich treasures of the past, march in response to\nevery honest demand of the interests of the actual present, and guide\nthe genuine aspirations of the race in the sure way to the more perfect\nfuture of its hopes.\n\nThis sublime mission is not the self-imposed work of any man or party of\nmen, but the divinely-imposed task of religion, of the present, visible,\nliving body of Christ, the church of God. None other has the power to\nrenew the world, unite together in one band the whole human race, and\ndirect its energies to enterprises worthy of man\u2019s great destiny.\nMarshal MacMahon, Duke de Broglie, or any one else, legitimists,\nimperialists, Orleanists, republicans, anti-republicans, these men and\nthese parties in France may contribute more or less as instruments to\nthe initiation of the new order of things in Europe, but that is all.\nThey will betray the cause of God and the interests of humanity, if they\nshould attempt to turn it to any individual account or to any partisan\ntriumph, whether called religious or political. The enemies of the\nchurch may place hindrances in her way, but they cannot stop her in\nreaching her goal. God alone rules and reigns.\n\nGod has spoken his \u201cthus far shalt thou go, and no further\u201d to his\nenemies and to all the persecutors of the church of Christ. When God\narises, his enemies will flee and be scattered. Their strength, compared\nwith that of his children, is as the strength of a rope of sand. Their\npower is gained by secrecy, and their influence by threats and deeds of\nviolence; for their real numbers constitute but a small fraction of the\nFrench, German, Italian, and Spanish or any other people. The present\nstruggle will render this fact evident to all the world.\n\nStrange destiny that of France, to be the leader of Europe both for good\nand for evil! France was the first nation converted to Christianity in\nwestern Europe, and the first to proclaim herself, as a nation, infidel.\nFrance will be the first to recover from her errors and give the initial\nblow that will end in the overthrow of the enemies of modern\ncivilization and Christianity.\n\nThe Marshal-President of the Republic of France, the brave soldier, the\nman without fear or reproach, is not the man to betray his high trusts\nthrough any personal ambition, or to any party, legitimist, Orleanist,\nimperialist, Gambettist, or whatever may be the name which it bears on\nits banner.\n\nThe mission of the President of France is to keep ambitious men and\npartisans at bay, and afford the best elements and the truest interests\nof all France a fair expression and the opportunity of forming a stable\nand suitable political government. The Catholic Church has been made to\nsuffer too much and too long from crowned emperors, royal dynasties, and\npolitical factions in France and elsewhere to identify her great cause\nwith theirs.\n\nFrance, under the providence of God, is slowly being taught to stand on\nher own feet, to assert her true manhood, and to practise\nself-government. The political virtues the French people have practised,\nand the self-control they have displayed, since the formation of the\nrepublic, have discomfited their enemies, increased the admiration of\ntheir friends, and won the applause of the civilized world. France never\nwas so really great as she is at this moment.\n\nThe purity of the motives of the President of the Republic, the\ndisinterested love of his country, and his undaunted valor have never\nbeen impeached, nor has his escutcheon ever borne the slightest stain.\nHis sagacity and prudence have never been at fault. That he has a will\nJules Simon has learned to his cost. Patrick MacMahon, the marshal of\nthe armies of France and the first President of her Republic, possesses\nevidently all the distinguishing qualities of the first\ncommander-in-chief of the American army and the first President of the\nRepublic of the United States\u2014George Washington. The French people can\nsafely trust for one term, and not unlikely for a second, their\nliberties, their interests, and their honor to the keeping of such a\nman.\n\nFrance will find in her president a providential man, and his name will\ngo down to posterity with the title of our own great patriot, the\nnoblest of all titles\u2014\u201cMacMahon, the Father of his Country.\u201d\n\nThe turning point of a new era for Europe and of the renewal of\nCatholicity is entrusted by divine Providence to the hands of the eldest\ndaughter of his church\u2014France! In the answer of France to the present\nissue lies the secret of the weal or the woe of the future of Europe.\n\n\n\n\n                     PHIL REDMOND OF BALLYMACREEDY.\n\n\n\u201cWhisht!\u201d exclaimed the blind hostler attached to the Derralossory Arms.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a car rowlin\u2019 along the Bray Road, an\u2019, from the sperrit that\u2019s\nin the baste, it\u2019s Luke Finnigan that\u2019s dhrivin\u2019 him. Ay, faix,\u201d he\nadded with a self-satisfied chuckle, \u201can\u2019 that\u2019s Luke Finnigan\u2019s note.\nI\u2019d know it from this t\u2019 Arklow.\u201d\n\nA wild whoop and a sound of wheels in the direction indicated announced\nthe approaching vehicle, and, ere the sightless hostler could grope his\nway from the snug corner in which he had been ensconced by the roaring\nkitchen fire\u2014it was the middle of July\u2014an outside car dashed up to the\nprincipal door of the hotel, stopped with a jerk as if on the edge of a\nprecipice, and the driver, throwing the reins upon the neck of the\npanting horse, cried out as he gaily entered the hostelry:\n\n\u201cNow, thin, Misther Murphy, be nimble wud the liquor. There\u2019s a rale\ngintleman goin\u2019 for to stand, an\u2019 I\u2019m as dhry as a cuckoo.\u201d\n\nUpon the vehicle sat a young man whose exquisitely-fitting frock-coat,\nfaultless linen, diamond studs, soft hat, and square-toed boots bespoke\nthe American. He was fair, with soft and expressive eyes, and wore a\n_Henri Quatre_ beard which admirably became his long and pensive face.\n\n\u201cYer welkim to the County Wicklow, sir,\u201d cried the hostler, who had\napproached the car and was engaged in giving a drink to the jaded\nanimal. \u201cIt\u2019s an illigant place for rocks an\u2019 rivers an\u2019 threes an\u2019\nscenery. Sorra a forriner that cums into it but is loath for to lave it.\nIt takes a hoult av thim.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is a very, _very_ beautiful place,\u201d exclaimed the new-comer\nenthusiastically, as he sprang to _terra firma_. \u201cSo green, so fresh,\nso\u2014but you cannot enjoy it, my poor fellow!\u201d suddenly perceiving the\nsightless orbs which were turned toward him.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s many a day sence I seen it, sir,\u201d responded the man, with a weary\nmoan in his utterance\u2014\u201cmany an\u2019 many a day.\u201d\n\n\u201cThrue for him,\u201d added the driver, emerging from the hotel and swabbing\nhis mouth with the back of a bronzed and blistered hand, while bright\nbeads twinkled like fallen stars in his merry eyes. \u201cHe\u2019s dark sence he\nwas a gossoon! An\u2019 it\u2019s a sight for to see him along wud the horses in\nthe stable; he\u2019ll go into stalls, an\u2019 the bastes kickin\u2019 thim to\nsmithereens, but sorra a word they\u2019ll say to him, though they\u2019d be\nafther knockin\u2019 sawdust out av any other tin min. He thravels the roads\nday an\u2019 night. To be sure it\u2019s all wan to him in regard to his bein\u2019\ndark, but he\u2019ll work his way down to Lake Dan below\u2014ay, an\u2019 to the Sivin\nChurches, begor.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod is good to me, sir,\u201d said the hostler; \u201can\u2019 whin it plazed him for\nto take me eyesight, he gev me sight in me ears an\u2019 hands.\u201d\n\n\u201cHere, my poor fellow.\u201d And the stranger placed a coin in the other\u2019s\nhorny palm.\n\n\u201cA five-shilling bit! Och, thin, may the saints light ye to glory, an\u2019\nmay ye never die till they sind for ye! It\u2019s lonely they\u2019ll be till ye\ngo to thim.\u201d\n\nBy this time the car was surrounded by a motley group of tatterdemalions\nof all ages, sizes, and sexes, in every stage of decrepitude and every\nvariety of raggedness.\n\n\u201cThrow a few coppers to an ould widdy, an\u2019 the Lord reward ye!\u201d\nexclaimed one.\n\n\u201cYe\u2019ll never miss a fourpenny bit,\u201d added another.\n\n\u201cA sixpince to an orfin will take a bag o\u2019 coals from undher ye in\npurgathory,\u201d chimed in a third.\n\n\u201cGive us the price av an ounce av tay,\u201d droned a fourth.\n\n\u201cMore power to the stars an\u2019 sthripes! Three cheers for Ameriky, boys!\u201d\nroared a leathern-lunged dwarf, throwing a rabbit-skin cap into the air.\nThis appeal was responded to with an enthusiasm that brought the fire\ninto the stranger\u2019s eye. Turning round upon the steps of the\nhotel\u2014along, thatched, whitewashed, two-storied building\u2014he made a sign\nas if desirous of addressing the assemblage.\n\n\u201cBe jabers! he\u2019s going for to spake.\u201d\n\n\u201cI riz him wud the stars an\u2019 sthripes,\u201d joyously chuckled the dwarf.\n\n\u201cFaix, it\u2019s more nor a speech we want,\u201d wheezed a little old fellow on\ncrutches.\n\n\u201cThe Home-Rulers has stuffed us like turkeys.\u201d\n\n\u201cOrdher! Ordher in the coort!\u201d yelled the dwarf. \u201cBe aisy, Billy McKeon.\nLave off scroogin\u2019 me, Mary Nayle, an\u2019 let the cripples in front.\u201d\n\nA few additional _faceti\u00e6_, and the silence became complete.\n\nThe new-comer had removed his hat, and his massive white forehead stood\nout from beneath his soft brown, curly hair.\n\n\u201cI thank you for the cheer which you have given for the country of my\nbirth.\u201d (\u201cThat\u2019s half a crown to me, anyhow,\u201d muttered the dwarf.) \u201cI\nhope that cheer was an honest one. It was not my intention to bestow ten\ncents among you, as I do not encourage mendicants; and once a beggar,\nalways a beggar.\u201d\n\nThis was received with very audible manifestations of dissatisfaction.\n\n\u201cMusha, but ye\u2019ve come far enough for to tell us that,\u201d growled the old\nman with the crutches.\n\n\u201cI _have_ come a long way to tell it to you,\u201d retorted the stranger,\n\u201cand I\u2019ll tell you more. It is positively sickening to travel through\nthis beautiful country, on account of _you_ and the like of you. From\nCork to Killarney, from Killarney to Dublin, from Dublin to\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBoys, let\u2019s make up a subscription for him,\u201d interrupted a little\nfellow whose rags depended for support upon a straw rope\u2014technically\ntermed a \u201csuggawn\u201d\u2014fastened around his waist.\n\n\u201cTh\u2019 hostler 'll hed it wud five shillin\u2019s,\u201d observed a bystander with a\ndroll, malicious grin.\n\n\u201cBegorra, we\u2019ll tell the landlord for to put it in the bill.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre ye goin\u2019 for to give us anything?\u201d demanded the dwarf. This query\nwas backed up by a unanimous murmur of approval.\n\n\u201cI am.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s raysonible, anyhow.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m going to give you some sound, wholesome advice,\u201d said the stranger.\n\nA yell of anger, disappointment, dissent, and derision followed this\nannouncement. Crutches were brandished, sticks flourished, fists shaken,\nand general denunciations upon this \u201cnagurly\u201d conduct were indulged in,\nin terms as pungent as they were personal.\n\n\u201cYou won\u2019t hear me?\u201d he resumed during a lull in the storm.\n\n\u201cSorra a hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, good-afternoon.\u201d And making them a low bow, he turned into the\nhouse, whither execrations loud, prolonged, and deep rapidly followed\nhim.\n\nThe accommodations at the \u201cDerralossory Arms\u201d\u2014for so the hostelry was\nnamed\u2014were somewhat pretentious. Opening a door with the word\n\u201ccoffee-room\u201d imprinted thereon in brazen letters, the new-comer found\nhimself in a long, low-ceilinged apartment. A cracked mirror, the\nsurface of which was scratched from frame to frame, like an ice rink, by\namorous owners of diamond rings, stood over the mantel-piece, and above\nit a smoke-dried card containing the announcement of the meets of the\nWicklow Harriers of the preceding season. Upon a mahogany sideboard\nshone a brave array of glassware interspersed with pickle-jars and some\nmysterious specimens of the ceramic art. Facing the sideboard was a huge\nantiquated sofa whose springs revealed themselves like the ribs of a\nhalf-starved horse, and opposite the sofa an ancient but\nuncompromisingly upright pianoforte. But not upon the mirror, sideboard,\nsofa, or piano did the eyes of the stranger continue to rest. The window\nhad been lowered, and a young girl was leaning her arms upon the sash,\ngazing out upon the tatterdemalion crowd beneath. Her figure was\n_petite_, but of that faultless outline which no amount of drapery can\nconceal. A long plait of lustrous brown hair hung down her back. She was\nattired in black, and a huge Puritan cambric collar and cuffs adorned\nher wrists and neck.\n\n\u201cIf her face is as her figure, she must be enchanting,\u201d thought the\nnew-comer.\n\n\u201cHe should have given them _something_,\u201d she murmured half aloud. \u201cPoor\ncreatures! hoping and fearing is weary, weary work.\u201d And she slowly\nfaced him.\n\nHe gazed at features as regular as the classic model, and whose paleness\nalmost imparted to them the calm, impassive beauty of marble. She\nflushed and was about to withdraw when he blurted forth:\n\n\u201cI\u2014I beg your pardon, but I overheard what you said. I am not so mean as\nyou think.\u201d And striding to the window and attracting the attention of\nthe mob, who received him with a yell of derisive defiance, he flung a\nhandful of silver among them.\n\nA scarlet flush mantled over her face and throat. \u201cI was but speaking to\nmyself, thinking aloud\u2014and\u2014but nevertheless on the part of those poor\nmiserable people, I beg to thank you, sir. _I_ am sorely to blame, and\nyour generosity only rivets the fetters that bind them to beggary.\u201d And\nwith a low courtesy, old-fashioned but witching grace itself, she swept\nfrom the apartment, leaving the stranger lost in admiration.\n\n\u201cWhat is that young lady\u2019s name who was here just now?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cHer name is Miss O\u2019Byrne\u2014wan av th\u2019 ould anshint O\u2019Byrnes that fought\nhard agin\u2019 the Danes an\u2019 Crummle\u2014bad cess to thim, body an\u2019 bones!\u201d\nreplied the waiter.\n\n\u201cDoes she live near this place?\u201d\n\n\u201cBeyant four mile, over be the side o\u2019 Lake Dan. It\u2019s an illigant place,\nwid no ind av ruins, an\u2019 a darlin\u2019 ghost that walks whinever sorra is\ncomin\u2019 to the race; an\u2019 be me song, they\u2019ve supped lashins av it.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs Mr. O\u2019Byrne wealthy?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, now\u201d\u2014here the waiter scratched a very shock head\u2014\u201che\u2019s not\nrowlin\u2019 in goold, but he\u2019s warm and\u201d\u2014brightening up\u2014\u201cas proud as a\npaycock. But there, I\u2019m forgettin\u2019 me message to ye.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo _me_? exclaimed the stranger with a start, half hoping it might be\nfrom Miss O\u2019Byrne.\n\n\u201cYes, sir. There\u2019s two gintlemin cum here in regard o\u2019 the fishin\u2019,\nthough sorra a haporth they ketch; an\u2019 they cum regular wud rods an\u2019\nhooks an\u2019 nets, an\u2019 all soarts av cumbusticles. Wan av them is an\nattorney, a gay man, an\u2019 th\u2019 other houlds a situation in the Four Coorts\nbeyant in Dublin, an\u2019 he\u2019s as nice a mannered man as there\u2019s in the four\nwalls o\u2019 Wicklow this blessed minit.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut the message?\u201d interrupted the stranger.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s it. Yer to dine wud thim\u2014no less. Misther Minchin tould me to\nprisint his respects an\u2019 to hope ye\u2019d favor him wud yer company; an\u2019\ndon\u2019t be hesitatin\u2019, mind ye\u201d\u2014here the waiter winked an indescribable\nwink, such as an augur might have indulged in consequent upon a\nsuccessful omen; \u201cthere\u2019s lovely chickens, an\u2019 the elegantest bacon, wud\na filly av cabbage, an\u2019 a dancing leg o\u2019 lamb.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t know these gentlemen, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cPermit me to introduce myself, sir,\u201d exclaimed a small, elderly man\nwith a merry eye, a bulbous nose, a very stiff, old-fashioned stock, and\na stiffer rim of shirt-collar which kept his head as erect as though he\nwas hung up by the chin, entering and bowing very courteously.\n\u201cMinchin\u2014Dominick Minchin. Hearing from this shock-headed retainer that\nyou were a stranger, and having experienced on more occasions than one,\nespecially during piscatorial excursions, the thrice-accursed loneliness\nof an inn, I beg, sir, that you will favor us by coming where glory\nwaits you and\u2014a bit of dinner.\u201d\n\nThis was uttered with a quaint cheeriness that bore everything before\nit.\n\n\u201cReally, sir, I am quite impressed by your consideration, and accept\nyour invitation most gratefully. My name is Philip Redmond.\u201d And he\nhanded the other his card.\n\n\u201cRedmond is not an American name, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir; my father was Irish.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnything to the Redmonds of Ballymacreedy?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am Redmond of Ballymacreedy.\u201d\n\nMr. Minchin seized him warmly by both hands and shook them repeatedly.\n\u201cBy Jupiter, sir! this is positively glorious\u2014sublime, sir! I knew your\nfather well; and when he thought fit to part with his property\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHis property parted from _him_, Mr. Minchin. It is gone, and I am now\nhere to try and repurchase it at any cost. However, we\u2019ll talk of that\nby and by. I _feel_ that dinner is not very far off, and that you are\nonly half as anxious about it as I am.\u201d\n\nMr. O\u2019Hara, Mr. Minchin\u2019s companion, was a tall, handsome, florid-faced\nman of about five-and-thirty, with a profusion of sandy hair which stood\nout from his head like quills upon the fretful porcupine, and a smile\nlike sunlight. In five minutes Redmond was as much at home with the two\nanglers as if he had known them all his life, and had planned two\nexcursions with them.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid you\u2019ll have some trouble about getting back this property,\u201d\nobserved O\u2019Hara. \u201cIt\u2019s now in the possession of a man who doesn\u2019t want\nmoney, and who would call you out if you proposed to purchase it.\u201d\n\n\u201cEvery man has his price, has he not, Mr. O\u2019Hara?\u201d asked Redmond.\n\n\u201cTrue; but there are exceptional circumstances connected with this case\nwhich hedge it round with an impenetrable _chevaux de frise_.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf what nature?\u201d\n\n\u201cFamily pride, which will never consent to confiscate the old acres.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut the lands of Kilnagadd and Derralossory belonged to our family.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat may be, Mr. Redmond, but they were part and parcel of other\nterritory before the Redmonds came north of Vinegar Hill. I know all\nabout them, as I rented a fishing lodge from one of the tenants, and,\nbeing anxious to purchase it, inquired into the title.\u201d\n\n\u201cI made my dying father a solemn promise that I would get back the old\nplace. Money is no object, Mr. O\u2019Hara. My father operated both in real\nestate and in gold, and died wealthy, so that a few thousands will not\nbalk me.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can try it,\u201d was the rejoinder, accompanied by a shake of the head.\n\nIt was late when they separated, Minchin warbling \u201cThe young May moon,\u201d\nand insisting upon shaking hands with the \u201cyoung boss,\u201d as he designated\nhim, over and over again.\n\nThe summer\u2019s morning was bright and balmy, and Redmond, after a yeoman\u2019s\nbreakfast\u2014consisting of trout fried with bacon, fresh eggs, and tea in\nwhich the cream was pre-eminent\u2014started out into the glorious sunlight\nwhich was irradiating hill and dale, mountain and valley. The\nforget-me-nots told their tale to the crystal pools, the graceful ferns\nlanguidly embraced the lichen-covered stones, an occasional cur basking\nin the heat and glow opened a lazy eye as Phil passed along the road,\nand compromised a bark with a prolonged yawn. The hawthorns threw their\nshadows across the path, and the \u201cblossoming furze unprofitably gay\u201d\nsent forth that fresh, quaint, and delicious perfume that tells us with\nspeechless eloquence that we are out in the bright green country and\naway from the heat and turmoil and loathsomeness of the over-crowded\nhuman hive. Having promised to join his newly-found friends at Lough\nDan, Phil took the steep and romantic road that leads to the lake direct\nfrom the village of Roundwood. Far away to the left in the summer haze\nlay the picturesque village of Annamoe, and farther still the sweet, sad\nvalley of Glendalough, guarded by the giant Lug na Culliagh, while the\ndeep-tinted groves of Castle Kevin lent a delicious contrast to the\npurple heights of the heather-covered Derrybawn; on his right the grim\ngray crags of Luggelaw, and, as he gained the crest of the hill, the\nblue waters of Lough Dan lay mirrored beneath him, reflecting the giant\nshadows of Carrig-na-Leena. The exquisite loveliness of the scene fell\nupon the young American like a dream or a perfume. It was refreshing,\nyet almost intoxicating. He thought of the color glories of the Hudson\nin the fall, of the blood-reds and orange-yellows and wine hues of the\nautumn foliage, and they seared his mental vision when he came to\ncontemplate the soft, cloudy green, the odor-laden atmosphere, pure yet\nfilmy as a bridal veil, and the delicious completeness of the _coup\nd\u2019\u0153il_, so satisfying, so soothing, and so enravishing. Somehow or other\nhe associated all this perfection with the fair young girl whose pale\nface and mantling blush still haunted his imagination like a sweet\nstrain of music. These scenes were a suitable setting for her beauty.\nShe would comprehend them, she would commune with nature in this wild,\nsecluded spot, so lonely and yet so lovely. As his ideas glided in this\nrosy channel, his revery was suddenly disturbed by the sound of wheels,\nand close upon him came a basket-phaeton attached to a very diminutive\npony. His heart gave one violent bound\u2014the object of his immediate and\ngushing thoughts was the occupant of the vehicle. Would she pass without\nnoticing him? There had been no introduction. He could expect no\nrecognition, and yet\u2014\n\nChance fills up many a gap in life, solves many riddles, and hastens\nmany _d\u00e9no\u00fbments_.\n\nThe pony, evidently a wilful, over-petted, hand-fed little brute, took\nit into its stubborn head that a rest at this particular spot in the\nroad would admirably suit his inclinations; and as he feared no whip,\nand, save a gentle chuck upon the reins and a solemn admonishment from\nhis fair mistress, his whim could be indulged in with comparative\nimpunity, he proceeded forthwith to carry his idea into execution, and\nstopped with a jerk right opposite where Philip Redmond stood.\n\n\u201cDo go on, Doaty!\u201d exclaimed Miss O\u2019Byrne, shaking the reins. \u201cDo go on,\nthere\u2019s a pet. You shall have a lump of sugar when we get to stable.\u201d\n\nDoaty shook his head and stolidly gazed at the lake beneath him.\n\n\u201cPermit me to try and persuade him,\u201d said Phil, stepping forward and\nlifting his hat, which, by the way, doubled up in his hand, clumsily\nconcealing his face and utterly destroying his bow.\n\n\u201cOh! thanks; I seem destined to give you trouble, sir.\u201d\n\nThis was a delicate recognition.\n\n\u201cI have to thank you for making me the most popular man in Roundwood,\u201d\nretorted Redmond. \u201cI feel like the lord lieutenant. I held quite a\n_lev\u00e9e_ this morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd your courtiers, instead of looking for place, were seeking for\npence.\u201d\n\n\u201cA distinction without much difference.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcept in the viceroy,\u201d she laughed.\n\nDoaty was as good as gold\u2014at least so thought one of the party\u2014and\nmanifested no intention of budging an inch.\n\n\u201cWhat a tiresome pony!\u201d exclaimed Miss O\u2019Byrne. \u201cI shall have to beat\nhim.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet me try and get him along.\u201d And Phil, taking hold of the shaggy\nmane, lugged the unwilling Doaty along in the direction of the lake.\n\n\u201cThis is really too bad, sir,\u201d remonstrated Miss O\u2019Byrne. \u201cI cannot tax\nyou in this way.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is no tax, I assure you. I have nothing on earth to do but to revel\nin the especial sunshine of this moment.\u201d\n\nThis was said with ever so slight an emphasis; nevertheless it bore a\nscarlet blossom in the rich blush which came whispering all over the\nyoung girl\u2019s charming pallor.\n\n\u201cYou\u2014you are a stranger here?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am, and yet I ought not to be.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis savors of a riddle.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery easily solved. My fore-fathers hunted these hills and fished that\nlake. My father was reckless, extravagant, and new men came into\npossession of the old acres. My father emigrated, and made a great deal\nof money in New York, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI have been in New York,\u201d interposed the young lady.\n\nHere was a bridge for thought-travel. Here was a market for the disposal\nof mutual mental wares.\n\n\u201cDid you like it?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cLike it!\u201d she exclaimed enthusiastically. \u201cWho could dislike it? It is\nthe most charming city, perhaps excepting Paris, that I have ever lived\nin. And how are Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and the ash-boxes?\u201d she added\nwith a ringing laugh.\n\nDoaty made another stop, and no earthly inducement would stir him until\nhe so willed it himself. His fair mistress relinquished the idea and the\nreins, and, stepping from the vehicle, clambered, with the assistance of\nRedmond, to a moss-grown bank, from which she pointed out some objects\nof special interest in the scenery.\n\n\u201cThat is Billy Doyle\u2019s cottage at Shinnagh, down far in the valley by\nthe edge of the lake. See the amber thatch glowing in the sunlight, and\nthe red flag. That flag shows that poor Mr. Fenler is on the lake\nfishing.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho is poor Mr. Fenler?\u201d asked Phil.\n\n\u201cHe is a man who was a great merchant in Dublin, but who lost all his\nproperty, and his wife and all his children. He saved as much from the\nwreck as enabled him to purchase one-half of that cottage\u2014the slated\nhalf\u2014and to support himself. He came here seven years ago, having made a\nvow _never_ to leave the valley again.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd has he kept it?\u201d\n\n\u201cReligiously. He goes nowhere, and spends his whole time in fishing. Do\nyou see that golden strand at the head of the lake?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, there is a legend about that which you should hear. Any old crone\nin the valley will do it ample justice.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should prefer to hear it from a fairy on the hill,\u201d said Redmond\ngallantly.\n\n\u201c_Pas des compliments_, although yours was nearly French.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou beat me at my own weapons,\u201d laughed Redmond. \u201cBut whose palatial\nresidence is that right over in the cleft between those two hills?\u201d\n\nThe fire lighted up in the young girl\u2019s eye, the delicate nostril\nexpanded, the rich, ripe lips quivered, as she proudly replied: \u201cThat is\nmy home.\u201d\n\n_Her_ home\u2014the nest in which she had been nurtured. What a precious\nflower in that gloomy valley! What a world of love and joy and beauty in\nthat lone and sequestered spot!\n\n\u201cI envy you,\u201d murmured Phil. \u201cThe tranquil loveliness of your home is\u2014\u201d\nhe was going to send the words from his heart to his lips, but luckily\nthey encountered Prudence upon the road, and altered themselves to suit\nthat cold, passionless, interfering busybody\u2014\u201cis\u2014just as it ought to be.\n_You_ have made no vow to leave this valley?\u201d he added.\n\n\u201cNo, but I have often thought it.\u201d\n\n\u201cSuch a determination would be a calamity, Miss O\u2019Byrne.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know my name?\u201d she quickly demanded.\n\n\u201cI asked the waiter after you had left.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow for an exchange,\u201d she laughed. \u201cLet us trade. What is _your_ name?\u201d\n\n\u201cPhilip Redmond, son of Redmond of Ballymacreedy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, that is Ballymacreedy,\u201d exclaimed the young girl, pointing to a\nfir-covered mountain, upon the side of which, as though perched on a\nshelf, stood a gaunt, uncompromising-looking, square-built mansion, all\nroof and windows.\n\nPhil Redmond\u2019s feelings, as he gazed on the home which he had never\nknown save by hearsay, were of a very varied and conflicting nature. He\nhad pictured it a feudal stronghold towering over an extensive lake such\nas America boasts of\u2014a diminutive ocean\u2014a battlemented castle, with keep\nand moat and drawbridge, ivy-grown in the interests of the picturesque,\nand plate-glassed in the interests of modern sunlight.\n\n\u201cGood heaven!\u201d he exclaimed involuntarily, \u201chow unlike what I conceived\nit to be. What a cruel disappointment!\u201d\n\nSo rudely were his ideas shattered, and so bitterly the pride of\nbaronial halls mortified, that the poor fellow\u2019s heart felt quite\ncrushed. Whether Miss O\u2019Byrne saw this or whether Doaty saw it is not\nthe question here; but _certes_, that admirable little brute gave a loud\nneigh as a trumpet-call to Redmond\u2019s scattered senses, and evinced for\nthe first moment during the preceding half-hour a desire to proceed upon\nhis homeward journey.\n\n\u201cPapa does not visit, Mr. Redmond,\u201d said Miss O\u2019Byrne as she grasped the\nreins upon resuming her seat in the basket upon wheels, \u201cbut I shall ask\nhim to call upon you, when I may hope for something like a formal\nintroduction. How half an hour flies upon the wings of _sans\nc\u00e9r\u00e9monie_!\u201d And with a delicious inclination of the head, half-saucy,\nhalf-dignified, and wholly _piquante_, she disappeared at a turn of the\nroad leading into the valley.\n\n\u201cHeigh-ho!\u201d sighed Philip Redmond of Ballymacreedy.\n\nWhile all this\u2014shall we say nonsense?\u2014was going on upon the hill, Mr.\nMinchin and his _fidus Achates_, O\u2019Hara, were busily occupied upon the\nlake; and although not a single rise greeted their longing vision, like\ntrue sportsmen they lived in hope.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a very good style of man,\u201d observed O\u2019Hara.\n\n\u201cRedmond?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe son of an Irish king, sir. By Jupiter! a fine fellow. A noble\nfellow!\u201d exclaimed Minchin, whacking the lake with his line in emphasis.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019ll go back to New York without as much of his father\u2019s property as\nwould sod a lark.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are still of opinion that the O\u2019Byrne will not sell?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019d burn the land first,\u201d was the sententious rejoinder.\n\n\u201cWell, sir, the next best thing that Redmond can do is to purchase\nGlenasluagh. It adjoins Ballymacreedy, and he will enjoy the right of\nfishing the Clohogue\u2014an enjoyment fit for the gods. Yes, by George! fit\nfor the gods.\u201d\n\n\u201cI never thought of that. Are you sure it\u2019s for sale?\u201d\n\n\u201cA scoundrelly attorney, one of those pitiful miscreants with whom it is\nmy bane to be officially associated, knowing that I loved the gentle\nsport, endeavored to curry favor with me by mentioning this. I listened\nto the scoundrel and made inquiries elsewhere\u2014in fact, I own I felt my\nway towards the Clohogue myself, but the figure was too high, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe must put Redmond on to it at once.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s our man crossing the bridge. George! how I envy him his\nsensations upon beholding this cherished spot, 'where all save the\nspirit of man is divine.\u2019\u201d And Minchin glowed again in the summer light.\n\nRedmond instinctively paused upon the quaint old lichen-covered bridge,\nin the worn interstices of which dainty little ferns of emerald green\ntoyed with the pale blue loveliness of the forget-me-not, and gazed\nacross the sheening waters of the tranquil lake. All was sleeping in\nsunlight, even the deep, clear shadows of the purple-covered mountains,\nwhile the melodious hum of glowing insect-life lent its peculiar charm\nto the peaceful surroundings.\n\nThe boat, by direction of Mr. Minchin, was turned for the bridge, and a\nfew lazy strokes from the oar of the ragged urchin who acted as waterman\nbrought it bump against a projecting bowlder which served as a\nlanding-place.\n\n\u201cThe top of the morning to you, Mr. Redmond!\u201d cried Minchin. \u201cYou are\njust in the nick of time. Nature abhors a vacuum, and we were about to\npass the rosy. This, sir, is a very dry country.\u201d And the cheerful old\nbiped laughed until the crags of Shinnagh re-echoed his jovial hilarity.\nAt this moment a cart attached to a donkey appeared upon the bridge, and\ntwo formidable-looking hampers jostled each other for supremacy.\n\n\u201cJump in, Mr. Redmond. We shall take our pick on that lovely little neck\nof land just under the stronghold of the O\u2019Byrnes yonder.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you room for two friends of mine?\u201d asked Phil.\n\n\u201cAny friend of yours is my friend, sir,\u201d exclaimed Minchin with the\npompous mannerism of the old school.\n\n\u201cThen lend a hand,\u201d to the boat-boy, \u201cto get these hampers on board.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat does all this mean?\u201d asked Minchin as the baskets were safely\nstowed away.\n\n\u201cA liberty I have taken,\u201d said Philip. \u201cI want you and Mr. O\u2019Hara to\nlunch with me to-day, as I dined with you yesterday.\u201d\n\n\u201cO\u2019Hara,\u201d exclaimed Minchin, \u201cwhat _shall_ we do with this dog? Pitch\nhim into the lake, hampers and all?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should say not,\u201d laughed the other.\n\n\u201c'My foot is on my native heath,\u2019\u201d cried Redmond; and, taking an oar, a\npull of twenty minutes keel-grated them upon a silvery strand beneath\nthe shady foliage of a gigantic horse-chestnut tree.\n\n\u201cA lobster-salad, George!\u201d cried Minchin, unloading the basket. \u201cA\nchicken-pie, Jupiter! A magmain of salmon! Why, hang it, man! this never\nwas raised at the Derralossory Arms.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow was it done?\u201d asked O\u2019Hara.\n\n\u201cI sent a man into Dublin for it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d with a long-drawn breath of admiration. \u201cYou Americans do things\nin the right way.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy the nine gods! champagne,\u201d ejaculated Minchin as he extracted the\ngolden-necked bottles from their wicker cradles. \u201cHeidsieck extra dry. I\nam extra dry too. _Per Bacco_, Redmond! you _are_ the son of an Irish\nking.\u201d\n\nWhere is the mortal who does not enjoy a picnic?\u2014that picnic where the\nfood is laid upon the grass, and with the green leaves or the sky for a\ncanopy; where fingers do service for forks, and the wild flowers for\nnapkins; where the food is ambrosia and the drink nectar. _Ay de m\u00ed_, we\nhave changed all that, and now we must have silver and cutlery and\nnapery, and servants to wait upon us, and hot dishes _ad nauseam_. We\nmust don our best and encase our sweltering hands in delicate-hued\ngloves, and icy etiquette now reigns where nature\u2019s happy freedom\nheretofore presided.\n\nThey were busily engaged with the chicken-bones, and Redmond, as host,\nwas uncorking the second bottle of champagne, when Minchin exclaimed:\n\u201cJupiter Olympus! here\u2019s the O\u2019Byrne and his daughter.\u201d\n\nNow, to be caught, under ordinary circumstances, in a stooping posture,\nwrestling with an infrangible wire, almost black in the face, and with\nthe drumstick of a chicken stuck saltier-wise in your mouth, your hat\nanywhere, and your hair in the wildest and most elfin disorder, is\nembarrassing enough in all conscience; but, in the condition of feeling\nunder which our romantic hero labored, to be thus detected was simply\nhorrible. As Redmond beheld the tall and stately form of a man of about\nfifty, with a pair of fierce black eyes beneath still fiercer brows,\nadvancing towards him, and by his side, gliding with that graceful\nundulation which is almost exclusively confined to the women of Spain,\nthe young girl for whom the portals of his heart had been cast wide\nopen, his desire to sink beneath the daisies was about the only\nsensation left to him.\n\n\u201cWe have invaded the land of the O\u2019Byrnes,\u201d said Minchin, rising and\nbowing to the _ch\u00e2telaine_.\n\n\u201cYou seem tolerably well armed,\u201d observed the O\u2019Byrne, casting a comical\nglance at the champagne bottles.\n\n\u201cPermit me the honor of crossing swords,\u201d cried Minchin.\n\nAt this moment Miss O\u2019Byrne interposed by exclaiming: \u201cThat gentleman is\nMr. Redmond of Ballymacreedy.\u201d\n\nThe O\u2019Byrne took a short, sharp survey of Philip from beneath his shaggy\nbrows, and, advancing with outstretched hand:\n\n\u201cMr. Redmond, I am glad to meet one of the old stock. You resemble your\nfather very strongly.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou knew my father, sir?\u201d asked Redmond eagerly.\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d The monosyllable spoke for itself. It shut down on the subject\nlike an iron door.\n\n\u201cThe old stock are thinning out, like my brown hairs,\u201d laughed Minchin.\n\n\u201c_Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto_,\u201d was the rejoinder.\n\n\u201c_Per Bacco!_ you must taste the Falernian. I am Dominick\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMinchin,\u201d interposed the O\u2019Byrne, \u201cthe best angler in Wicklow. We\ndisciples of the rod and reel scarcely need a formal introduction.\u201d\n\nSomehow or other, while the O\u2019Byrne and Dominick Minchin were bandying\nquaint and courtly compliments, Philip managed to pull himself together\nand to engage in conversation with the daughter of the house.\n\n\u201cYou perceive, Mr. Redmond, how fate is against our being introduced\u2014so\ndead against as to compel me to make you and my father acquainted as if\nyou and I were old friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cI _do_ feel as if I had known you for ever so long, and that a void\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDo look at the trout jumping. What perfect circles they make in the\nstill water!\u201d\n\nShe had interrupted with a woman\u2019s tact. Redmond was unversed in the\nsubtle distinctions which form the rungs of the ladder of love. Most of\nthe girls whom he met in society were as so many agreeable\nnothings\u2014exquisitely-attired statuettes, whose ideas were bounded by\nsilk, satin, feathers, and lace. With them he had nothing in common save\nthe weather and ice-cream; and being imbued with a feeling of aversive\ncontempt for the whole sex, the revelation of light and love which now\nburst upon him revolutionized his whole being and begat an enthusiasm\nthat forgot impossibilities. A child of nature sounds very well in\npoesy, but the article attired in broadcloth is very rapidly put down as\na bore, if not a nuisance.\n\n\u201cI drink with you on one condition,\u201d said the O\u2019Byrne to Minchin, who\npresented a bottle at his head.\n\n\u201cCondition me no conditions, chieftain!\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall; and the condition is this: that you, with Mr. Redmond and Mr.\nO\u2019Hara\u201d\u2014to whom he had been introduced by Minchin\u2014\u201cwill help me to\npunish a cooper of claret after a seven o\u2019clock dinner.\u201d O\u2019Hara excused\nhimself on the plea of being compelled to reach Dublin by the night mail\nfrom Rathdrum. Minchin called a number of the Olympian deities to\nwitness that so superb an offer should not be lightly considered, and\nRedmond thought of his dress and hesitated to say yes, when his whole\nsoul was in that solitary word.\n\n\u201cI want to have a gossip about New York, and surely you will not refuse\nme that boon?\u201d urged Miss O\u2019Byrne, and this decided the question.\n\n\u201cAre you of the true faith, Mr. Redmond?\u201d she asked, as some hours\nlater, in acting as _cicerone_ through the old castle, she took him to\nthe private chapel.\n\n\u201cI should be a recreant Redmond if I were not,\u201d was his proud reply.\n\nCoolgreny, the stronghold of the Clan O\u2019Byrne, was as picturesque as a\nround tower, an ivied keep, a battlemented outer wall, a dry moat, a\nveritable carpet of bright flowers, solemn old yew-trees whose branches\nhad supplied many a sturdy bow wherewithal to resist the incursions of\nthe O\u2019Tooles, and a rookery, could make it. As he crossed the drawbridge\nand gazed at the oaken door with its rusty iron rivets, at the massive\narchway telling an imperishable tale, at the inner quadrangle, its gray\nstone lighted up by blood-red geraniums and deeply, darkly, desperately\nblue forget-me-nots, and from thence to the high-bred-looking girl by\nhis side, Philip Redmond felt the old blood in his veins as the old, old\nstory began to whisper itself to his heart.\n\nThey passed into the old banqueting-hall, rich in oaken tracery and\nwainscoted up to the ebon-colored ceiling. Portraits of doughty warriors\nin the grim panoply of battle-axe and shield, suits of Milan steel, and\nbuff jerkins of the later periods adorned the walls\u2014formidable O\u2019Brinns\nwho stood in many a gap, and fought the rocky defiles of Auchavana inch\nby inch; who displayed their prowess on many a tented field; who\nfollowed the fortunes of the luckless house of Stuart even after the\nunhappy disaster at the Boyne; and who, nobly fighting, fell against the\nhated usurpation of the Orange William. Here, too, were soft,\nsilken-bearded representatives of the house who attached themselves to\nthe Irish Brigade and covered themselves with glory at Lannes and\nFontenoy.\n\n\u201cNow for the ladies, monsieur!\u201d exclaimed Miss O\u2019Byrne. \u201cI see that you\nare lost in admiration of my male ancestors. Prepare now to be enchanted\nby the beauty of their wives and daughters.\u201d\n\n\u201cI need no preparation,\u201d said Phil with a low bow. \u201cI see all their\nperfections concentrated in their charming descendant.\u201d\n\n\u201cAdmirably done!\u201d cried the young lady, with heightened color; \u201cbut\n'bide a wee.\u2019 Look at that little dame. There is fire for you. She was\nCountess of Ovoca in her own right\u2014a Geraldine. She defended this castle\nagainst two attacks of Cromwell\u2019s crop-eared curs, and when it was\nintimated to her that the defence jeopardized her husband\u2019s life, she\n_na\u00efvely_ replied: 'I could replace my husband, but I could not replace\nCoolgreny.\u2019 'Wasn\u2019t that complimentary to that ill-looking fellow\nopposite leaning upon his sword? I _do_ believe that he steps out of\nthat frame occasionally for the purpose of upbraiding her, poor dear!\u201d\n\nRedmond laughed heartily as he replied that he thought the cavalier was\nlikely to get the worst of it.\n\n\u201cHere is a Lely\u2014my great, great, great, ever-so-great grandmamma. Isn\u2019t\nshe lovely? Look at her cool blue pastoral drapery, her bright brown\nhair, her matchless eye, and her ivory complexion.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am looking at her,\u201d said Redmond, gazing earnestly at Miss O\u2019Byrne,\n\u201cand she is lovely.\u201d\n\nIt was as if the portrait had been painted for herself.\n\n\u201cMr. Redmond, you are incorrigible. I absolutely refuse to act as\n_cicerone_. Tyrconnel was madly in love with her.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course he was; and if he wasn\u2019t he ought to have been,\u201d laughed\nPhilip. \u201cPray who is that sparkling brunette, with the color glowing\nbeneath her swarthy skin, and with the head and hair of Cleopatra?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is Mistress Lettice O\u2019Byrne, who received King James in this very\nhall, as, blood-stained and travel-sore, he honored our poor house by\nresting here after the disaster of the Boyne. He heard Mass in our\nlittle chapel before he started at daybreak.\u201d\n\nThey wandered from portrait to portrait, she chatting gaily,\nbrilliantly, until they came directly opposite that of a very young man\nattired in a gorgeous hussar uniform.\n\n\u201cThis is a picture of today,\u201d said Redmond. \u201cWho is he?\u201d\n\nA bright diamond-drop welled into her eyes as she replied:\n\n\u201cIt is my only brother. He took service with our kinsman, Field-Marshal\nNugent, in Austria, and fell at Magenta. God be merciful to him!\u201d\n\n\u201cAmen!\u201d And the response was a prayer, so fervently and reverentially\nwas it uttered.\n\n\u201cLet us go to the chapel and say an _Ave Maria_ for the repose of his\nsoul.\u201d And, leading through a long, dark passage, and thrusting aside a\nscarlet velvet curtain which hung over the entrance, she ushered Redmond\ninto the church. Pure Gothic, the oaken traceries of its pulpit and\nchancel rails were worthy of the hand of Verbruggen, while the altar, of\nwhite marble, was decorated with constellations of the rarest hot-house\nflowers and plants.\n\nAs they emerged from the chapel the hideous clamor of a gong announced\nthat dinner would be served in a quarter of an hour, and Redmond was\nushered by his host to an apartment to prepare as best he might for the\nall-important ceremony. For after all \u201cthe dine\u201d is a very serious piece\nof business, and it is only such foolish young fellows as Redmond\u2014who\nspoiled his appetite at luncheon\u2014or such delicately-nurtured young\nladies as Miss Eileen O\u2019Byrne, who can afford to turn up their noses at\nthe mention of the word, and wish with a sigh that the noble institution\nyclept eating had never been invented.\n\nWhen Redmond descended to the drawing-room he was formally presented to\nthe Rev. Father O\u2019Doherty, the parish priest \u201cof as wild a district as\nlies between this and New York,\u201d gaily added his reverence. \u201cI am proud\nto meet you, sir; and let me tell you that the Redmonds of Ballymacreedy\nhave left a name behind them respected, loved, and honored. Have you\ncome to stop with us?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot\u2014that is, I\u2019m\u2014I\u2019m so enchanted with all that I have seen of Ireland,\nand with _all_ whom I have met here\u201d\u2014he sought the eye of his hostess\n(it should be mentioned that her mother had died in giving birth to\nEileen)\u2014\u201cthat if I do not return to it, it will not be my own fault.\u201d\n\nThis was doing pretty well\u2014much better than he could have hoped. It was\nvery _prononc\u00e9_, but Phil liked to be understood. He was straight in\neverything, and was perfectly prepared to step into the O\u2019Byrne\u2019s\nlibrary and explain himself right away. But he was not to get the\nchance. Father O\u2019Doherty took the _ch\u00e2telaine_ into dinner and presided\nat the foot of the table. The dinner was not _\u00e0 la Russe_, and, although\nserved with extreme elegance, the guests were allowed the privilege of\nseeing what they were about to partake of, and to make a judicious\nselection according to palate. The wine was, as Minchin subsequently\nremarked, \u201cof the rarest and choicest vintage.\u201d To hear _her_ speak, to\nlisten to the music of her laugh, to gaze upon her when her looks were\nturned in another direction, was rapture to poor Philip, who drank his\nwine, eating nothing, being wholly and solely absorbed in the radiance\nof her presence. It was rack and torture to him when she arose to leave\nthe room, and, as he opened the door to permit her egress, the words,\n\u201cDo not remain too long over your wine,\u201d rang into his senses like a\npeal of sweet bells.\n\n\u201cPush the claret, Mr. Redmond,\u201d exclaimed his host; \u201cyou may get richer\nbut you won\u2019t get softer wine across the Atlantic.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Per Bacco!_ this is bottled velvet,\u201d said Minchin, smacking his\nlips\u2014\u201cthe odor of the violet, and the gentle tartness of the raspberry.\nBy the nine gods! a bottle of this makes a man look for his wings to\nfly, sir\u2014to fly like a bird.\u201d\n\nAfter some considerable time, during which Minchin and the O\u2019Byrne had\nindulged in a very serious potation of the Ch\u00e2teau Lafitte, \u201cAre you\nhere on a pleasure trip, Mr. Redmond?\u201d asked Father O\u2019Doherty.\n\n\u201cWell, my good fortune has made it one of pleasure, but I came\noriginally on business. I came to endeavor to rescue some of my poor\nfather\u2019s property,\u201d replied downright Phil.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean by _rescue_, Mr. Redmond?\u201d asked the O\u2019Byrne, flushing\ndarkly red.\n\n\u201cI mean, to purchase it from the man who now holds it.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d And his host tossed off a bumper of the wine. \u201cDo you refer to\nBallymacreedy?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do, and to the lands of Kilnagadd and Derralossory.\u201d\n\nThe beetling brows of the Irish chieftain met in a black scowl.\n\n\u201cAnd suppose this man who holds these lands were unwilling to sell?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! every man has his price,\u201d said the unconscious Philip.\n\nThe O\u2019Byrne rose, and, stretching himself to his full height, haughtily\nexclaimed:\n\n\u201cWhen I sell one rood of Ballymacreedy, Kilnagadd, and Derralossory, may\nI be shattered into fragments like that wine-glass,\u201d casting, as he\nspoke, the crystal goblet upon the oaken floor, where it shivered into\nten thousand pieces.\n\nHad a thunderbolt fallen upon the _\u00e9pergne_, and, splitting roof and\nceiling, descended into their midst, the luckless hero of this narrative\ncould scarcely have been less scared and astonished. The admonitory\nwinkings of Minchin, the ankle-rubs of the good priest, had been lost\nupon him. He had rushed upon his fate and had impaled himself. Fool that\nhe was, never to have conjectured that the haughty possessor of the land\nof his ancestors was the fiery, fierce old chieftain who now sat\nscowling at the ceiling and quaffing goblet after goblet of the rich red\nwine! Everything pointed to the fact\u2014the conversation of the previous\nevening, the exclamation of Eileen upon the hill overlooking Lough Dan,\nthe references of Father O\u2019Doherty. He was a senseless idiot, and had\nplanted the thorn of offence where he would have sown the bright seed of\nfriendship. Could he apologize? How? Could he explain? He must.\n\n\u201cThe fact is\u2014\u201d he commenced, when his host pulled him up:\n\n\u201cA word of advice to you, Mr. Redmond. When you enter a man\u2019s house do\nnot turn appraiser and play the amateur auctioneer.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut-\u201d burst in Phil.\n\n\u201cPardon me. If you consider that because you have scraped a few\ngreenbacks together\u2014Heaven knows how; _I_ don\u2019t want to inquire\u2014that you\ncan come over here to dictate insulting terms to a man with reference to\nhis own goods and chattels, upon his own hearth, let me tell you, sir,\nthat\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHear _me_,\u201d exclaimed Father O\u2019Doherty. \u201cI am certain that our young\nfriend had no intention of giving annoyance when he made those\nobservations.\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the honor of a man,\u201d roared Redmond, who was in a white heat of\nmortification, \u201cI meant no offence, and furthermore\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us drop the subject, sir, and go to the drawing-room for coffee,\u201d\nsaid the O\u2019Byrne, rising.\n\n\u201cBut I will _not_ drop the subject until I explain myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Redmond, do not press my endurance in my own house.\u201d And the\nhaughty host motioned to the door.\n\n\u201cNot a word,\u201d whispered Father O\u2019Doherty. \u201cYou can make it all right by\nand by, and if _you_ fail _I_ will succeed.\u201d\n\nStill, Philip was not satisfied. He was the outraged party. He demanded\nredress for a cruel wrong. Was he to remain in the pillory and be pelted\nwith the mistrust and dislike of the man whom of all others he was most\ndesirous of conciliating. What would _she_ think of him when her father\ncame to tell her his version of the affair? Would _he_ not suffer and\nstand convicted, however innocent he might be? It was maddening, and\nRedmond, following his host, brusquely demanded a few minutes\u2019\nconversation.\n\n\u201c'Forbid it, Heaven, the hermit cried!\u2019\u201d exclaimed Minchin, playfully\nseizing our hero by the shoulders and twisting him teetotum-fashion,\nwhile the priest engaged the attention of the O\u2019Byrne in another\ndirection.\n\n\u201cAre you mad, Redmond?\u201d said Minchin in a low tone. \u201cOn this subject he\nhas a craze. Why, in the name of Jupiter Olympus, did you introduce it?\u201d\n\n\u201cAm I to lie under the imputation of being a peddler, an auctioneer, a\nblackguard?\u201d asked the other excitedly.\n\n\u201cThe thing will be as dead as Queen Anne in five minutes, if you will\nonly let it cross the Styx.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I did not know that Mr. O\u2019Byrne was the present proprietor of\nBallymacreedy.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen why didn\u2019t you say so?\u201d\n\n\u201cI would not be listened to.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s easily explained.\u201d\n\nWhen Redmond entered the drawing-room the host was speaking to his\ndaughter, and that it was about him he had little doubt from the\nexpression of surprise, pain, and anger which flitted across her face.\n\nDetermined not to be baffled in his purpose this time, he strode across\nthe apartment, and, confronting the O\u2019Byrne, said:\n\n\u201cIf you will kindly permit me a word of explanation\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201c_Do_ take a cup of coffee, Mr. Redmond,\u201d interrupted Miss O\u2019Byrne;\n\u201cand\u2014and you will excuse me if I\u2014I wish you good-night.\u201d And courtesying\nvery low, she turned from him and swept out of the room.\n\nA choking sensation seized our hero. A something in his throat\u2014anger,\nmortification, bitter mortification\u2014clutched him and held him fast.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll be hanged if I\u2019ll stop here any longer!\u201d he said; and so earnest\nwas his rage that, without waiting to bid his host farewell or to hint\nhis intention to Minchin, he strode out into the quadrangle, through the\narched entrance, across the drawbridge, and onwards he knew not in what\ndirection, reckless, hopeless, and hatless.\n\nWhy had he met her? His path had been calm and peace. Why had she\ntreated him in this way? What had he done to _her_? _He_ knew how her\nfather would vamp up his version of the story. Was ever innocent man so\ndeeply wronged? He would leave Ireland next day, and place the broad\nAtlantic between him and this\u2014ay, this lovely, bewitching girl. Why was\nshe so captivating? Where did the charm lie?\n\nThoughts all-conflicting, all-contradictory surged through his brain as\nhe marched onward. The summer dew failed to soothe his fevered mind; the\nsoft night-wind sighing across the Shaughnamore mountain did not cool\nhis burning brow. The gray dawn of glorious day still found him plodding\nonwards, and the sun was high above the horizon when he entered the\npicturesque little village of Enniskerry. He had left Coolgreny fifteen\nIrish miles behind him across the mountains.\n\nWhen he had succeeded in arousing the inmates of the Powerscourt Arms,\nhe demanded writing materials and a messenger.\n\n\u201cIs it pin an\u2019 ink at this time o\u2019 day, sir?\u201d demanded the sleepy\nhandmaiden.\n\n\u201cYes; here\u2019s half a crown for you. Open your eyes and hurry up.\u201d\n\nHe wrote the following note to the O\u2019Byrne, and despatched it by a\nragged gossoon, who started on his errand, up the hill that leads by the\nDargle, like a mountain deer. He also forwarded an order for his luggage\nto the landlord of the Derralossory Arms.\n\n    SIR: As you would permit me no explanation last night, I _insist_\n    upon making it now. I did not know that you were the possessor of\n    the lands of my forefathers until you yourself announced it. In\n    thanking you for your hospitality I cannot refrain from saying that\n    I wish I had never enjoyed it, as it has been a source of intense\n    pleasure and likewise of bitter pain.\n\n    I am, sir,\n\n    Your obedient servant,\n\n    PHILIP REDMOND.\n\nThe messenger returned in a few hours with his luggage.\n\n\u201cDid you deliver my letter at Coolgreny?\u201d\n\n\u201cI gev it to wan av the boys, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you see any of the\u2014family?\u201d\n\n\u201cNone o\u2019 them, barrin\u2019 Miss Eileen\u2019s pony that does be dhruv be her in a\nsthraw shay, yer honner.\u201d\n\nHappy pony! thought Redmond, as he gazed into the past and beheld Doaty\ncoming to a standstill despite the musical remonstrances of his\nmistress.\n\n\u201cThey axed me if your honner\u2019s name was Ridmond, an\u2019 I sed I didn\u2019t\nknow; an\u2019 I was axed if ye cum wudout a hat, an\u2019 I sed yis. 'That\u2019s\nhim,\u2019 sez Luke Byrne, the boy. 'A low-sized man,\u2019 sez he. 'No,\u2019 sez I,\n'he\u2019s a cupple o\u2019 yards high anyhow\u2019; an\u2019 Luke tould me they wor\ndraggin\u2019 the lake beyant at Shinnagh for ye, an\u2019 that Miss Eileen was\nroarin\u2019 an\u2019 bawlin\u2019 the whole mornin\u2019.\u201d\n\nA thrill went through every fibre in Redmond\u2019s body as this last\nannouncement fell upon his ear; and although the idea was coarsely\nexpressed, that the tender girl might be sorrowing for him caused an\nunutterable sensation of joy. She could not believe him capable of\ninsulting _her_ father beneath the same roof which shut the stars from\nher; and yet\u2014pshaw! he would shake the whole thing off as a disagreeable\nyet delightful dream.\n\nHis immediate resolve was to proceed to Dublin, and from thence to\nQueenstown and back to his native shores; but second thoughts, always so\nsober, so full of judicious counsel, whispered that the long, lonely\ndays and nights upon the Atlantic would but serve to increase his fever,\nand that his best chance lay in the distracting influence of European\ntravel. Seven o\u2019clock that evening found him on board the mail steamer\nfor Holyhead; and as he gazed at the soft outlines of the Wicklow hills\nreceding from his wistful glance, and thought of _her_ in that secluded,\npeaceful valley, he would willingly have parted with a moiety of his\nexistence to be once again in the sunlight of her presence.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhile our hero was on the road to Enniskerry Father O\u2019Doherty found an\nopportunity for comparing notes with Minchin, and, fully convinced of\nthe truthfulness of the young American\u2019s statement, proceeded at once to\ndisabuse the diseased mind of the O\u2019Byrne. This he ultimately succeeded\nin doing, but not without a deal of powerful and full-flavored argument.\n\u201cI do believe, Father, I took too much wine. Where is Mr. Redmond, until\nI make the _amende honorable_?\u201d\n\n\u201cStrolling about the grounds, I believe.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us go in search of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can go, O\u2019Byrne; I want to have a chat with my fair young child,\u201d\nsaid the clergyman, who had witnessed Eileen\u2019s stately courtesy and\nexit.\n\nMinchin and O\u2019Byrne strolled out into the summer night, making sure of\nfinding Redmond on the terrace overlooking the moat.\n\n\u201cWe have bail for his appearance,\u201d said Minchin, \u201cas his hat is\ndecorating the antlers of a lordly stag in the entrance hall.\u201d\n\nThe two gentlemen smoked their cigars as they leisurely went in quest of\nthe missing one, and from terrace they proceeded to garden, from garden\nto pleasaunce, and from pleasaunce to gate-house, but no trace of him\ncould be found. \u201cHe is in the stables,\u201d suggested the O\u2019Byrne; and they\nreturned to the enormous quadrangle in which the houses were quartered,\nbut none of the helpers had seen him, and the stables were all locked\nfor the night.\n\n\u201cHe is a romantic, hot-headed young dog, and is just taking a cooler. He\nwill turn up by and by, I warrant me; or mayhap he has hied him to my\nlady\u2019s bower.\u201d And Minchin laughed at the conceit.\n\n\u201cWhere is Redmond?\u201d asked Father O\u2019Doherty, as they regained the\ndrawing-room.\n\n\u201cWe were going to ask you,\u201d said the O\u2019Byrne. \u201cWhere is Eileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe poor child has a bad headache and has gone to lie down.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome along, Mr. Minchin, and we\u2019ll take our _cruiskeen lawn_. In the\nmeantime I shall send some of the men to scour the wood in pursuit of\nthis invisible guest. I needn\u2019t ask you to join us, father?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir; a little wine at dinner is my _quantum_.\u201d\n\nAs the night rolled over considerable uneasiness was felt about Philip\u2019s\nnon-appearance; but Minchin\u2019s theory, that he had, in his agitation,\nreturned to the Derralossory Arms _minus_ his hat, was gladly accepted,\nand the O\u2019Byrne insisted upon driving with Minchin into Roundwood in\norder to set matters right.\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to say that the worthy proprietor of the\nhostelry had nothing of Redmond\u2019s but a small nickel-mounted valise,\nwhich he described as set in solid silver.\n\nThis increased the anxiety, and as a portion of the lands of Coolgreny\nabutted upon the lake in sheer precipices of two and three hundred feet,\nfears began to be entertained that poor Philip in his ignorance of the\ncountry might have taken this unfortunate path. There was nothing for it\nbut to await the advent of daylight, and then to scour the country, and,\nif necessary, to drag the lake at this particular place.\n\nThe morning brought no Redmond, and as traces of recent footsteps were\nvery distinct in the neighborhood of the precipice, and the heather\nrudely torn away at the edge of the cliff, as though by a despairing\nclutch, the idea that he had fallen into the lake grew into a certainty.\nA grapnel was got ready, and the melancholy process of dragging rapidly\ncommenced.\n\nThe relief which Redmond\u2019s letter brought produced immediate reaction.\nFather O\u2019Doherty at once started with his car to Enniskerry, with a very\ncourteous note from the O\u2019Byrne and a message from Eileen, but arrived\nabout an hour after our hero had quitted the village. Later on, when the\ngood priest had returned with this intelligence, the O\u2019Byrne telegraphed\nto the Shelborne Hotel, Dublin, on chance, writing also to that address.\nPhilip was on board the steamer when the telegram arrived, and in London\nwhen the missive reached Ireland\u2019s capital. Had he received either, he\nwould have flown back to Coolgreny; but it was not to be.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was Sunday forenoon, and a great human wave surged out of the\nMadeleine Church, Paris. Instinctively one pauses beneath that noble\nportico and gazes across the Place de la Concorde, taking in the\nglittering Boulevard and the whole brilliancy of the _coup d\u2019\u0153il_.\nPhilip Redmond had been amongst the worshippers, and was now on his way\nto the H\u00f4tel du Louvre, so different in every respect to the\nwhite-washed, thatch-covered hostelry in the heart of the County\nWicklow, and at the door of which he was introduced to the reader. He\nhad indulged in a lazy tour, commencing with the quaint old cities of\nBelgium, whence he proceeded to Cologne and up the Rhine to Mayence, and\nafter a wandering of two months found himself in the gay and fascinating\ncapital of the world. Philip\u2019s wound had been healed; his heart ceased\nto throb at the recollection of the \u201ctender light of a day that was\ndead\u201d; and if the image of Eileen O\u2019Byrne did come back to him, he felt\ninclined to place himself in the pillory of his own thoughts and pelt\nhimself with ridicule. It was a delightful thing to be heart-whole. He\nhad played with fire and had passed through the red-hot furnace, badly\nburnt, no doubt, but cured at once and for ever. He used to amuse\nhimself by imagining what the effect of his letter upon the haughty\nchieftain might be, and would not _her_ vanity be ruffled by the utter\nabsence of the mention of her name? He had done his _devoir_ in stating\nthat the day was one of intense enjoyment; this _she_ could easily\ntranslate by the aid of her own dictionary. Heigh-ho! it was a pity the\ndream did not last a little longer, he thought, as he prepared to\ndescend the steps of the church upon that lovely August forenoon. As he\ndescended, his foot became entangled in the skirt of a young girl right\nin front of him. He turned to apologize\u2014his heart gave one fearful bound\nand his brain reeled till he became dizzy. He felt himself grow pale and\ncold, but, lifting his hat with a cold salutation, he passed down and\nonwards. It was Eileen O\u2019Byrne!\n\nWhen he reached the hotel\u2014and he felt as if treading on air\u2014he repaired\nto his apartment and flung himself into a chair in a whirl of\nconflicting emotion. The old wound which he had imagined healed had\nbroken out afresh beneath the sad, reproachful glance of those lovely\ngray Irish eyes. There was but one chance left, and that was to fly. To\nbe in the same city, country, hemisphere with her would be torture. He\nfelt as if some great sea should divide them, and then that the joyous\nserenity of the last few weeks would be restored to him. He had very\nlittle packing to do, as he had not unpacked, and he at once proceeded\nto the _bureau_ to settle his bill. As he was passing along a corridor\nin order to reach the _vestiaire_, he became almost rooted to the\nground. A turn in the passage brought him face to face with her whom he\nwas doing his uttermost to avoid. She was deadly pale, and she passed\nhim with a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head, cold, glacial,\nhaughty. There was a cry of anguish in Phil Redmond\u2019s heart, and, acting\nupon an unconquerable impulse, he turned after her and almost fiercely\ndemanded: \u201cWhat _have_ I done to deserve this?\u201d\n\nThe same bright rush of crimson which flashed across her face like a\nrosy sunset when first he met her covered her now as she panted forth:\n\n\u201c_You_ seemed to wish it so.\u201d\n\n\u201c_I!_\u201d And Phil Redmond blurted out something with reference to\nexplanation and unfair treatment in his usual _brusque_ way.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was chill October, and a huge log burned in the cavernous fire-place\nin the banquet-hall at Coolgreny. The claret was upon the ebon-colored\noak table, and round it sat no less a party than that which was\nassembled upon the memorable night when Phil Redmond so innocently\nbrought the wrath of his host upon his devoted head.\n\n\u201cTo think,\u201d said Minchin in a state of ecstatic glow, \u201cthat we should\nmeet here under such remarkable circumstances. Ye gods!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the O\u2019Byrne, rising, \u201cI wanted the same party exactly, and I\nhave been fortunate. You all heard me swear that I would never sell a\nrood of Ballymacreedy, Kilnagadd, or Derralossory; but\u201d\u2014with a\nsmile\u2014\u201cthat oath does not prevent my giving them away, and, please God,\nwhen you, Father O\u2019Doherty, unite my honest young friend Philip Redmond\nto my only child, he shall be restored to the lands of his fathers\nthrough his wife.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n           THE BEGINNING OF THE POPE\u2019S TEMPORAL PRINCIPALITY.\n\n\nThe Vicar of Jesus Christ is by virtue of his office, and by divine\nright, of necessity in his own person a sovereign. He is exempt from all\nsubjection to any temporal power, and perfectly free in respect to his\nown person and the full exercise of his spiritual supremacy, to which\nkings are as much subject as other baptized persons, and nations as\nindividuals. The right of acquiring property and domain, in a manner\nwhich does not violate any other human right, is inherent in this\npersonal sovereignty, and carries with it all the rights of eminent\ndomain, so that whatever is acquired in this way becomes inalienable\nexcept by a voluntary cession. The possession of actual sovereign\ndominion over a sufficient territory is evidently the logical and\nnatural complement of this personal sovereignty, yet is not acquired\nexcept by some legal, human act, similar to that which subjects any\ngiven domain in particular to any other given individual or corporation.\nThe possession of spiritual sovereignty united with the temporal dignity\nand power of a civil monarch is, manifestly, the most dangerous and\nliable to abuse of all the attributions which any individual ruler or\ndynasty of supreme rulers can be supposed to have received as a stable\nand permanent right. The danger is increased in proportion to the\nmagnitude and duration of the spiritual empire and the political\nmonarchy united with it. We are obliged, therefore, to believe that\nJesus Christ, as the Sovereign Lord of the world, when he founded such\nan institution, provided efficaciously for the protection of Christian\nsociety against this danger and liability to abuse. This he could not do\nwithout exercising a special and supernatural providence over his\nearthly vicariate, the Papacy. Yet, according to the analogy of all\nother departments of the divine government, this special providence\nought to be reduced to a minimum and made as little miraculous as\npossible, by a wise ordering of natural and secondary causes in\nreference to the desired effect. In point of fact, we see, from the\nhistory of the Papacy, that God has permitted it to exhibit as much of\nthe weakness and imperfection of all human things as was consistent with\nthe fulfilment of the end of its institution. His supernatural\noverruling of the natural course of events has been limited to this\nresult. And the preservation of the Holy See from perversion by human\npassions into a merely earthly power, an empire of this world, has been\naccomplished in great part by the difficulties and struggles which have\nalways environed the possession of the greatest of human dignities and\npowers\u2014the papal sovereignty.\n\nFrom Nero to Constantine the Popes were obliged to struggle with the\nheathen emperors in order to conquer their liberty at the cost of\nmartyrdom. From Sylvester to Gregory the Great they were obliged to\nstruggle with civil and ecclesiastical princes for the recognition and\nmaintenance of their spiritual supremacy. The temporal and civil domain\nnecessary for the stable possession and exercise of the personal,\nsovereign independence of the Pope as Supreme Pastor of the church was\nnot given until its necessity became manifest. It came in the natural\ncourse of events, without violence or miracle. Its tenure was precarious\nand constantly disputed, and has so remained until the present day. Our\npresent purpose is to sketch the history of the struggles by which the\nfirst Popes who were kings of Rome secured the dominion of the patrimony\nof St. Peter as an inalienable right recognized by the international law\nof Christendom.\n\nThe temporal domain of the Popes began with the natural and gradual\nacquisition of landed property, which in those times carried with it\nprincely authority over the tenants and inhabitants of estates. Not only\nthe Popes but the principal bishops in Italy and other countries became\nin this way dukes and counts. The sovereign rights of the emperors\nlapsed through a long-continued neglect to fulfil the essential duties\nof sovereignty, and there was no other royal power in Italy which\nsucceeded to them in a legitimate manner. The ruling power devolved\nnaturally upon the local princes. The Roman people turned toward the\nPope as their immediate bishop; just as the people of Ravenna, Milan,\nTreves, Cologne, and many other cities did to their own bishop, because\nhe was the chief of their aristocracy, and also the protector of the\npeople, and was the only one who was both willing and able to take the\nplace vacated by their former rulers. The Western Roman Empire ceased to\nexist when the Heruli under Odoacer took and sacked Rome, making\nthemselves masters of Italy. Odoacer was in turn conquered and killed by\nthe Ostrogoth Theodoric, who was nominally the lieutenant of the Greek\nemperor, but in reality conquered Italy for himself. When the empire\nrevived under the able administration of Justinian, the kingdom of the\nOstrogoths was subdued and overthrown by the great general Belisarius. A\nnew invasion of Lombards, or Long-beards, from Germany put an end once\nmore to the imperial dominion in Italy, with the exception of a certain\npart called the exarchate, which had its capital at Ravenna. The\nauthority of the Lombard kings was very limited and precarious, and\nunder their sway the duchies and marquisates and independent\nmunicipalities of Italy assumed that character of autonomy which made\nItaly ever after incapable of anything except a federative unity. The\nLombards were at first Arians, but the conversion of their beautiful and\naccomplished queen, Theodolinda, by St. Gregory the Great was the\nbeginning of a general reconciliation of the whole people to the\nCatholic Church, and of the complete extinction of the Arian heresy in\nItaly. The Popes never acknowledged the sovereignty of the Lombard kings\nover the city and duchy of Rome. The Greek exarch at Ravenna, as the\nrepresentative of the emperor, was recognized as having lawful\njurisdiction, and a magistrate delegated by him, called a duke, resided\nin Rome. The actual authority of these representatives of the ancient\nimperial power and of their master at Constantinople became, however,\ncontinually more and more a restricted and almost nominal formality,\nuntil it was altogether extinguished by the fall of the Greek exarchate.\nA few passages from the Italian historian Cant\u00f9 will show in a clear and\nbrief manner how the temporal sovereignty of the Popes in Rome resulted\nnaturally and necessarily out of the new order of things which issued\nfrom the universal disorder and confusion that prevailed:\n\n    \u201cAt the time of the descent of the Lombards upon Italy the country\n    lacked a head possessing general authority, and the Roman people, as\n    well that portion of them who had been subjugated as those who were\n    still free, had no other eminent personage to whom they could look\n    except the Pope. He possessed immense domains in Sicily, Calabria,\n    Apulia, the Campagna, the Sabine territory, Dalmatia, Illyria,\n    Sardinia, in the Cottian Alps, and even in the Gauls. These domains\n    being cultivated by farmers, he exercised over them a legal\n    jurisdiction, appointed officers and gave orders; and, besides, his\n    revenue enabled him to distribute succors in times of dearth, to\n    furnish asylum to refugees, and to pay troops. After the conquest\n    had interrupted the communications between Rome and the exarch of\n    Ravenna, the Pope remained the _de facto_ head of the city where he\n    resided; he corresponded directly with the Byzantine court; made war\n    and peace with the Lombard kings; and, moreover, by putting himself\n    in an attitude of resistance to their conquests, _he became the\n    representative of the national party_. The chair of St. Peter\n    awaited only a pontiff who should feel all the importance and\n    display all the dignity of his high position. Such a man was Gregory\n    the Great\u201d (580-603).\n\n    \u201cItaly, at this time, had no more stability in its civil\n    institutions than France. The Lombards had occupied a large part of\n    it in the first burst of invasion; but the partition which they made\n    among several dukes, though it served to consolidate their\n    possession, prevented them from completing their conquest. As the\n    king was elected from among these different nobles, without any\n    hereditary right, there was a revolution at every vacancy; moreover,\n    the dukes obtained continually more considerable privileges by\n    favoring one or another among the competitors\u2014so much so that those\n    of Benevento and Spoleto acquired complete independence. The only\n    thing they all desired was to remain in tranquil enjoyment of\n    absolute authority in their particular domains, or to make war for\n    their own personal aggrandizement in power and wealth, and not in\n    obedience to the king\u2019s command; so that the king could with\n    difficulty induce them to follow him in any military enterprise\n    against the Greeks for the purpose of expelling these from Italy, or\n    against the Franks, who molested them unremittingly, either for the\n    sake of pillage or at the instigation of the Eastern emperors....\n    The Greek exarch\u2019s administration extended over the Romagna, the\n    marshy valleys of Ferrara and Comacchio, over five maritime towns\n    from Rimini to Ancona, and five other towns between the shore of the\n    Adriatic and the Apennine slope, over Rome, Venice, and almost all\n    the cities on the sea-coast. Some cities, for instance Venice, made\n    themselves independent, while others were constantly menaced and\n    often invaded by the Lombards. When these latter were involved in\n    foreign or civil wars, the exarchs would avail themselves of the\n    chance to repossess the places they had lost, but were always\n    speedily driven back into narrow limits, without ever enjoying\n    peace, and subject to the necessity of making every year short\n    truces, for which they frequently had to pay a tribute of three\n    hundred livres in gold. When the means failed for paying tribute and\n    the wages of the soldiers, they ran down to Rome and plundered the\n    treasury of the church, or pillaged the sanctuary of St. Michael at\n    Monte Gargano, which was an object of great veneration to the\n    Lombards....\n\n    \u201cAnother power remained in Italy, as yet imperceptibly growing up,\n    but destined to be developed during the course of the century and to\n    cast lasting roots amid the ruins of the others. The Popes had\n    always shown themselves hostile to the Lombard domination and\n    desirous of preserving the invaded provinces to the empire. Gregory\n    the Great had employed for this effect his authority, his eloquence,\n    his treasure, and his skill in the arts of diplomacy; his successors\n    followed his example, and whenever they were menaced by the Lombards\n    they implored without delay the aid of Constantinople. Preserving\n    toward the emperor the submission which they had constantly\n    exhibited while Rome was the capital of the world, they asked his\n    confirmation of their election, paid him a fixed tribute, and kept\n    at his court an apocrisiarius, who treated with him respecting their\n    affairs; but their dependence on distant sovereigns and feeble\n    exarchs, upon whom the people looked with an evil eye, kept on\n    continually diminishing. Thus the authority of the Popes, who were\n    at the head of the municipal institutions which had been preserved\n    in the city, rendered that of the Duke of Rome almost a nullity, and\n    approached to a species of sovereignty.\u201d[98]\n\nFootnote 98:\n\n  Cesar Cant\u00f9\u2019s _Univ. Hist._, French translation, vol. vii. p. 418,\n  vol. viii. p. 214.\n\nAlboin, the first Lombard king, was murdered soon after his conquest by\nhis own wife, in revenge for the death of her father, Cunimond, chief of\nthe Gepid\u00e6. He was succeeded by Clefis, who was assassinated after\nreigning eighteen months. The Lombard dukes were disposed to do without\na king, and elected no successor to Clefis, until the necessity of\nuniting in war against their enemies compelled them to elect Autharis,\nthe son of Clefis, the prince whose wife was the celebrated Queen\nTheodolinda. Autharis died one year after his marriage, and Theodolinda\nwas requested by the dukes to choose a new spouse and king from among\ntheir number. The choice fell upon Agilulph, Duke of Turin. His son and\nsuccessor, Adoloald, was deposed and Ariovald, Duke of Turin, elected in\nhis place, to whom succeeded Rotharis, Duke of Turin, the second husband\nof Gundeberga, widow of Ariovald, and who was followed by his son\nRodoald, the last of the descendants of Theodolinda. The nobles and\npeople were so much attached to the memory of this pious queen that they\nsought for a new king in her family, although it was not Lombard, and\nelected her nephew, Aribert of Asti, of the Agilolphingian tribe settled\nin Bavaria. At his death the kingdom was divided between his two sons,\nfrom whom it was wrested by Grimoald, Duke of Benevento. His son\nGaribald was dispossessed by Perthurit, one of the sons of Aribert.\nCunibert, Luitpert, Ragimpert, and Aribert II. completed the list of the\nAgilolphingian kings. Ansprand, a partisan of Luitpert, who had been\ndethroned by his rival Ragimpert and imprisoned by Aribert, conquered\nAribert, and after a short reign of three months was succeeded by his\nson Luitprand, who reigned thirty-two years (712 to 744) and was the\ngreatest of the Lombard kings.\n\nWith the reign of Luitprand begins the epoch of the decisive events\nwhich resulted in the final severance of all the bonds of political\ndependence which united Rome with the Greek Empire, in the establishment\nof the formal and legal monarchy of the Popes, and the overthrow of the\nLombard dominion in Italy by Charlemagne.\n\nLuitprand was a sovereign in the strict sense of the word, through his\nability and energy of character even more than by the recognized title\nto the royal dignity which was vested in his person. He undertook and\ncarried out a thorough reformation in the political administration of\nhis kingdom, re-established order, extirpated the germs of disunion and\ncivil war, secured the obedience of his subordinate dukes, and preserved\na good intelligence with the Popes and the church. His ultimate aim was\nthe union of all Italy in one kingdom under his own laws, including all\nthe remaining Greek possessions and the city and principality of Rome.\nThe first great step toward the fulfilment of this design must obviously\nbe the conquest of the Greek exarchate. In this undertaking he had the\nsympathy of the Roman aristocracy and people, though not that of the\nPopes. The remnant of the old Roman nation existed at this time almost\nentirely in the ancient capital and its adjacent territory. The Roman\nEmpire really perished from no other cause than the general extinction\nof the Roman race. As the barbarians swarmed into Italy the best part of\nthe old Italians took refuge in Rome, where the old spirit, the old\nmanners and institutions\u2014so to speak, the Roman essence\u2014was concentrated\nand preserved to effect a new and peaceful conquest of the world. This\nRoman nation desired to have its own autonomy and to be subject neither\nto the Roumanians of the east nor the barbarians of the west. They had\nno thought of accepting Lombard sovereignty over themselves, yet they\nwere eager to see the Greek domination in Italy terminated, and\ntherefore desired Luitprand\u2019s success in the enterprise of overthrowing\nthe exarchate. For Rome they desired independence. The Popes, however,\nwould not take any measures for making Rome a sovereign state, until\ndivine Providence directed the course of events to this end as a natural\nand necessary result, without any positive act on their part renouncing\ncivil allegiance to the empire.\n\nThe course of events actually favored most opportunely and remarkably\nthe designs of Luitprand and the wishes of the Roman people. The\nunutterable folly of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian drove him to an attack\non the religion of the Romans and the sacred person of the pontiff. He\nordered the exarch Paul to enforce submission to the heresy of the\nIconoclasts by military power. Pope Gregory II. excommunicated Leo and\nexhorted all the Catholic princes and people of Italy to stand firm in\ndefence of the faith and discipline of the church. They obeyed his voice\nso readily and with so much zeal that the absolute and final extinction\nof the Greek dominion in Italy was only averted by the mediation of the\nPope himself. As Luitprand and the Lombards, profiting by the general\nuprising against the imperial authority, became stronger and advanced\ntoward a more entire subjugation of Italy, they became more dangerous to\nthe independence of the Holy See than were the feeble dukes and exarchs\nwho represented the distant emperor. The king even allied himself with\nthe exarch for the subjugation of the proud republic which disdained to\nbe subject to either Greek or Lombard, and besieged the city of Rome.\nPope Gregory II. went to Luitprand\u2019s camp, and the majesty of his\npresence, together with the force of the arguments which he addressed to\nthe noble and Catholic mind of the king, produced such an effect upon\nhim that he cast himself at the feet of the pontiff, imploring his\nbenediction and promising peace. In company with the Pope, Luitprand\nwent to St. Peter\u2019s Church, where he laid upon the tomb of the apostle\nhis royal mantle, bracelets, coat of mail, dagger, gilded sword, golden\ncrown, and silver cross as a gift to St. Peter and the church.\nNevertheless, he renewed his attempt to make himself master of Rome ten\nyears later during the pontificate of Gregory III., and continued during\nthe pontificate of Zacharias his occasional irruptions into the\nexarchate of Ravenna and the duchy of Rome, although in every instance\nhe yielded to the voice of his conscience and of the Vicar of Christ,\ndesisting from his purpose as often as he renewed it, and making\nrestitution of the towns which he had conquered. His successor, Rachis,\nundertook anew the enterprise of subjugating the exarchate, but was so\nmuch affected by the remonstrances of the Pope that he abdicated his\ndignity and withdrew with his wife and children into a monastery. His\nbrother and successor, Astolpho, actually achieved the conquest of the\nexarchate,[99] and put an end to the Greek dominion in that part of\nItaly. Henceforth the Byzantine emperors had no authority in Italy\nexcept in Calabria and Sicily. Astolpho next turned his attention toward\nRome and made a formal demand of allegiance on the senate and people,\nsupported by a large army. The city was strongly fortified, and all its\npeople were determined to make a stubborn defence of their independence.\nAstolpho would not lend his ear to any negotiation, help was demanded in\nvain from the Greek emperor, and in these sore straits Pope Stephen III.\nbetook himself for aid and succor to Pepin, the King of the Franks.\n\nFootnote 99:\n\n  The term exarchate is here used in its restricted sense.\n\nGregory III. had once before invoked the help of Charles Martel without\nany result. Since that time the Frankish nobles had referred to Pope\nZacharias the question of their right to set aside the effete dynasty of\nthe Merovingians and to substitute in its place the family of Charles\nMartel. The Pope had answered that the royal title ought to be given to\nthe one who actually possessed and exercised the royal authority and\nfunctions. The new Carlovingian dynasty was thus formally established in\nFrance with the sanction and benediction of the Pope. And the time was\nnow come for these powerful kings, Pepin and Charlemagne, to step\nforward as the eldest sons of the church, to secure the temporal\nsovereignty of the Pope, and to inaugurate that close relationship which\nhas ever since existed between the kingdom of France and the Holy See.\n\nPope Stephen, although old and in extremely feeble health, went to\nFrance, where he was received with a spontaneous and splendid ovation by\nall ranks of the people, from the highest to the lowest. The Pope\nperformed the solemn ceremony of the anointing of the king, the queen,\nand the royal princes, and conferred upon Pepin the dignity of patrician\nof Rome. A solemn assembly of the magnates of the kingdom was held at\nQuiercey, at which the king and nobles bound themselves to place the\nPope in possession of the sovereign dominion of Rome and the exarchate.\nPepin first attempted peaceful negotiations with Astolpho, and, these\nbeing absolutely refused, crossed the Alps with an army, and compelled\nhim to make a treaty of peace with the Pope, by which he renounced all\nclaim upon the Roman principality and the exarchate. Astolpho, however,\ndisavowed and violated his engagements as soon as Pepin had withdrawn\nhis army. Again (755) Pepin crossed the Alps and suddenly appeared with\nan overwhelming force before Pavia. Severer conditions of peace were\nthis time imposed upon Astolpho\u2014a mulct of one-third of his treasure, a\nyearly tribute of 12,000 gold _solidi_, and hostages for the fulfilment\nof his promises. French and Lombard commissaries were appointed to visit\nthe whole territory assigned to the Pope and receive the keys of all the\ncities. Pepin made a solemn and festal entry into Rome amidst universal\njubilation, and laid a formal document of investiture of the pontifical\ndomain, together with the keys of the towns, upon the tomb of St. Peter.\n\nAstolpho died suddenly from an injury received by a fall from his horse,\nvery soon after these events (756). Rachis came out of his cloister with\nthe design of regaining the crown which he had resigned. The majority of\nthe princes favored the election of Didier, Duke of Brescia, who secured\nthe influence of the Pope and of the envoys of Pepin in his favor by a\nsolemn promise under oath to execute the treaty made by Astolpho and to\ncede some additional territory to the Holy See. He was accordingly\nelected King of Lombardy, but failed to fulfil his engagements and\npassed the seventeen years of his reign in perpetual efforts to secure\nan undivided sovereignty over all Italy. At last, taking advantage of\nthe death of Pepin and of Pope Stephen III., and of cabals and factions\namong the Romans in reference to a new election, he made an open and\nviolent effort to seize the dominion of Rome and the entire\nprincipality. He was deterred from actually consummating his intention\nby an armed entry into the city, where there was no force which could\nhave prevented it, simply by the threat of excommunication, and withdrew\nto Pavia. The end of the Lombard kingdom was now near at hand. Pope\nAdrian, the Italian people, Charlemagne, and all except a few adherents\nof Didier were in accord on this subject. Charles crossed the Alps with\na large army, evading the troops which guarded the passes by means of a\nsecret defile, and easily took possession of the whole territory, Pavia\nonly excepted, which held out for a year under Didier and his gallant\nson, Adelchis. Pavia at length surrendered, the Lombard kingdom was\nabolished, Didier was confined in a French monastery, where he became a\nmonk in earnest for the rest of his life, the donation of Pepin to the\nHoly See was confirmed, and Charles returned home to prosecute that\nbrilliant career which made him before the end of the century the\nmonarch of almost the whole of Europe.\n\nThe temporal kingdom of the Pope was now established in a definite and\nstable manner, with the universal recognition of Catholic Christendom.\nNevertheless, as a civil institution it was still exposed to the inward\nand outward vicissitudes and dangers to which all states are liable from\nthe very nature of things. It was necessary that some great political\npower, distinct from the papal sovereignty, should hold over the See of\nSt. Peter the \u00e6gis of protection. The providence of God, therefore, soon\nraised up that power which was consecrated by the name of\n\n\n                        \u201cTHE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.\u201d\n\n\nDuring the last year of the eighth century Adrian\u2019s successor, Pope Leo\nIII., was obliged to implore the aid of Charlemagne to repress the\nturbulence of Roman factions. Leo was received by Charlemagne at\nPaderborn, in the midst of a brilliant assemblage of nobles and a vast\narmy, with all possible veneration and honor, and returned to Rome\nescorted by princes and prelates and a guard of honor, to await the\npromised visit of the king. In December, 799, Charlemagne came to Rome,\na great council was assembled, and all the measures which were necessary\nfor restoring and confirming order in the pontifical state were adopted.\nThe Christmas festivities were celebrated with the greatest possible\npomp and splendor, and while Charlemagne was kneeling before the tomb of\nthe apostles Leo suddenly and unexpectedly approached him and placed on\nhis head a golden diadem. The people burst forth into the acclamation:\n\u201cLife and victory to Charles, the great and pacific Roman emperor!\u201d In\nthe bull which Leo published on the same day he says: _Quem Carolum\nauctore Deo, in defensionem et provectum sanct\u00e6 universalis ecclesi\u00e6\nAugustum hodie sacravimus_.\n\nIn a former article[100] we have sketched an outline of the destinies\nand vicissitudes of Rome during the period of the decline of the\nCarlovingian dynasty and the rise of the German Empire. We have,\ntherefore, now presented in a general view the history of the rise and\nconsolidation of the temporal sovereignty of the Popes between the two\ngreat eras of St. Gregory I. and St. Gregory VII. From that time forward\nthe political history of the Papacy relates chiefly to the rise and\nsubsequent decline of the temporal power of the Pope over all\nChristendom, until at last, in the disruption of political unity among\nEuropean states, the Holy See is once more subject to the same struggle\nfor independence in its immediate patrimony which preceded the period of\nits medi\u00e6val power. The confederate union of the European nations under\nthe moral presidency of the pope and the political primacy of the\nemperor was gradually transformed, by the waning of the imperial power\nwhich became restricted to Germany and at last subsided into a mere\nroyal dominion over Austria, and the diminution of the spiritual power\nof the Holy See by the schism in Christendom, into a weaker sort of\nalliance, held together by common interests and mutual treaties. So long\nas this continued the Pope retained his place among the other sovereigns\nas one of the Italian princes, with a personal pre-eminence and a moral\ninfluence derived from his spiritual supremacy over the Catholic\nnations, and over the Catholic population in those nations which were\nnot Catholic. Sound policy and the necessity of preserving an\nequilibrium in Europe caused the powerful monarchs of the great states\nto protect the independence of the Pope against one another, and to\nrestore it when it was invaded. The disruption of the last bonds of\nEuropean alliance in our own day has left the Holy See and the church\nonce more a prey to secular tyranny exercised by a new German emperor,\nand a new Lombard king, without protection or defence from any political\npower. As Rome and Christendom went up together, so they have gone down\ntogether. And if a regeneration or restoration in the actual present or\nthe future is destined for Europe and the rest of the world, it must be\naccomplished in both together; for they are inseparable parts of one\nwhole. The history of the past is therefore a guide for judging the\npresent and forecasting the future. The question of the temporal\nsovereignty of the Pope in the Roman state is essential and pre-eminent\nin the discussion of the principles of a reconstitution of the family of\ncivilized and Christian nations. The complete independence and liberty\nof the Pope as supreme head of the church, and of the church itself, are\nintrinsically the most important of all rights and interests; and with\nthese the temporal sovereignty of the Pope is necessarily connected so\nintimately that it becomes indirectly and extrinsically of equal\nimportance, being, in fact, practically identified with them. We have,\ntherefore, in our preceding historical sketches prepared the way for\nshowing how this sovereignty of the Pope over Rome and the whole\nterritory which he claims as subject to his crown is an indubitable and\ninalienable right, which must be restored and secured to him as the\nindispensable condition of religious and political order and well-being.\n\nFootnote 100:\n\n  \u201cThe Iron Age of Christendom,\u201d THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877.\n\nWe shall not attempt to reconcile this proposition with the doctrine of\na divine or natural right of sovereignty inhering in the multitude of\nevery nation or a majority of them. At the present time this doctrine is\nnot maintained by sensible and moderate advocates of a constitutional\nform of government and of popular franchises. The sovereignty may\nlawfully reside in the multitude politically organized, as it does in\nour republic, but it is not by virtue of divine or natural right\ncoalescing from the separate, individual rights of the units who make up\nthe mass. The right of Mr. Tilden to the Presidential chair was not\nasserted on the ground that he received a majority of the popular vote,\nwhich he did receive without question, but on the ground that he\nreceived a majority of the votes of the electors who were really\ncompetent to vote for the appointment of a President, according to the\nConstitution. We might make a plausible argument to show that the Roman\npeople have always consented to the papal sovereignty, except during\nintervals of political madness, and actually at the present time would\nre-establish it, if they were free to do so. But the right of the Pope\ncannot be maintained on a theory, which would reduce it to a popular\nconcession revocable at any time by the will of his subjects. Some good\nCatholics may hold the doctrine of popular sovereignty as above defined,\nbut they do so inconsistently; for, although it is not directly contrary\nto the Catholic faith, it is incompatible with the principles and\npractice of the Holy See and the church, and the doctrine of every\nauthority respected by sound and loyal Catholics who are instructed in\nthe science of political ethics. In certain circumstances the will of\nthe people suffices, alone or in concurrence with other causes, to\nconvey or transfer lawful dominion. We have shown how, in the case of\nthe papal sovereignty, the Roman people did, voluntarily, withdraw or\nrefuse allegiance to all other princes and eagerly give it to the Pope.\nWe have shown, also, how other causes concurred in establishing his\nright as a fact, and placing him in actual possession of the\nsovereignty, without prejudice to any other really existing legitimate\nright. The Pope possessed all the rights belonging to his position as\nthe chief land-owner and prince among the Roman princes. He possessed\nthe right, as head of the church, to have no temporal prince placed over\nhim who could control or hinder the exercise of his spiritual supremacy.\nMoreover, he possessed a great many imperfect rights or claims upon the\nallegiance of the Roman people arising from the services he had rendered\nto the state in preserving, defending, and succoring it in circumstances\nwhen it was near extinction, from his superior ability to govern the\nstate, and the fitness of things making it expedient, and even\nnecessary, for the public good that sovereignty should be vested in his\nperson. The action of Pepin was that of one who defended the Roman\npeople in the right of their independence against tyrants and\naggressors, and defended the general right of his own and other nations\nto the independence and tranquillity of the Roman Church as the centre\nof Christendom. The action of Charlemagne was similar, and his overthrow\nof the Lombard kingdom was justifiable by the right of conquest, the\nconsent of the greater part of the people of Italy, and the necessity of\nproviding for the welfare not only of Italy but of all Europe. His final\nact of settlement in the beginning of the year 800 had still greater\nforce and legitimacy as the act of the king of Europe, in which all the\ngreat estates of his realm concurred, the whole people of Western\nChristendom applauding, and the Eastern empire tacitly consenting. The\npossession of a temporal principality by the Pope became thus a fact,\nwhich was so connected with natural and divine rights of various kinds\nthat it became a perpetual and inviolable right. This is the only way in\nwhich sovereign rights can become vested in any kind of lawful possessor\nor political person. There is no such thing as a right to civil\nsovereignty immediately delegated by God or springing out of the\nconstitution of nature directly. Scarcely any one can be found, even\namong legitimists, who maintains any such origin for sovereign rights.\nThere is a natural and divine right to good government inherent in the\nsocial and political order. There is a divine right, having a natural\nbasis, in the Catholic Church to good government, which is specifically\nsecured by the divine appointment of the form of government, as a\nhierarchy subordinated to a supreme head. This right takes precedence of\nall others. As those rights which are more particular cede to the more\ngeneral, all rights whatever must give way to the universal right of all\nChristians and all mankind, that the Vicar of Christ shall be left free\nand independent in the possession and exercise of his spiritual\nsupremacy, and that all men shall have liberty of obeying him as the\nvicegerent of God on earth. The Roman people have a right to good\ngovernment, the Italian people have a right to national well-being, all\nEurope has a right to the advantage of a due political equilibrium and\nalliance among nations. All these advantages were secured by the\nestablishment of the sovereignty of the Pope in Rome. It grew up and\nbecame strengthened, and sustained itself for ages, as an essential part\nof the political constitution of Europe. Whatever pretence to right,\nlegitimacy, stability, or sanction of any kind can be made by any\nEuropean institution, the same is applicable to the temporal\nprincipality of the Pope. But, beyond all this, it is necessary to the\nspiritual independence of the Holy See, and therefore protected by the\nsanction of a higher right and a higher law. It has been given to God\nand accepted by his vicegerent, and has thus become sacred, inviolable,\nirrevocable. It is like a cathedral, an altar, the sepulchre of a saint.\nIt is the property of the universal church, of Christendom, and of God.\nAs such it is under the protection of ecclesiastical, international, and\ndivine law; it is within the domain of right and of morality, and\ntherefore appertains to the Catholic religion; is included in the order\nwhich is subject to the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. In this order\nhe is the supreme judge and lawgiver, infallible in defining and\ndeclaring the law, sovereign in the judgments and decrees by which he\napplies it to particular questions and concrete matters. The Pope is\ntherefore the supreme judge, the Catholic episcopate being associated\nwith him in the same tribunal, by whom alone the right and the necessity\nof the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See can be determined. The\nconsent of the Catholic people adds moral weight to this determination,\nand the political action of states gives it the necessary physical force\nfor its execution. But there is no appeal from the judgment of the Pope\nhimself on his own rights as sovereign in the Roman principality, either\nto bishops, sovereigns, or people. His own judgment has settled the\nright of the Roman question, and it is the duty of all Catholics to\nadhere to that judgment. The Pope will not cede his sovereignty, and the\nCatholic people will not consent to its cession or to its violent\noccupation by any usurper.\n\nThe history of the destinies of Rome in the past shows that the recent\ncalamities of the Holy See do not warrant the expectation that its\ntemporal sovereignty has passed away to return no more. It has proved\nitself to be indestructible amid all the vicissitudes of Europe. When\nRome is shaken and disturbed, the civilized world is thrown into\ncommotion. As we are writing, the Russian army is crossing the Pruth,\nand it cannot be doubted that we have reached one of the most momentous\nepochs of history. When our readers are perusing what has been written,\nanother fold of the scroll of time will have been unrolled, perhaps\nthickly written over with records of great events. We have read this\nmorning the significant utterance of Von Moltke on the necessity of\narming more German troops for the defence of the empire. Some may take\nCh\u00e2teaubriand\u2019s gloomy view of things and think that Europe is hastening\non a funeral march to the tomb. If this be so, then there is no refuge\nfor the Pope but the catacombs. If atheism, despotism, revolution, and\nanarchy are going to hold a wild revel amid the ruins and monuments of a\nChristendom which was but is no more, then Rome will be involved in the\ncommon ruin. But \u201cwhen Rome falls, the world.\u201d However, we do not feel\nobliged, as yet, to despair of Europe, Christianity, or civilization. If\nthere is a resurging movement after a temporary convulsion, Rome will be\nthe centre of it, and the successor of Pius IX. will reap the advantage\nof his long watch by the tomb of St. Peter. We believe in the triumph of\nthe Catholic Church over infidelity, heresy, schism, revolution, and\ndespotism; over Judaism, Mohammedanism, and heathenism. The restoration\nof the Pope\u2019s temporal kingdom is necessary to this triumph, and\ntherefore we believe it will be restored. We hope for a pacification of\nEurope after the war which has now begun is terminated. Civilized\nmankind is tired of war, and the almost bankruptcy which is universally\nproduced by the enormous military establishments of the nations of\nEurope, it would seem, must enforce at length disarmament and bring\nabout a period of amicable alliance and devotion to the arts of peace,\nthe study of the welfare of the people as the end of government, the\nmoral sway of principles which are not only patriotic but Christian and\nCatholic. In such a state of things the moral influence of the Holy See\nwould naturally rise to a higher point than it attained even under the\nmedi\u00e6val system.\n\nAs for Rome and Italy, their temporal prosperity, so far from being\nsacrificed, would be promoted, by the re-establishment of the pontifical\nstate and the overthrow of the visionary fabric of Cavour and Mazzini.\nWe certainly desire to see all just national aspirations of the Italians\nsatisfied. We are glad that Austrian domination in Italy has ceased. But\nall history seems to show that a confederate unity of distinct states is\nthe only order suited to Italy, and that a monarchical unification is\nforeign and hostile to the genius and conditions of the Italian people.\nBut, whatever may be done by the Italians and the European princes who\nwill be left masters of the situation and arbiters of national interests\nafter the conflict now impending, in respect to the rest of Italy, the\ndomain of the Pope must be restored to him in its integrity and placed\nunder the protection of the law of nations. This is the indispensable\ncondition of the restoration of Europe from the condition of decadence\ninto which it has fallen, and no doubt the providence of God will force\nupon the rulers of the world the recognition of this truth in due time\nand by the course of events wholly beyond their foresight or control.\n\n\n\n\n                             ALBA\u2019S DREAM.\n BY THE AUTHOR OF \u201cARE YOU MY WIFE?\u201d \u201cA SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,\u201d\n                                  ETC.\n                                PART II.\n\n\nWhen it was known in the country that M. le Marquis had joined the army\nas a common soldier, the consternation was great; but when it was known\nwhy he had done so, surprise gave way to bitter indignation and regret.\nThe Marquis de Gondriac gone to risk his life for the son of a low\nplebeian, generally supposed to have been a pirate! The marvel was how\nthe world stood still while such a scandal was enacted in its face. As\nto the widow, nobody thought of congratulating her. If Marcel had gone\nout and been shot, they would have pitied her, within reasonable bounds;\nbut now every man\u2019s hand was against her and her son\u2014even the women felt\nthe sweet font of pity dried up within them when they thought of what\nmight come of this. But the people, despite their wrath, were loath to\ntake so gloomy a view of the future.\n\n\u201cThe bullets have a sense of their own,\u201d said Peltran; \u201cthey know who to\nhit first and who last, and who never to hit. Look at M. le Comte, how\nthey respect him! He has seen more fighting than ever the Caboffs did,\nand yet the bullets have never touched a hair of his head. It\u2019s my\nbelief the things are alive and know what they are about.\u201d\n\nNo one contradicted this sapient remark; for Peltran was not a pleasant\nperson to contradict.\n\nMarcel Caboff had never been popular, but from this time forth he was\nbranded as a sort of potential malefactor; if M. le Marquis died, Marcel\nwould be his murderer, and Marcel\u2019s life would not be worth an old song\nin Gondriac. The only people who did the young man justice and had the\ncourage to take his part were Virginie and Alba. Since the night of the\nstorm a friendship had sprung up between Marcel and Alba which had grown\nto more than friendship on his side. Alba was a lovely maiden now;\nimpulsive, untutored as the waves that her nature seemed attuned to,\nwild as the sea-birds whose lot she sometimes envied when they beat\ntheir wings, rose up from the rocks, and took flight across the sea.\n\n\u201cI wonder you can stay here and live this idle, humdrum life when you\nmight be away seeing the great world,\u201d Alba said to him one day, as they\nmet upon the cliff and walked on together.\n\n\u201cYou wish I were away, do you?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! no; only I wonder you don\u2019t go. I should, if I were a man.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is harder on me than you think,\u201d said Marcel bitterly. \u201cI did my\nbest to get away; but mother went on her knees and said I would kill her\nif I went. It was hard to resist that; but it makes me feel angry with\nher when I think of what has come of it. I know the people hate me and\ncall me a coward. Alba,\u201d he said, turning suddenly round, \u201cyou don\u2019t\nthink me a coward, do you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Marcel; if you had not been braver than any man in Gondriac, except\nyour father, you would not have come out in the boat that night. How\ndare they call you a coward when they remember it!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey don\u2019t remember it. Everybody has forgotten it but you.\u201d\n\n\u201cM. le Marquis has not forgotten it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wish he had. That is what has brought all this misery about. If he\nhad not remembered, I should be away with the _grande arm\u00e9e_ now, and\nshould either die a glorious death like my brothers, or come home by and\nby with the cross, and perhaps a wound or two. Then everybody would know\nI was a brave man, and mother would have had something to be proud of.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Alba dreamily; she was watching a ship that flecked the\nhorizon far away like a great swan, its white sails flapping against the\nsky, the sea-gulls following in its wake, as it cleaved the wave.\n\n\u201cWould _you_ have been proud of me?\u201d asked Marcel.\n\n\u201cYes,... perhaps.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou would not have cared a straw, I believe,\u201d he said, angry and hurt\nat her indifferent tone.\n\n\u201cIf you had been killed? Indeed I should, Marcel. I should have been\nvery sorry; but what is the good of being sorry now, when it is never\ngoing to happen? Look at that ship out there! With what a dip she shears\nthe water! How fast she goes! Her sails are like wings. I wish I had\nwings!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are always wishing for impossible things,\u201d said Marcel, huffed at\nthis summary dismissal; \u201cyou were wishing you were a man a little while\nago, and now you want to be a bird. Why don\u2019t you wish for something I\ncould give you?\u201d\n\n\u201c_You_ give me! You could not give me any one of the things I wish for!\u201d\nAlba flung back the waves of swart hair from her low, broad brow and\nlaughed derisively.\n\n\u201cHow do you know that? I have plenty of money, and money can buy\neverything\u2014everything reasonable, that is. Suppose a fairy were to come\nand say she would give you whatever you wished; what would you ask for?\u201d\n\n\u201cI would ask her first to make me perfectly beautiful, perfectly good,\nand perfectly happy,\u201d began Alba.\n\n\u201cWhy, you are all that already, you foolish girl!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou think so; but you know nothing about it. I would ask her to make me\nas rich and powerful as a queen, and to make everybody pay me homage\u2014not\nbecause I was rich and powerful, but because they loved me! Oh! I should\nlike to be loved more than anybody ever was in this world before. And I\nshould like to live in a beautiful castle, like the castle yonder, and I\nshould fill it with beautiful things, and make it a real fairy palace to\nlive in.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd who would you like to live in it with you? You would not care to\nlive in it all alone?\u201d inquired Marcel, bewildered by these ambitious\naspirations that left himself and his money-bags altogether out of the\nreckoning.\n\n\u201cWell, first, I should like to have petite m\u00e8re, of course; then ...\nthen I should ask the fairy for a brave and handsome prince, who would\ncome and woo me as they do in the story-books; he should be handsome and\nclever and good, or I should not care for him; but if he was all that, I\nshould love him with all my heart and soul, and we should be as happy as\nthe days are long!\u201d\n\nMarcel heard her to the end, and then began to consider if there was not\nsome one item in the capacious list that came within his possibilities.\n\n\u201cIf another castle would do instead of this one\u2014you know you never\n_could_ have this one\u2014I would go and buy it for you, Alba, and you might\nhave as many pretty gauds to fill it as you liked. We have lots of gold\nand silver things and pictures up there\u201d\u2014nodding towards the\nFortress\u2014\u201cand if I asked mother she would give them to us\u2014to you, I\nmean.\u201d Alba\u2019s laugh rang like a silver echo all along the cliff.\n\n\u201cAnd the prince\u2014where would you get him?\u201d\n\n\u201cMust he be a prince? Would not a brave man who loved you and was ready\nto do your bidding in everything, who would spend his whole life in\ntrying to make you happy\u2014would not that do instead? Must he be a prince,\nAlba?\u201d\n\nHe took her hand and held it, and she did not struggle to release it.\nThey were standing at the foot of a rock that cast a long, black shadow\nfar out upon the sea; the west wind blew into their faces; Alba\u2019s\nscarlet hood had fallen back, and her hair drifted in a heavy stream\nbehind her, as Marcel bent over her, waiting to hear his fate. He might\nhave read it in her blank, scared looks, in her startled, reluctant\nattitude. If there had been hope for him, would she have shrunk away and\ndrawn closer to the rock, as if asking it to protect her?\n\n\u201cI have been too hasty,\u201d said the young man penitently; \u201cI should have\nspoken to M\u00e8re Virginie first. Forgive me, Alba, and say only if I may\ngo to her now and ask you for my wife?\u201d He still held her hand, and,\nmistaking her silence, made an effort to slip his arm around her. The\nmovement acted on Alba like the sting of a snake; she escaped from him\nwith a cry, and sped along the cliff like a deer flying from the\nhunters.\n\n\u201cMy child, you have been foolish, and so has Marcel; but there is no\nneed to cry or be unhappy about it,\u201d said M\u00e8re Virginie when Alba had\nsobbed out the terrible story on her breast. But Alba was not to be\ncomforted. She had been living in dreamland, and now awoke to find the\nhard ground under her feet instead of golden clouds. Of course she had\ndreamt of love and lovers, and her heart, or that vague yearning which\nas yet took its place, had become enamored of the dreams, visions that\nlay safe beyond the disenchanting present, wrapped in the golden haze of\ndistance; and now this rude awakening had dispelled them, and brought\nhome to the dreamer that she had reached that border-land that lies\nbetween the mystery of morning and the revelation of noon; the pearly\nmists had rolled away in an instant, and the blaze of the mid-day sun\nwas upon her, chasing the fairy phantoms and making sober realities\npitilessly clear. She had been dreaming of a lover in some remote time\nand place, and, lo! he was at her side; he had been close to her all\nalong\u2014an ugly, common man, who seemed made on purpose to mock the\nvisions of her fancy. And yet this incident, which threw Alba into such\ndespair, had been for many a day the fond anticipation of her mother\u2019s\nheart.\n\n\u201cWhy need it frighten you to find that Marcel loves you and wants to\nhave you for his little wife, my child?\u201d said Virginie. \u201cDon\u2019t shudder\nand cling to me as if he were going to drag you away this very moment!\nYou shall never leave me, unless you do it of your own free will. But\nremember, darling, that I may have to leave you; and then what will\nbecome of you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou leave me, petite m\u00e8re?\u201d And Alba looked up at her in dismay.\n\n\u201cIt must come to that some day. I am old and you are young. I have a\ntrouble here that reminds me of this often, and then I lie awake of\nnights, thinking of my little one, and praying God to give her a friend,\nthe best and truest friend a woman can have in this world, to take care\nof her before I am called away.\u201d\n\n\u201cMother, if you go I will go too. I could never live without you! What\nshould I do here if you were gone? Nobody wants me, nobody loves me in\nthe whole world but you.\u201d\n\n\u201cMarcel loves you, my child, and he will be that good friend, if you\nwill let him.\u201d\n\n\u201cMarcel! Marcel! As if he could replace you! I don\u2019t love him; I don\u2019t\ncare if he went to the wars and never came back again.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you married him you would soon learn to love him; his goodness would\nsoon win your love. And then remember, Alba, how happy he could make\nyou. You often long to have beautiful things\u2014pearls and jewels and\nsplendid dresses\u2014and you sigh to go away in the ships that we see\nsetting sail for distant lands, and to see fair cities, and the great\nmountains, and the countries where it is always summer and the flowers\nnever die. Marcel would give you all these wishes; and then he would let\nyou be so good and generous to the poor!\u201d\n\n\u201cI should not care for pearls and pretty things, if I had to marry\nMarcel,\u201d said Alba. \u201cI should not like to go to distant cities with him;\nand if he loved me like a real lover, he would let me be good to the\npoor without making me his wife.\u201d\n\nHow was the anxious woman to argue with this sweet, foolish innocence?\nIf she could but teach the child to believe in the happiness that was at\nher feet, and persuade her to become Marcel\u2019s wife, how easy it would be\nto die! How terrible it was to have to leave her unprotected and alone!\nVirginie\u2019s heart overflowed in tears as she thought of it, and the hot\ndrops trickled down her face and fell on Alba\u2019s.\n\nAlba looked up quickly. \u201cPetite m\u00e8re!\u201d she said.\n\nThrowing her arms round Virginie and kissing the wet cheeks again and\nagain, \u201cI will marry him! I will do anything, only don\u2019t be unhappy,\ndon\u2019t cry! O mother, mother! what is it?\u201d she cried, starting up in\nterror; for Virginie had fallen back and was gasping for breath. She\npressed the child\u2019s arm, and with her eyes bade her be still. The spasm\nof pain passed away after a while; but when she tried to speak the words\ncame faintly in broken sentences.\n\n\u201cPetite m\u00e8re! what is it?\u201d entreated Alba, scarcely reassured. \u201cMay I\ncall Jeanne? Shall we send for the doctor?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my darling, it is nothing; I am well now,\u201d said Virginie, with a\nsickly smile that belied her words. The sharp pang had, it is true,\nsubsided, but she was still ashy pale and could only speak under her\nbreath. Alba watched her intently for some minutes, and then, twining\nher arms round Virginie\u2019s neck, she laid her head upon her breast,\nnestling to her like a bird.\n\n\u201cMother,\u201d she whispered, \u201cwould it really make you happy if I were to\nmarry Marcel?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy darling, it would make me happier than anything else in this world.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I will marry him, petite m\u00e8re.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy child!\u201d Virginie\u2019s face lighted up with a beaming joy.\n\n\u201cI will marry him to please you. There, now, promise me not to be\nunhappy, not to lie awake at night fretting, and never to have any more\npains at your heart!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, my darling, I would not have you do it to make me happy. It is\nyour happiness I am thinking of, not my own. Don\u2019t you think you could\nlearn to love Marcel after a while?\u201d\n\n\u201cPetite m\u00e8re! how can you ask me? Foolish, ugly Marcel, whom everybody\nlaughs at and calls a coward! But never mind. I will marry him, since he\nwants me and you wish it; I promise you I will.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are a foolish child to speak of Marcel so,\u201d said Virginie; \u201cthose\nwho laugh at him are the fools, and you know he is not a coward. As to\nhis ugliness, what does that matter, if he is faithful, and fond, and\ngood?\u201d\n\nAlba pondered this philosophy for some minutes; then she said: \u201cWhen\nwill he want to marry me, petite m\u00e8re?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot for a long while yet, my darling. You are both very young; there\u2019s\ntime to wait.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow old am I?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou were sixteen in September.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how long will you let me wait?\u201d\n\n\u201cTill your seventeenth birthday is passed, at least.\u201d\n\n\u201cNearly a whole year! Then I have all that time to be free and happy!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd if at the end of that time you have not learned to care for Marcel,\nI shall not ask you to marry him at all,\u201d said Virginie. The ecstasy\nwhich the reprieve had called forth sent a pang through her heart, and\nmade her ask herself whether, after all, she was doing wisely and well\nin forcing upon the child a lot from which her sympathies recoiled so\nviolently.\n\n\u201cNot marry him at all!\u201d repeated Alba in amazement; but she added\nquickly, with one of those sudden changes of manner that were familiar\nto her sensitive and mobile nature: \u201cI think, petite m\u00e8re, I had better\nnot wait for the year. Instead of growing easier, it might grow harder\nby thinking over it all that time. You know you always tell me that when\none has a disagreeable thing to do, it is better to do it at once and be\ndone with it; one only makes it worse by looking at it. I think it would\nbe better if I were to marry Marcel at once and get it over.\u201d\n\nVirginie was aghast at the combination of strength and utter childish\nignorance of the true nature and bearings of the sacrifice in\ncontemplation which Alba\u2019s reasoning revealed. In the bottom of her\nheart the mother believed this repugnance would pass away, and there was\nno cruelty in coercing the child\u2019s will at the outset, in order to bend\nit to her real happiness; but unless it could be so bent, Virginie would\nrather die trusting her treasure to God\u2019s guardianship than force it\ninto any man\u2019s keeping.\n\n\u201cWe will say no more about it for the present, my child,\u201d she said; \u201cwe\nwill leave it in the hands of God for another year.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you will be happy now, petite m\u00e8re?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. I feel more tranquil about my darling\u2019s future.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd Marcel\u2014must I tell him?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, you must not mention to him or to any one what we have been saying.\nI will speak to him myself.\u201d\n\nSo there was no engagement, no promise exchanged; not a word of thanks\nor of rejoicing passed between him and Alba; but Marcel knew how docile\nshe was to the power of love, and she loved her mother with a strength\nand depth of feeling that knew no limits and measured no sacrifices. He\ndid not mean to be accepted as a sacrifice. He had faith enough in his\nlove to believe that before the year was out it would have conquered the\ncoy heart of his lady-love and brought her a willing captive to his\nside. Meantime, he would leave none of the stratagems and tactics of\nhonorable warfare untried.\n\nAlba was fond of books; he sent for all those he could hear of that were\nlikely to interest her, and she and Virginie read them together in the\nlong evenings, and talked over them, until their days were brightened by\nthe scenes of travel and story which the books described. He knew she\nloved jewels and shining silks, and he went to Paris himself and\nselected pretty trinkets of every kind\u2014a necklace of pearls, and rings\nof emeralds and rubies, and silks of soft and brilliant colors\u2014and he\nwould carry them to the cottage, and shyly lay them down without saying\na word. Alba seldom noticed them till he was gone, when she would open\nthe parcel and examine its contents; but M\u00e8re Virginie seemed to take\nmore pleasure in the gauds than she did. This went on for three months.\nThen, one morning, Alba, who had been out since sunrise, sitting on the\nrocks and watching the tide come in and the creamy surf break upon the\nshore, entered the cottage and said abruptly:\n\n\u201cMother, I won\u2019t take any more presents from Marcel, and I want to give\nhim back all those we have. I can\u2019t keep them; I can\u2019t indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have made up your mind never to marry him?\u201d\n\n\u201cI will marry him whenever you wish it. It is not that, only I can\u2019t\ntake his gifts; they make me miserable. I hate them!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy darling, I will send them back to him, if you wish; but it will hurt\nhim very much, poor fellow!\u2014he took so much trouble to get them for you,\nand you used to love pretty things. How often have I not heard you long\nfor the rings and flowers and shining silks we have seen in the fine\nshops at X\u2014\u2014? Many a time you have wished a fairy or a lover would come\nand give them to you! Do you forget?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! that is just it,\u201d said Alba, with a light laugh that was full of\npain; \u201cif a lover gave them to me, I dare say I should like them well\nenough.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut Marcel is your lover?\u201d\n\n\u201cPoor Marcel! It is so funny trying to think of him like that. He is so\nawkward and stupid and ugly; a real lover would be quite different. But\nI don\u2019t want one now; I don\u2019t indeed, petite m\u00e8re. Only please send\nMarcel back his gifts. They make me feel as if he were bribing me to be\nfond of him, and I should not care a bit more for him if he gave me the\nloveliest jewels in France. I don\u2019t care any more for jewels. I used to\nlong to be happy myself, but now I only care to make you happy. You\npromised me to be very happy when I married Marcel?\u201d\n\nThis was dreadful. This was not what the mother meant when she prayed\nfor the marriage that Alba contemplated with such pathetic resignation,\nas if it were a sacrifice or a torture that every day brought nearer to\nher. There were still eight months between her and the dreaded fate, and\nVirginie was strongly moved to tell her at once that she was released.\nIt seemed cruel to poison the child\u2019s life all that time on the chance,\nwhich apparently grew less as the months went on, of her getting to love\nMarcel at the end of the year. But, again, this marriage was the one\nprospect of security and happiness which the future opened out\u2014quiet,\nsubstantial happiness such as the mother longed to see her in possession\nof. If Alba flung it away, there was nothing before her but a lonely,\nloveless life of unprotected poverty. It was best to be patient, to keep\nsilence a little longer. Virginie, meantime, had faith in the power of\nher own love, and she would never cease imploring heaven to take the\ndestiny of her darling into its safe-keeping.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nHermann de Gondriac had now been five years absent, and those years had\nbeen an uninterrupted series of triumphs for him; he had borne a charmed\nlife on every battle-field, and come off unharmed where all around him\nwere stricken. But the chances of war prevailed at last, and the news\ncame to Gondriac that M. le Comte had been seriously wounded and was\ncoming home. His left arm had been shattered, and, though the skill of\nthe emperor\u2019s surgeon had saved him from amputation, he was in great\nsuffering and condemned to the severest precautions. A few bonfires were\nlighted on the cliffs to bid the home-comer welcome, but this was all\nthe people ventured on. M. le Marquis, it was said, had been in the same\nengagement with his son, but had come out of it unhurt.\n\nThat winter was a fierce one all through France, and Gondriac suffered\nterribly; the bleak gray sea in a perpetual roar, and the winds beating\non its wild, open coast. Food and fuel were scanty, and but for the\npresence of the young lord at the castle many amongst the fishermen\u2019s\nfamilies must have perished and starved. No one had yet seen him; the\ngreat physician, who came from Paris at intervals, forbade his going\nbeyond the southern side of the park until spring came with sunshine and\nblossoms. But Hermann could not have been more actively present amongst\nhis people had he been walking daily in the midst of them. He seemed to\nknow by inspiration what they wanted, and food and clothing were dealt\nout from the castle in unlimited supplies. There were toys for the\nchildren, and medicine and strengthening wine for the sick, and books\nfor those who could enjoy them, until the people came to think that the\nbird of the fairy-tale must be true, and that their young master had the\ntell-tale messenger at his orders.\n\nAlba busied her poetic fancy in making pictures of what Hermann was\nlike. She had not seen him since she was a child and he a tall, slim\nlad. Now that he was a man and a hero, she longed to behold him again.\nEven to look at a hero from a distance would be something\u2014life was so\ntame, and all the people she knew were so commonplace. Was he proud and\nstern and abrupt in speech, as they said the emperor was? Or was he\ngentle and honey-tongued like the knights of old?\n\nOne morning a man rode in from X\u2014\u2014 to the castle bearing important news\nto M. le Comte. Important news indeed: the emperor was coming the next\nday to inspect the fortifications of a neighboring seaport. It was\nsettled at once in Gondriac that M. le Comte would go to meet his\nmajesty. No physician could hinder him in that, come what might of it.\n\nAlba had heard nothing of this great event which was stirring the\ncountry for fifty miles round. She and Virginie lived a life apart up in\ntheir sea-nest, and old Jeanne was not given to gossip, but did her\nmarketing without waste of words, and brought home little news in her\nbasket.\n\nIt was a lovely morning; the sun shone brightly on the sea; the breakers\nwere scampering in, not loud and angry, but tossing over one another in\nmasses of creamy foam. Alba loved these laughing seas, and would sit for\nhours on the rocks, watching the tide ride in on the silver horses.\nTo-day the salt breath of the ocean and the mellow west wind excited her\nlike wine, and carried her off to the old dreamland where she seldom\nventured now. She was away on the dancing billows, sailing to the land\nof the sun with a noble knight by her side. Virginie sat there with\nmaidens serving her; there was music on shore, and crowds waving glad\nfarewells. Alba began to sing as she walked briskly along the cliff,\nbuilding her castle in fairy-land. But the Fortress standing out like a\nspectral prison, with the ivy blown inside out on its grimy walls, sent\na sudden chill through her and put out the sunlight. There was a figure\nat the window watching her. She turned hastily back, walking quickly\nuntil she got down the slope, when she almost flew across the moor, on\nand on till she was safe in the shelter of the park. O that figure, how\nit pursued her! How the Fortress threatened her! If she could but fly\nfrom them for ever, and never hear of Marcel Caboff any more! She had\nfancied latterly that the prospect of being his wife and living with old\nMme. Caboff in the gloomy, rat-haunted place was less odious to her than\nit used to be; but to-day the thought nearly drove her mad. She had sped\nalong as if some evil fate were behind her, and she was tired; there was\na moss-grown oak close by, and she sat down on the trunk to rest. The\nwind rustled the dead leaves at her feet and swept the topmost branches\nof the pines; then the anthem died softly away and all was silent. The\nplace was very still; nothing stirred but the insects in the grass, and\nthe zephyr high up above her head, as it rose and fell in swift, \u00c6olian\nbreathings. In the distance, with a forest of trees between, lay the\ncastle, its battlements and towers and flying buttresses rising\nmajestically against the sky\u2014a high romance of chivalry and war\nchronicled in stone; to Alba the door of an enchanted realm whose\nportals she might never pass. No wonder men were heroes who lived in\nhomes like this; how easy it must be to lead grand lives where the very\nwalls are heralds and witnesses urging to noble and knightly deeds! The\npresent owner of this splendid house was worthy in all this of his proud\nancestors. What a royal act of heroism it was of the old Marquis to\nenlist as a common soldier out of gratitude to a dead man and pity for\nhis widow! Then Alba thought of Marcel, of the poor, tame creature he\nshowed beside this race of knightly nobles, and she despised him, and\nfell to wondering how it would be when she was his wife. Gradually the\ncastle melted away, and in its place rose the Fortress, dark and\nfrowning, and it lowered on her like a doom, and Marcel and his grim old\nmother stood at the window beckoning her to advance. Alba flung herself\ndown upon the trunk and buried her face in the moss, and began to cry\npassionately. She cried a long time, being full of pity for herself, and\nthere was no one within reach that she need check her sobs.\n\n\u201cWhat has happened? What is the matter with you, child?\u201d said a voice\nclose to her.\n\nShe started up in terror. Yet the speaker was not at all terrible to\nlook at\u2014a gentleman in the brilliant uniform of the Imperial Guard,\nyoung and handsome, with a most commanding air, and carrying his left\narm in a sling. When Alba rose it was his turn to start. Lying there in\nan attitude of child-like _abandon_, shaken with sobs, her scarlet hood\nthrown back and her masses of black hair falling in loose coils over her\nneck and face, he had taken her for a little girl; he had called her\nchild, and, lo! she was a full-grown maiden, and lovely beyond words,\ndespite her tears and her dishevelled mien. He bowed to her as he might\nhave done to a queen.\n\n\u201cYou are M. le Comte!\u201d said Alba, pretty much as she might have said to\na celestial apparition, \u201cYou are the Archangel Gabriel!\u201d\n\n\u201cHermann de Gondriac, your humble servant, mademoiselle.\u201d\n\nShe stared at him through the big tears that hung like dew-drops from\nher lashes, her soft, large glance modest, yet unabashed as if it were\ngazing on a picture. The knighthood in Hermann recognized the maidenhood\nof that fearless gaze and did it reverence, but he could not quench the\nglowing admiration of his own. How liquid and pure they were, those\nblack stars with which she stared at him, those soul-lit eyes that met\nhis without dismay, too innocent to quail beneath their burning light!\nWhy should they quail? Were they not looking at a vision, a dream\ntransmuted into substance? This was the young chief whom she had\npictured to herself so often, whose lineage and prowess were the pride\nof all the people. Only how much grander the reality was than anything\nshe had fancied! What a martial air he wore in his gold-embroidered\nuniform, with his spurs and clanging sword and plumed helmet, the stars\nupon his breast\u2014every inch a warrior and a knight!\n\n\u201cYou have hurt yourself, mademoiselle; you are in pain,\u201d said Hermann.\n\u201cCan I send to the castle for assistance for you?\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, monseigneur; I have not hurt myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cYet you were crying?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was not with pain.\u201d This time Alba dropped her lids and blushed.\n\n\u201cForgive me; I did not mean to intrude upon you.\u201d Alba stood looking\ndown like a guilty child, her cheeks aflame, her lips quivering with the\nsudden conflict between fear and shame, and a strange emotion that\nthrilled her like sweet music. \u201cWho is she?\u201d thought Hermann. He\nremembered, years ago, a child whom his father raved about, wondering\nhow a plebeian stem could have put forth so fair a flower. Could this be\nshe? The _cur\u00e9_ had told him of the girl\u2019s rare beauty as a sad and\nanxious burden on his mind, and of the mother\u2019s being ill and in need of\ngenerous wine, and he had ordered the best in his cellar to be sent to\nher. Half unconsciously, as when we try to catch some forgotten air by\nhumming it under our breath, he murmured, \u201cAlba....\u201d\n\nShe looked up with a start, and then they both smiled.\n\n\u201cHow did you guess I was Alba?\u201d she said, her shyness gone in an\ninstant.\n\n\u201cI did not guess, I remembered.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow wonderful! I should never have remembered you, monseigneur.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is not surprising. I am changed since you saw me.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd so am I, am I not?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, more changed than I could have believed.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh?\u201d Did he mean for the better or the worse? The man read the question\nin her eyes and answered it:\n\n\u201cYou are far more beautiful than I expected.\u201d\n\n\u201cBeautiful!\u201d she repeated, and her face lighted up.\n\n\u201cI was frightened when I saw you; I took you for a fairy princess,\u201d said\nHermann, yielding to the irresistible temptation of pleasing her.\n\nAlba\u2019s face clouded over. \u201cNow I know you are laughing at me,\nmonseigneur; you don\u2019t believe in fairies, and you know very well I\u2019m\nnot a bit like a princess.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have seen many a one who would have given a great deal to be like\nyou,\u201d said Hermann.\n\n\u201cLike me! I thought princesses were all so happy!\u201d\n\nHermann smiled. \u201cSometimes they have hearts,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cSometimes! And does that make them unhappy?\u201d\n\nHe turned to walk under the trees, tacitly inviting her to do the same.\n\n\u201cIt endows them with the power of loving,\u201d he answered absently.\n\n\u201cBut I thought....\u201d She hesitated; it was difficult to put the thought\ninto the right words.\n\n\u201cYou thought that love always led to happiness?\u201d said Hermann, finishing\nthe sentence for her, while he looked at her with a curious glance. Why\nhad she come to cry in this lonely place?\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what it leads to. I shall never know,\u201d said Alba very\ngravely.\n\nM. le Comte smiled. \u201cTell me, Alba, why were you crying so bitterly just\nnow?\u201d\n\nShe turned away her head and made no answer.\n\n\u201cTell me, sweet Alba,\u201d persisted the young man; \u201cperhaps I can help you\nif you are in trouble. Trust me with your secret. As I am a soldier and\na gentleman, I will defend you if I can. Tell me, is there some one you\ncare for who does not know it?\u201d\n\nShe shook her head. \u201cIt is not I who care.... I wish I could, but I have\ntried my best and I _cannot_ love him!\u201d The tears welled up again and\nwere flowing freely.\n\n\u201cWho is forcing you to love him? Tell me his name and I will protect you\nfrom him. I swear to you I will!\u201d And Hermann, with a soldier\u2019s\ninstinctive gesture, put his hand to his sword, while his eye kindled\nwith chivalrous anger. Alba thought him the ideal of a noble knight, as\nshe looked at him, terrified and enchanted.\n\n\u201cHe is not forcing me, monseigneur,\u201d she said, \u201cand you can do nothing\nto help me. I have promised to marry, and I must keep my word.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou shall not, by heaven, if it makes you wretched! He is a cowardly\ndog who would hold you to your word against your will,\u201d protested the\ncount hotly.\n\n\u201cHe is not forcing me; but I have promised,\u201d repeated Alba.\n\n\u201cAnd you cannot love him?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo! and I have tried so hard.... But mother says that when I am his\nwife it will be different....\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it will be worse, a thousand times worse! Alba, tell me this man\u2019s\nname; trust me with your secret,\u201d said Hermann, changing his angry tone\nto one of soft persuasion.\n\n\u201cI dare not,\u201d said Alba in a frightened whisper; \u201cyou would go and kill\nhim.\u201d The great, swart eyes were looking up at him, full of trust and\nadmiration.\n\n\u201cKill him, child! Do you think me so terribly wicked? Do I look like a\nmurderer?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt would not be murder in you. You are a warrior; you don\u2019t think it\nwrong to kill men. That is what warriors are for; but I should not like\nyou to kill poor Marcel.\u201d\n\n\u201cMarcel!... Marcel! I seem to know that name,\u201d said the count, musing.\n\u201cHas he no other?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, Marcel Caboff,\u201d replied Alba in a confidential tone; \u201cbut you must\nnot hurt him, monseigneur. Oh! I wish I had not told you.\u201d\n\nHermann started and muttered something between his teeth which she did\nnot hear, but his look frightened her.\n\n\u201cMarcel Caboff! the fellow whom my father ransomed at the risk of his\nown life!\u201d said the count. \u201cAnd he would force you into marrying him! By\nheaven! he shan\u2019t. I will foil him there.\u201d\n\n\u201cO monseigneur, monseigneur! you will not kill him,\u201d pleaded Alba,\nclasping her hands and appealing to the murderer with a scared face. \u201cIt\nis not his fault\u2014it is not indeed, monseigneur!\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mean to kill him; I would not touch a hair of his head,\u201d said\nHermann. \u201cBut why do you say it is not his fault? Does he not love you?\nDoes he not want you to marry him?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe does, oh! so dreadfully. But I should not mind that. It is mother\nwhom I have promised. It is to please her that I must marry him,\u201d said\nAlba, and her breast heaved with big sobs, and all the floods were let\nloose again.\n\nHermann longed to draw her to his breast and kiss away the tears\u2014she was\nsuch a child in spite of her sixteen summers and their full-blossomed\nbeauty! But he checked the impulse. There is no majesty so imposing as\nthe majesty of childhood. \u201cAlba,\u201d he said, \u201cI will save you from Marcel\nCaboff without hurting him or any one. You shall not marry him, unless\nyou come to wish it yourself. Are you sure that if he gave you up you\nwould not change your mind and wish him back again?\u201d This was Hermann\u2019s\nestimate of woman\u2019s nature; true, his experience had been gathered among\ntypes as different from the one before him as the flowers of a hot-house\nare from the primrose of the woods.\n\n\u201cI should never wish him to come back; I could never love him,\u201d said\nAlba\u2014\u201cnever, never, never.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I swear to you on my sword you shall not marry him!\u201d said the\ncount impetuously. \u201cNow tell me, Alba,\u201d he resumed, seeing that she did\nnot speak, \u201cis there not some one you would like to marry better than\nthis fellow Caboff? Tell me the truth. If you had a brother, you would\nnot mind telling him. Try and fancy I am your brother.\u201d\n\nFancy him her brother! Alba\u2019s fancy had taken many an aerial flight, but\nnever such a one as this.\n\n\u201cWho is he? What is his name?\u201d said Hermann in a whisper, bending closer\nto her.\n\nBut she shook her head. \u201cThere is no one, monseigneur.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! I don\u2019t believe that; you are afraid to trust me. There is surely\nsome one else who wants to marry you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo one, monseigneur, but Marcel.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlba, look at me!\u201d She turned and looked at him like a docile child.\n\u201cHave you never seen any one whom you could love or whose heart you\nwould care to win?\u201d He was gazing deep down into the two dark pools of\nlight, as if he thought to see into her soul through them. She did not\nshrink from the searching glance, but dwelt in it for one long moment;\nthen, as if the flame in Hermann\u2019s eyes leaped out and flashed upon her\nwith too intense a radiance, revealing the spring of some sweet mystery\nin her heart and his, the white lids quivered and dropped, and a deep\nblush rose to Alba\u2019s face. They were alone. The voices of the wood were\nhushed; the dead leaves ceased to rustle at their feet; the zephyrs\npaused in the branches overhead; the silence grew and deepened, filling\nthe solitude with an overpowering presence, till each seemed to hear the\nbeating of the other\u2019s heart. Suddenly the sound of a horn, followed by\na noise of wheels crushing the gravel in the distance, broke the spell\nand admonished Hermann that he must be gone. He lifted Alba\u2019s hand to\nhis lips, and without a word of farewell turned from her and struck\nacross the park towards the castle.\n\nAlba watched him out of sight, and then turned and wended homewards. Her\nheart beat with wild throbs of joy; the spirit that had been dead within\nher all these miserable months woke up, quickened to a new birth, and\noverflowed in song. The flute-like voice trilled out over the lonesome\nmoor like the carol of a bird let loose; but as she drew near the\nconfines of the heath the Fortress came in sight and checked her song.\nWas it so certain that Hermann could set her free? and how? What would\nher mother think of it? how of this wonderful meeting and monseigneur\u2019s\npromise? Alba slackened her steps and took to pondering. A moment ago\nshe was impatient to pour into Virginie\u2019s ear the story of the\ninterview, to repeat every word Hermann had said, to convey, as far as\nit was possible, the impression he had made upon her, to describe his\nmanly beauty, his warlike aspect, his gentle courtesy, the incomparable\nsweetness of his voice, the chivalrous kindness of his manner, never\ndoubting but that Virginie would sympathize in this new delight, as she\nhad done in every little joy that had gladdened her child\u2019s young life.\nBut suddenly a change came over Alba\u2014something vague, and undefined; a\nsense of doubt, of warning, of intangible fear. She had done nothing\nwrong, and yet the still, small voice was whispering inaudible reproach\nas if she had. Could Virginie be angry with her for speaking to\nmonseigneur? How could she have avoided it, how refuse to answer his\npersistent questions, so kindly and so courteously put? He had entreated\nher to trust him! Alba stood amidst the breezy waves of heather, and\nrecalled him as he bent near her and lowered his voice and bade her look\nat him. How he had seemed to read her through and through! \u201cHave you\nnever seen any one whose heart you would care to win?\u201d She murmured the\nwords softly to herself, and the sound of them was like the echo of his\nvoice, and called up the hot blush to her cheeks again. There was\nnothing wrong in monseigneur\u2019s asking her the question. Why, then, did\nshe feel afraid to tell her mother of it? Musing for a moment on this\nmystery, Alba remembered how he had said: \u201cTry and fancy I am your\nbrother.\u201d Virginie could not be angry at that, surely. \u201cI will tell her\nthat, and say nothing about the other,\u201d muttered Alba to herself; and,\nsatisfied that this was a safe way out of the difficulty, she walked on\nbriskly till she was close upon the confines of the moor. Then the sound\nof a carriage coming down the road made her stop till it should pass. It\nwas an open cal\u00eache preceded by outriders. Alba recognized the occupant\nat once, even before his hand was raised in courtly salutation as he\nflashed by. Her heart beat fast, and sent the blood to her cheeks and\nbrow, dying them crimson.\n\n\u201cPerhaps I had better say nothing at all to petite m\u00e8re,\u201d was her\nreflection as she crossed the road and began to climb the cliff. \u201cHe\ntold me to trust him; perhaps he would be angry if I spoke until he bade\nme.\u201d And so it was decreed. The tyrant had stepped in, and at his first\nwhispered prompting the discipline of a life gave way.\n\nIt was not many days after this wonderful morning when an event occurred\nwhich threw all the sweet romance of life into the shade, and made Alba\nforget her own cares and hopes in concern for the great sorrow of\nanother. M. le Marquis was dead. He had died, not actually on the field,\nbut of a wound received in battle. The young lord\u2019s grief was like a\nmadness, they said. Those about him said that in the first frenzy of\ndespair he had called on Marcel Caboff and cursed him as the murderer of\nhis father. Whether this was true or not, Gondriac believed it, and\nbitter words were spoken against the widow\u2019s son in all the country\nround. Bitter words are like the wind; they fly, and have a faculty for\nreaching those whose aching nerves most dread their sting. The widow\nheard what was said of her son and felt it keenly; it was cruel, yet it\nwas just; it was a hard price to pay for Marcel\u2019s safety, but she could\nnot reckon it too high. If only she might pay it alone! They are all\nalike, these mothers. Mme. Caboff was a vain, hard woman, but the mother\nin her was all soft and generous and beautiful. She came to Virginie for\nsympathy\u2014not for herself, but for Marcel. It was her doing, M. le\nMarquis\u2019 death, not his. Why would not people visit her sin upon\nherself, and not upon her boy? But Virginie and Alba would be kind; they\nhad always said that Marcel was no coward. Virginie gave the poor woman\nwhat comfort she could; but Alba was not there. She could not bear the\nsight of Marcel\u2019s mother; for the thought of Marcel was now unendurable\nto her. It might be unjust, and yet it was true to say that he was the\nmurderer of M. le Marquis, of Hermann\u2019s father. The news had thrown her\ninto such a paroxysm of distress that Virginie was terrified, not\nholding the key to it. It was right that she should be sorry, and\nnatural that she should be shocked, but this agony of grief was\nunaccountable. Virginie took her in her arms, and soothed her with\ncaresses and endearing words, and then bade her go and rest awhile. But\nAlba, as if instinct warned her of the coming visit, hastened out of the\nhouse, and fled across the moor until she was safe in the shelter of the\npark, and then she flung herself down on the moss-grown trunk that had a\nmemory of its own, and buried her face in the primroses and cried her\nheart out in pity for Hermann.\n\nAfter this it was impossible to mention Marcel Caboff\u2019s name in her\npresence. \u201cI loathe the very thought of him, mother! I would rather die\nthan marry him!\u201d she said; and Virginie felt that Providence was against\nher, and surrendered. Marcel took back his gifts, and quarrelled with\nhis mother, and went away from Gondriac. People said it was shame and\nremorse that drove him forth; but Alba knew this was not true, and, now\nthat he had set her free, she pitied him.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nM. le Marquis was borne to the grave amidst such honors as the proudest\nCrusader of his name might have envied. It was with the jubilant pomp of\na coronation rather than the mournful pageant of a burial that they laid\nhim to rest. For his people would have it that he was a martyr; he had\ngone out to die of his own free will, sacrificing himself out of\ngratitude to the dead and charity to the living. The population flocked\nin from thirty miles round to attend the funeral. Five hundred men\nfollowed the crimson-draped car with palms and laurel branches; children\nclad in white bore crimson banners that fluttered in the breeze, while\ntheir voices rose in hymns of victory, giving glory to God and the\nChristian soldier; the voices of the multitude made response in chorus,\nand the waves, breaking in low thunder against the rocks, sounded their\neverlasting _amens_ as the procession wound its way by the sea-shore to\nthe cemetery.\n\nAnd now Hermann de Gondriac was alone, the head of an ancient house,\nwealthy and young, but as poor in that which makes life rich as the\npoorest of his peasantry. If he could but have girded on his sword, and,\nescaping from solitude, have drowned his grief in the excitement of the\ncamp! Spring came, and the fields were carpeted with wild flowers, and\nthe woods were full of music. But Hermann was seldom seen abroad; he\nlived indoors, amidst his books, the people said; but, in truth, the\nyoung lord\u2019s chief companions were his thoughts, angry, rebellious\nthoughts, that made him chafe most bitterly against his forced inaction.\nThe park was vast as a forest, and he never went beyond it. Often, in\nhis moody walks, he strayed to that spot close upon the moor where he\nhad first seen Alba lying upon the mossy trunk. The charm of her beauty\nand her daisy-like simplicity had wrought upon his heart more deeply\nthan he was aware. For days after that meeting she had been ever in his\nthoughts. He said that he was thinking only of how he might rescue her\nfrom a cruel fate; no doubt it was to help him to this issue that he\nreturned to the spot where she had stood, and conjured up her image,\ntill the nymph-like figure with the dark eyes and witching smile seemed\nto float visibly before him, and listened for her voice until he thought\nhe heard it in the sighing of the wind.\n\nThen came the thunderbolt of his father\u2019s death, and Alba and all the\nworld were forgotten. But grief cannot hold its sway in human souls\nbeyond a given time. As the days go by they bear away its sting upon\ntheir wings, that touch the bleeding places with a balm. Hermann was\nyoung, and as the weeks passed youth vindicated itself, and rebelled\nagainst the stagnant, lonely life, and longed for action and for the\nsweet companionship of kindred youth. If he could not fight, he could at\nleast love; but who was there at Gondriac to love? The merry comrades of\nthe bivouac were out of call, and when he returned to the midst of them\nhe would find his place filled up; others would have come and gone\nagain, and risen in command and won place and distinction, while he was\nout of sight, a prisoner to a stiff arm, as good as a dead man. He hated\nhimself with bitter vexation. One morning he betook himself in one of\nthese savage moods to wander in the park, and, not heeding which way he\nwent, strayed to that lonely walk under the shadow of the old trees near\nthe moor. Some one, meanwhile, was watching him, crouched timidly behind\na furze-bush, admiring his quick, military stride, thinking how grand\nand lion-like was that angry toss of the head which every now and then\nrelieved his bitter thoughts.\n\nThe air was fresh, and yet warm with that delicious warmth of some\nspring days that come like heralds of the summer, gathering up all the\nsweets of earth into one fragrant breath, wooing us with soft, furry\nzephyrs, and the scent of opening blossoms, and the melody of young\nbirds learning to sing. Alba had been tempted across the heath to the\npark, where the trees had put out their bright green foliage that looked\nso lovely sparkling in the sunlight. Perhaps, too, though she did not\nown it, there was a lurking hope in her heart that she might catch a\nglimpse of Hermann in the distance. If so, she was not disappointed.\nThere he was, walking under the pine-trees, but, happily, with his back\nto the heath, so that he did not see her! She dipped quickly behind a\nfurze-bush, and disappeared from view just as he turned, and, coming\nthrough the trees at an angle, stepped out on the pathway. A nightingale\nbegan to sing in the distant copse; but Alba, as she cowered behind her\nbush, thought the crystal trills and the loud call-note less musical\nthan the sound of Hermann\u2019s foot-fall crushing the gravel close to her\nhiding-place\u2014so close she almost feared he would note the shadow of her\npink skirt upon the grass, or mayhap overhear the palpitation of her\nheart. But presently the foot-falls died away, and the nightingale and\nthe zephyrs had it all to themselves again. She waited some minutes\u2014an\nhour it seemed to her\u2014before she ventured to look up; but at last she\ndid, and there, within a few paces, straight before her, stood Hermann.\nHe had left the pathway and taken to the noiseless grass under the\ntrees.\n\n\u201cAlba!\u201d\n\nThere was a ring of joy in the greeting, as the young lord came forward,\nholding out his hand.\n\n\u201cWhy have you never come? I have been here again and again in hopes of\nseeing you!\u201d\n\nHe was a true knight and meant no harm; but in his joy at seeing the\nsunbeam on his path he forgot that he had no right to be so glad or to\nlet Alba see it.\n\n\u201cI did not forget my promise,\u201d he said, leading her into the park and\nturning to walk by her side; \u201cbut I learned soon after that there was no\nneed for me to interfere. Caboff left the place, they told me.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, monseigneur, people said\u201d ... she hesitated. \u201cThey were all so\nsorry for you, and Marcel could not bear it, because they hated him\u2014poor\nMarcel! It was not his fault; he never was a coward.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are sorry now that he is gone! Perhaps he will come back? No doubt\nhe will, if you ask him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will never ask him; but I am sorry for him,\u201d she replied, and then,\nlooking up at Hermann with those soul-lit eyes that had a language of\ntheir own like music, she added timidly: \u201cBut I was more sorry for you,\nmonseigneur.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlba!\u201d He took her hand and kissed it. It was very sweet to be so near\nhim, Alba thought. They walked on together, hand in hand, without\nspeaking for a while. The grass was soft beneath their feet, and the\ntrembling sunbeams stole through the trees and touched their faces with\ngolden shadows, thrilling and pure and full of gladness, as the touch of\nnature is when it stirs the chords of young vibrating hearts. \u201cIf I\ncould but comfort him!\u201d she was thinking, till the thought grew so loud\nwithin her she feared he would overhear it. But we are deaf to those\nvoices that lie \u201cupon the other side of silence.\u201d Hermann, as he held\nthe warm, soft hand within his own, was wondering how it came to pass\nthat yonder on the barren cliffs a flower so rare and delicate had\ngrown, and been trained to so much grace and ease by a woman who was\ncalled M\u00e8re Virginie. Then he remembered his father\u2019s words about the\nroyal flower on the plebeian stem, and, thinking of him, he sighed. Alba\nlooked up quickly, offering all her soul\u2019s wealth of sympathy through\nher eyes, and Hermann bethought to himself how delightful it would be to\nhave this sympathetic creature always at his side. But he thought also\nof the emperor and the world, and wondered what these potentates would\nsay were he to pick up the jewel from the dust and set it in his\ncoronet. Bonaparte had a way of choosing mates for his officers as he\nchose sites for his battles, and ordering them to marry as he ordered\nthem to charge; but Hermann felt he was not one to be cowed by the\nimperial match-maker, and there was something rather inspiriting in the\nidea of defying the despot if he attempted to meddle with his life\noutside the camp. Why should he not gather this wild flower, if he\nchose? Had his father lived, it would have been different; but now he\nwas free, there was no one to whom he need sacrifice the promptings of\nhis heart, be they wise or foolish. The world and the court might laugh;\nit was not from amongst them he cared to take a wife; he wanted to be\nloved, to be wed for his own sake, and not for the good things he had to\noffer. But did Alba love him?\n\n\u201cAlba,\u201d he said, \u201cnow that Marcel is gone, who is to be the favored\nsuitor?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo one, monseigneur; I told you so before.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I did not believe you. I don\u2019t believe you now.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy should I tell you a lie? I never told one in my life.\u201d\n\nShe spoke without anger or offended pride; but Hermann saw that he had\npained her, and there was a purity of truth about her that rebuked his\ndenial, though it was spoken in jest.\n\n\u201cForgive me, dearest! I wanted to hear you say it again. I wanted to be\ncertain there was no one else you cared for.\u201d\n\nHe bent toward her caressingly, and, looking under her hood, saw two big\ntears slowly trickling down her cheeks.\n\n\u201cAlba....\u201d\n\nWhat an idle boast seems this about the freedom of the human will! Our\nmost pregnant words, our weightiest actions, spring far oftener from\nimpulse than from deliberate resolve; a touch, light as the feather\nfloating on the summer breeze, will stir the fountain and make its\nwaters overflow; a word spoken when we had meant to be silent will\nchange the current of our life, and push us to a step that can never be\nretraced. An hour ago Hermann de Gondriac no more dreamed of offering\nhis hand to Alba than he did of burying himself in the Grande\nChartreuse; but those two tears were the drops that made the fountain\noverflow, and, in the sudden flood of tenderness, pride, prudence,\neverything but love was swept away.\n\n\u201cAlba,\u201d he whispered, clasping her in his arms and gathering her to his\nbreast\u2014\u201cAlba, I love you. Will you come to me and be my wife?\u201d\n\nWas she awake, with the solid earth under her feet, or were those\nwhispered words the music that our fancy makes in dreams? But the music\ndid not die away, nor did the clasping arm melt from her, as do the\nembraces of those loved ones who visit us in sleep.\n\n\u201cYou love me!\u201d she said, looking up into his face with her large, warm\nglance, pure and trusting as a child\u2019s\u2014\u201cyou love me!\u201d And the sunbeams\nwent on singing it in shadow music on the grass, and the cuckoo called\nit through the woods, and the trees in their murmurous song repeated it,\nand the clouds, as they sailed over the zenith, traced it in silver\nlines upon the sky\u2014\u201cYou love me!\u201d\n\nTO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.\n\n\n\n\n                         MAGDALEN AT THE TOMB.\n\n\n    Deep sombre clouds roll up to shroud the night,\n    For in the silence of a guarded tomb\n    Rests the rich promise of a Virgin\u2019s womb;\n    And hearts that hoped are shrunk as buds by blight,\n    Till, like a soul which gains from Heaven delight,\n    The radiant morn dispels the woeful gloom,\n    And casts o\u2019er hungry Earth a new perfume.\n    A white-robed Angel, pinion-fring\u2019d with light,\n    Beside the empty grave bade one rejoice,\n    Who, coming from the cross, outran the morn,\n    In loving haste the body to adorn;\n    But found it gone\u2014and wept. Oh! hasty choice\n    Of tears, for one who was the first to turn\n    Her eyes upon her Lord, and hear his voice.\n\n\n\n\n                      FROM THE MEDEA OF EURIPIDES.\n                         _'A free translation._\n                           BY AUBREY DE VERE.\n\n\n[_The Chorus dissuades Medea from slaying her children._]\n\n\nSTROPHE I.\n\n    O race renowned in ancient story,\n      Race from the blest Immortals sprung,\n      Athenians, ye who all day long,\n    Feeding on wisdom and on glory,\n    Walk lightly through that climate fine,\n      Where, as the fabling poets say,\n      The yellow-tressed Harmonia\n    Brought forth the Muses nine;\n    That sage and virgin choir whose shell\n    You hear so often, love so well:\u2014\n\n\nANTISTROPHE I.\n\n    To you white Aphrodite sends\n        Her Loves, to make you wise and kind;\n    For they are Wisdom\u2019s choicest friends;\n    And here they say the goddess wreathed\n      Her fragrant locks with rosy twine;\n        And here they sing that, passion-fraught\n        And o\u2019er Cephisus\u2019 stream reclined,\n    Along the flowery vale she breathed\n        Sweet airs from that cold current caught\n    Upon her balmy lips divine.\n\n\nSTROPHE II.\n\n    Medea, dream not that the city\n      Of sacred founts and streams can e\u2019er\n        Give harbor to a wretch like thee:\n    Pity them, ruthless mother, pity!\n        See but thy guilt as others see;\n      By all things great and good, forbear!\n      We clasp thy knees, and bid thee spare\n        The babes that laughed upon thy knee!\n\n\nANTISTROPHE II.\n\n    They are thy children! They will call\n      Aloud, aloud upon their mother!\n        How can\u2019st thou hear that pleading cry?\n      In vain thou striv\u2019st:\u2014thou can\u2019st not smother\n    A mother\u2019s love. Thy hand will shake;\n    Thy heart will bend; thy heart will break,\n        Thy frenzy melt away and die,\n    When twining round thy feet they fall\n        In that despairing agony.\n\n\n\n\n                    THE STORY OF THE GOTHIC REVIVAL.\n\n\nWhen, centuries hence, historians endeavor to delineate the\ncharacteristics of the present century, it is more than probable that\nthe features that will most strike them will be those of innovation and\nchange. Progress in every science, rapid advance in material prosperity,\nsweeping reforms in laws and governments, political and social changes\nnot a few, will appear to have pretty well filled up the records of the\nbusy century that is fast drawing to its close. To those, however, who\nlook more closely into the minor though oftentimes important details\nthat contribute in a great measure to influence the character of an age,\nit will be evident that, if change and revolution have to a large extent\nreigned paramount in this century, neither has it been altogether\nwanting in a just recognition of the past, and in a serious revival of\nsome of the best features of that past.\n\nThese thoughts have been suggested by the perusal of Sir Charles\nEastlake\u2019s _History of the Gothic Revival in England_\u2014a work in which is\ndisplayed a thorough knowledge of the subject combined with an agreeable\nstyle and a high artistic taste, which cannot fail to interest even\nthose whose predilections are for other styles of architecture.\n\nThe revival which it describes has not been confined to England; in both\nFrance and Germany progress in Gothic art has made rapid strides during\nthe last thirty years. In the production, indeed, on the history and\ntheory of the pointed style France is perhaps in advance of England; but\nnowhere else has the revival been so universal and so practical as in\nthe latter country, nowhere else has it reached a point which could\njustify an author in attempting its history. So many Catholic\nassociations are linked with Gothic architecture, so many fond\nrecollections of a glorious past are called up by the mere name, that it\nis only natural that Catholics should take a special interest in its\nrevival, should feel justly proud of the large part that some of their\nco-religionists have had in that revival, and should refer with feelings\nof pleasure to the influence brought to bear upon it by the adoption of\nmany Catholic doctrines and practices by their Protestant brethren.\n\nAmerican readers cannot be indifferent to the history and fortunes of\nedifices where their ancestors prayed in those happy days when unity of\nfaith prevailed; nor can they fail to take an interest in the history,\nwhich we propose to sketch, of those years during which a handful of\nearnest men struggled, and struggled successfully, to revive the glories\nof a style that had been rendered for ever illustrious by such names as\nCologne and Chartres, Amiens and Salisbury, Notre Dame and York Minster.\n\nMany were the fair buildings that graced the broad lands of merry\nEngland at the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII.; stately\nchurches and splendid monasteries adorned her towns and nestled among\nher wooded hills and valleys; the one same principle of art had presided\nover their structure\u2014happy symbol of the one faith to whose service they\nministered. Before the end of that reign what a transformation had come\nover the face of the land! One of the first acts of the Reformation had\nbeen the suppression of the monasteries and confiscation of their\nproperty. Cromwell and his band of impious followers but too faithfully\ncarried out the orders of their royal master; the venerable and\nbeauteous piles on which the pious munificence of ages had lavished\ntheir skill and their treasures were soon reduced to bare and crumbling\nruins. Nor did the spoliation end here; the zealous reformers of God\u2019s\nchurch were not slow in condemning as idolatrous the rich and brilliant\ndecorations and ornaments that filled the cathedrals and churches, and\nthus these sacred edifices were shorn of all the costly treasures that\ndevotion had accumulated to honor the abiding presence of a heavenly\nKing, in order to fill the coffers of a licentious monarch.\n\nIt was not, however, the material ruin and desecration of its finest\nbuildings that struck the severest blow at Gothic art; it was rather the\nloss of that faith which had witnessed its earliest efforts and had\ninspired its grandest works. When the cold blast of Protestantism swept\naway one after another each Catholic dogma and each Christian belief,\nthe sources of Gothic inspiration were dried up, its very _raison\nd\u2019\u00eatre_ ceased to exist. Not that the Catholic Church has in any way\nadopted one style of architecture as the _only_ fitting one for her use;\nshe has equally sanctified by her solemn ritual and her sacred\nceremonies the colonnades of the Greek temple, the dome of the Italian\nbasilica, and the pointed arch of the Gothic cathedral. But this last,\nif we may use a comparison, seems somehow more especially her own child;\nthe others are but children of adoption\u2014wayward children that she has\nrescued from pagan parents. She has not watched over them from their\nbirth, nor seen them grow up under her fostering care to the vigor and\nstrength of manhood.\n\nIt naturally took some time before the spirit of a form of art which was\nthen the only form could completely disappear from the country; for we\nmust recollect that in England at the time of the Reformation not only\necclesiastical but civil and domestic architecture was entirely Gothic.\nAs there were for several centuries no new churches built\u2014for the\nusurped edifices of Catholic days more than sufficed for the needs of\nProtestant piety\u2014it was in domestic structures that the spirit of the\nstyle lingered longest in a practical form.\n\n    \u201cEven down to the reign of James I. the domestic architecture of\n    England, as exemplified in the country-houses of the nobility, was\n    Gothic in spirit, and frequently contained more real elements of a\n    medi\u00e6val character than many which have been built in modern times\n    by the light of arch\u00e6ological orthodoxy. Inigo Jones himself\n    required a second visit to Italy before he could thoroughly abandon\n    the use of the pointed arch. But its days were numbered when in 1633\n    the first stone was laid for a Roman portico to one of the finest\n    cathedrals of the middle ages, and Gothic architecture as a\n    practical art received what was then no doubt supposed to be its\n    death-blow.\u201d[101]\n\nFootnote 101:\n\n  Eastlake, p. 5.\n\nFrom this period the practice of Gothic art gradually died out. Classic\nand Italian architecture, which had received a fresh impulse from the\nFrench Renaissance, rapidly came into fashion. Architects studied no\nother style, for the very good reason that the public admired no other.\nIt was henceforth considered the criterion of good taste to abuse as\nbarbarous all the productions of medi\u00e6val art, and the test of good\nProtestantism to look upon them as superstitious and popish. It is\nindeed surprising that so many of the wonderful productions of a period\nno longer understood or appreciated should have been allowed to come\ndown to us unaltered by \u201cclassical\u201d remodelling. What saved them and at\nthe same time preserved the spirit of the old art from total extinction\nis thus told by Sir C. Eastlake:\n\n    \u201cBy a strange and fortunate coincidence of events, however, it\n    happened at this very time, when architects of the period had\n    learned to despise the buildings of their ancestors, a spirit of\n    veneration for the past was springing up among a class of men who\n    may be said to have founded our modern school of antiquaries.\n    Sometimes, indeed, their researches were not those of a character\n    from which much advantage can be expected.... But, luckily for\n    posterity, the attention of others was drawn in a more serviceable\n    direction. Up to this time no work of any importance had been\n    published on the architectural antiquities of England. A period had\n    arrived when it was thought necessary, if only on historical\n    grounds, that some record of ecclesiastical establishments should be\n    compiled. The promoters of the scheme were probably little\n    influenced by the love of Gothic as a style. But an old building was\n    necessarily a Gothic building, and thus it happened that, in spite\n    of the prejudices of the age, and probably their own \u00e6sthetic\n    predilections, the antiquaries of the day became the means of\n    keeping alive some interest in a school of architecture which had\n    ceased to be practically employed.\u201d[102]\n\nFootnote 102:\n\n  _History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 6.\n\nAmongst the earliest names that attained to a certain celebrity by their\nresearches and writings may be mentioned those of Mr. R. Dodsworth and\nMr. W. Dugdale, joint authors of the _Monasticon Anglicanum_, a work\nfirst published in 1655, and which still retains much interest for the\nmodern student, as it includes many records and views of buildings which\nhave long since perished. Another writer whose name deserves mention was\nAntony \u00e0 Wood, born 1611, whose _History of the Antiquities of Oxford_\nwas a book of considerable importance, connected as it was with a\nuniversity where Gothic architecture was so nobly illustrated and where\nthe traditions of the style lingered long after its true principles were\nforgotten.\n\nDuring the next two hundred years the annals of Gothic art are indeed\nmeagre; from time to time we have the record of some antiquarian\nresearch, and at rare intervals we hear of some uncouth attempts at\nGothic building remarkable only for the egregious mistakes they display.\n\nEarly in the eighteenth century we find the name of a remarkable man\nconnected with one of these crude attempts at medi\u00e6val art\u2014that of the\ncelebrated Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford, the author of the first work\nof modern fiction whose scene is laid in the middle ages. His labors in\nthe fields of literature and art were not profound. Eccentricity seemed\nthe most marked feature of his taste; and, as may be well imagined, his\nfamous Gothic house, Strawberry Hill, which has remained almost\nunaltered to the present day, is a strange monument of what debased art\ncan achieve. The fact, however, that a man of his position, and enjoying\nthe reputation he did, could patronize a form of architecture which had\nfallen into almost universal contempt could not have been without a\npowerful effect on the public mind\u2014an effect which may be traced in the\nerection during the next fifty years of a certain number of mansions\nthroughout the country in that style which Pugin loved so much to call\n\u201cBrummagem Gothic.\u201d\n\nTowards the end of the century some useful books on architectural\narch\u00e6ology appeared, such as Carter\u2019s _Specimens of Ancient Sculpture\nand Painting_, Hearne\u2019s _Antiquities of Great Britain_, Gough\u2019s\n_Sepulchral Monuments_, Halfpenny\u2019s _Gothic Ornaments of the Cathedral\nof York_, B. Willis\u2019 _History of Gothic Architecture in England_.\n\n    \u201cIt was something at least to draw attention to the noble works of\n    our ancestors, which had long been neglected and despised; to record\n    with the pencil or with the pen some testimony, however inadequate,\n    of their goodly form and worthy purpose; to invest with artistic and\n    historical interest the perishing monuments of an age when art was\n    pure and genuine.\u201d[103]\n\nFootnote 103:\n\n  _History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 71.\n\nWhen the nineteenth century opens, we find these works already producing\npractical fruits; for we see several architects of note, such as Wyat,\nNash, and Smirke, attempting, and not without some success, the erection\nof edifices of Gothic design. Nearly always, however, their efforts were\nconfined to domestic structures for private individuals\u2014a proof how\ncompletely the taste was confined to the upper classes and was still\nunappreciated by the general public. If they did not often attempt to\n_build_ new churches, unfortunately they did not hesitate to restore and\n_improve_ the venerable cathedrals and churches of the past. Wyat in\nparticular has a heavy burden of responsibility to bear on this score;\nfor many were the noble buildings that long bore the traces of acts of\nvandalism and ignorance associated with his name.\n\nHow, indeed, could we expect better things in ecclesiastical\narchitecture at a time when religion was at so low an ebb in England? As\neach generation had passed away the lingering memories of the old faith\nand the old ritual had vanished one by one; the last remnants of\nCatholic feelings and practices had disappeared under the influence of\nthe cold formalism of the Puritans and the colder indifferentism of\nthose who succeeded them. When we read the following description, given\nby Sir C. Eastlake, of a Protestant church and Protestant worship as he\nrecollected them during the early years of the present century, we\ncannot feel surprised that there was a lack of inspiration among church\narchitects:\n\n    \u201cWho does not remember the air of grim respectability which\n    pervaded, and in some cases even still pervades, the modern town\n    church of a certain type, with its big bleak portico and\n    muffin-capped charity-boys? Enter and notice the tall,\n    neatly-grained witness-boxes in which the faithful are empanelled;\n    the 'three-decker\u2019 pulpit placed in the centre of the building; the\n    lumbering gallery which is carried round the three sides of the\n    interior on iron columns; the wizen-faced pew-opener eager for stray\n    shillings; the earnest penitent who is inspecting the inside of his\n    hat; the hassock which no one kneels on; the poor-box which is\n    always empty. Hear how the clerk drones out the responses for a\n    congregation too genteel to respond for themselves. Listen to the\n    complicated discord in which the words of the Psalmist strike the\n    ear after copious revision by Tate and Brady. Mark the prompt, if\n    misdirected, zeal with which old ladies insist on testing the\n    accuracy of the preacher\u2019s memory by turning out the text. Observe\n    the length and unimpeachable propriety, the overwhelming dulness, of\n    his sermon.\u201d\n\nAlas! as far as exterior worship was concerned, the Catholic chapels of\nthis period were in an equally sad condition; but from how different a\ncause! Centuries of persecution had not been able to stamp out the\nCatholic faith, but penal laws still in force, though not rigorously\ncarried out, forced it to hide away in back streets and lanes, always\navoiding whatever might attract public notice, lest it might awaken\nagain the dormant flames of bigotry. Add to this the state of poverty to\nwhich, in many places, the Catholic body was reduced, and we need not\nwonder at the desolate aspect of the chapels, if the miserable\nstructures that oftentimes were used for divine service deserved the\nname. _They_ possessed, however, the presence of that God who had not\ndisdained the poverty of a stable nor the humble offerings of poor\nshepherds; in like manner he looked with indulgence on the mean and\nscanty ornaments that in these sad times decorated his altars, and on\nthe cold and desolate walls within which persecution had forced him to\nmake his dwelling. He was pleased to await the time when happier days\nand gentler laws should once again permit his worship to be freely\ncelebrated with all the glory and pomp of by-gone years. Such days were\nrapidly advancing, and Catholics were not slow in availing themselves of\neach relaxation of penal statutes, each favorable turn of Protestant\nbigotry, to improve their churches and to carry out more fully their\nsacred ceremonies\u2014a task of no small difficulty on the part of a\ncommunity so ill supplied with the riches of this world, and so long,\nfrom cruel necessity, forced to content themselves with a simplicity\nalmost akin to that of the early Christians.\n\nThe dawn of the revival, which was now at hand, was marked by some\nwriters of eminence whose theoretical works contributed much to prepare\nthe way for it. Their writings were distinguished from those of the\nearlier antiquarians by a more practical knowledge of building and a\nmore exact delineation of the details of the edifices they describe. Mr.\nJ. Britton may be looked upon as a link between the two schools, as he\nhad some of the characteristics of both. He was the author of numerous\nworks on the English cathedral and other Gothic edifices, all\nillustrated with really artistic drawings. They were, however, more\ndesigned to create a taste for ancient art among the reading public than\nto assist the professional architect.\n\n    \u201cWhile Britton was thus enlisting the sympathy of the amateur world\n    two architects were engaged in preparing a practical and valuable\n    work for the use of professional students.\n\n    \u201cThe examples of Gothic architecture which had hitherto been\n    selected for publication were chiefly those which either served to\n    illustrate a principle in the history of the style, or possessed\n    some picturesque attraction in the way of general effect. But\n    neither of these were of real service to the practical architect,\n    who required geometrical and carefully-measured drawings of ancient\n    roofs, doors, and windows to guide him in his designs and to help\n    him in reviving a style the details of which had been as yet most\n    imperfectly studied. Pugin\u2019s (father to the celebrated Welby Pugin)\n    and Wilson\u2019s specimens of Gothic architecture supplied this want. It\n    was a happy accident which brought these men together, the one\n    eminently qualified as a draughtsman for the task, the other equally\n    fitted to undertake its literary labor.\u201d[104]\n\nFootnote 104:\n\n  Eastlake, page 88.\n\nThe writer whose name next appears on the roll of champions of Gothic\nart is one whose memory is enshrined in the hearts of all English\nCatholics\u2014Dr. Milner, Vicar-Apostolic of the Midland district, better\nknown to most people for his holy life, his ardent zeal, and his\ncontroversial power than as a writer on architecture. In this latter\ncapacity, however, he deserves a foremost place among those who prepared\nthe way for the great revival which unfortunately he did not live to see\naccomplished.\n\nHis _Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester_ revealed much erudition\nand a thorough appreciation of ancient art; but by far the most\nimportant part of it was the short but now famous essay it contained,\n\u201cOn the Rise and Progress of the Pointed Arch.\u201d In it the author uses\nfor the first time the appellation now become so general as applied to\nthe architecture of the middle ages\u2014viz., _the pointed style_. His next\nwork was an important _Treatise on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of\nEngland during the Middle Ages_. In this work the author not only proves\nhimself an antiquary but a man of taste. A work more important still,\nand one productive of the most serious results, was a short pamphlet\nentitled _A Dissertation on the Modern Style of Altering Ancient\nCathedrals, as Exemplified in the Cathedral of Salisbury_. In it he\nprotests in vigorous language against the miserable degradation of the\nold churches accomplished under the name of restoration; nor does he\nspare Wyat, the leading spirit in these unfortunate _improvements_. No\none before the days of Welby Pugin had so enthusiastically entered into\nthe spirit of the old art, so thoroughly appreciated its beauties, and\nso ably defended its principles, not only against its avowed enemies,\nbut against the ignorance of many of its would-be admirers. So\noutspoken, indeed, was Dr. Milner\u2019s language in this pamphlet that it\nshocked the staid members of the Society of Antiquaries, before whom it\nwas to have been read, and was in consequence withdrawn\u2014not, however, to\nlie mouldering in its author\u2019s desk, but soon to appear in print, and to\nwork even more important effects on the future than its author ever\ncontemplated.\n\nDr. Milner died in 1826, the very year that W. Pugin, then a youth of\nfourteen, was displaying one of the earliest proofs of his taste for\nmedi\u00e6val art in devoting long hours to the studying and sketching of the\nold castle of Rochester.\n\nHow little did the gray-haired bishop dream of the wonderful revolution\nthis youth, as yet unknown to fame, was to accomplish within a few\nyears. Little did he think, when he saw arising the humble walls of his\nGothic chapel at Winchester, that the day was not far distant when a\nCatholic architect would revive throughout the land the glories of that\nstyle which Dr. Milner had so well defended in days when it was\nneglected and abused.\n\nOne more name of importance must be mentioned before we attempt to trace\nthe outline of Pugin\u2019s career; we again quote from Sir C. Eastlake:\n\n    \u201cMidway in point of time between Milner and Pugin, and possessing,\n    though in a minor degree, the talents of both, Thomas Rickman, as an\n    architect and author, plays no unimportant part in the history of\n    the revival. His churches are perhaps the first of that period in\n    which the details of old work were reproduced with accuracy of form.\n    Up to this time antiquaries had studied the principles of medi\u00e6val\n    architecture, and to some extent classified the phases through which\n    it had passed, while architects had indirectly profited by their\n    labors when endeavoring to imitate in practice the work of the\n    middle ages. Rickman united both functions in one man.... In the\n    science of his art he will not, of course, bear comparison with\n    Willis. In the analyzing of its general principles he must yield to\n    Whewell. In capability of invention he ranks, even for his time, far\n    below Pugin; but it may be fairly questioned whether, if we consider\n    him in the twofold capacity of a theorist and a practitioner, he did\n    not do greater service than either his learned contemporaries or his\n    enthusiastic disciple.\u201d[105]\n\nFootnote 105:\n\n  Page 122.\n\nHad Rickman done no more than write his _Attempt to discriminate the\nStyles of English Architecture_, he would have been worthy of a high\nplace among those who contributed to revive Gothic art. He supplied by\nthis book a want long felt by architects and by those interested in\narchitecture. Of learned, or rather unlearned, dissertations on the\norigin of the pointed style there were plenty, but of those short and\nuseful volumes to which have been aptly given the name of _hand-books_\nthere was a complete absence. Rickman\u2019s book gave in a small compass a\nvery complete history of the various phases of Gothic architecture in\nEngland; the main divisions into periods which he adopted being so good\nthat they have remained unaltered to the present day. The work was\nillustrated with very fair engravings, and no architect who had perused\nit could any longer plead ignorance as an excuse for the monstrosities\nthat were so often produced in those days under the name of Gothic.\n\nHis work on French Gothic, the fruits of a journey through the North of\nFrance with his friend Whewell, afterwards the famous Master of Trinity,\nis full of interest and contains an elaborate and carefully-drawn\ncomparison between the medi\u00e6val remains in France and England.\n\nWith Rickman ends that gloomy night which had so long, with faint\nflashes of light now and again, enveloped the science and art of Gothic\narchitecture; a dawn as sudden as it is bright foretells a day of more\nthan ordinary brilliancy.\n\nIgnorance and prejudice, which had so long reigned supreme in England in\nall matters concerning true religion and true art, were fast giving way\nbefore the researches of conscientious science, and as a result we see\ntwo great movements marking the first quarter of the present century\u2014the\nTractarian movement and the Gothic revival; the one religious, the other\nartistic. Of the first it does not enter into our plan to speak here,\nthough it would no doubt afford a highly interesting study to trace out\nthe mutual influence these two movements have exercised on one another;\nfor it is impossible not to perceive that, on the one hand, the inquiry\ninto the principles and form of ancient art led naturally on to an\ninquiry into the ancient formularies and practices of the faith which\nhad inspired that art; and that, on the other hand, the revival of the\nlong-forgotten ritual of the old faith led directly to the restoration\nand refurnishing of those temples that were so intimately connected with\nit. Before entering on the life of Pugin, which constitutes the\nculminating point in the great artistic revival we are attempting to\nsketch, we cannot do better than quote the opening words of the chapter\nin which Sir C. Eastlake traces his career, as it clearly proves the\nimportance he attaches to the labors of this great man:\n\n    \u201cHowever much we may be indebted to those ancient supporters of\n    pointed architecture who, faithfully adhering to its traditions at a\n    period when the style fell into general disuse, strove earnestly, in\n    some instances ably, to preserve its character; whatever value in\n    the cause we may attach to the crude and isolated examples of Gothic\n    work which belong to the eighteenth century, or to the efforts of\n    such men as Nash and Wyat, there can be but little doubt that the\n    revival of medi\u00e6val design received its chief impulse from the\n    energy and talents of one architect whose name marks an epoch in the\n    history of British art, which while art exists at all can never be\n    forgotten.\u201d[106]\n\nFootnote 106:\n\n  P. 145.\n\nAugustus Welby Pugin, the architect to whom these words apply, was born\nin London on March 1, 1812. We have already spoken of his father, and of\nthe important place his illustrated works occupy in the history we are\ntracing; he was a French refugee and a Protestant, and his son was\nbrought up a Protestant. Although the elder Pugin had little\nprofessional practice, he seems to have attained to a position of ease\nby the sale of his works and the instruction of pupils. His son was\neducated at Christ\u2019s Hospital, on leaving which he entered his father\u2019s\noffice, having from his earliest years shown a great taste for drawing.\nHe soon mastered the first elements of his profession and became of much\nuse to his father, already showing that earnestness in all he undertook\nthat was so characteristic of him in later years. His taste for medi\u00e6val\nart received a fresh impulse from a professional tour he made in 1827\nwith his father through Normandy, which gave him the opportunity of\nstudying the beauty of Gothic ornament in some of its most splendid\nproductions.\n\nWhile still a mere youth his cleverness in designing attracted\nattention, and he received a commission from the royal upholsterers to\nprepare designs for the new furniture for Windsor Castle, which it was\ndetermined should partake of the character of the building. The drawings\nhe gave were probably better than what most architects of the day could\nhave produced, yet in the writings of his after-years he always frankly\npointed out their faults.\n\nA love of variety and a strong taste for roving interrupted for a short\nperiod his architectural studies. He devoted for a time his energies to\nscene-painting, and with much success when the subjects were of a\nmedi\u00e6val character. Next we find him carried away by an extraordinary\npassion for the sea, and he actually for a certain period commanded a\nmerchant schooner trading between England and Holland. Having been\nwrecked, however, on the Scotch coast, his seafaring ardor was somewhat\ncooled, and he returned to the labors of his original profession.\n\nHis talents were soon rewarded by increasing practice, many architects\nbeing glad to avail themselves of his wonderful, one might almost say\ninnate, knowledge of Gothic ornament.\n\nA most serious and important event in Pugin\u2019s life, and one having much\ninfluence on his future career, occurred about this time\u2014his conversion\nto the Catholic religion. There can be no doubt that his intense love of\nthe past and his enthusiastic admiration of the glorious monuments of\nthe ages of faith strongly biassed his mind towards this determination,\nthough of course it was not these considerations alone that led him to\ntake so important a step. His after-life proved how thorough was his\nfaith and how sincere his piety.\n\nThis change of religion affected, in more ways than one, the\nprofessional career of Welby Pugin. From a pecuniary point of view it\nprobably made little difference to him\u2014as his talents were such as to\ninsure for him constant work, and he already possessed independent\nmeans. But by this step he sacrificed what was far dearer to him, his\nfuture fame as an architect.\n\nNever was there a more splendid opening for architectural talent than\nthat very time when Pugin, in the first dawn of his genius, embraced the\nCatholic faith. Everything had combined to prepare a revival of Gothic\nart. The materials were already collected and awaited but the hand of a\nman of genius to make a practical use of them. The ritualistic movement\nhad awakened the desire to restore the old and to build new churches.\nRich men were ready to give unbounded wealth to further the enterprise.\nHad Pugin remained a Protestant, had he preferred fame to conscience, he\nmight have found an easy road to it by availing himself of an\nopportunity so worthy the gifts of one eminently fitted to be a leader\nin a movement that combined religion and art. He preferred to return to\nthe faith that had inspired those medi\u00e6val times he so fondly loved, and\nto risk his future reputation by offending that feeling which is so\nstrong in Protestant England against converts. The Catholic who for\ncenturies has kept his faith they can tolerate, nay, admire; but one who\nwas their own and deserts them they find it hard to forgive.\n\nNot only did Pugin, in thus affronting public opinion, bias the judgment\nof his contemporaries and of future critics, but he actually, by\nattaching himself to the poorest religious body in England, deprived\nhimself of the means of adequately displaying his power.\n\nDuring the next years that composed the short career of Pugin we find\nhim working with an activity and enthusiasm that showed how all labor\nconnected with his art was to him a labor of love. His pen and his\npencil were alike devoted to its service. In 1836 he published his\ncelebrated _Contrasts_\u2014a work in which he compares with keen irony and\nscathing satire the buildings and institutions of the past with those of\nthe present; in the sketches which illustrate it he delineates with\nwonderful humor all the weak points of modern architecture. His style of\nwriting was flowing and easy, always highly picturesque and\nenthusiastic, but sometimes slightly inclined to exaggeration and\neccentricity. It was this that made it so difficult for him to write\nwithout giving offence sometimes even to his own friends and\nco-religionists.\n\nHis next work was his _True Principles of Pointed Architecture_. It is\nbut a short volume, consisting of two lectures delivered at St. Mary\u2019s\nCollege, Oscott, but it forms a most complete elementary treatise on\nGothic art, founded on the two great principles enunciated in its first\npage: \u201c1. That there should be no features about a building that are not\nnecessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; 2. That all\nornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of\nthe building.\u201d\n\nIt is clearly shown that in these principles lies the true secret of all\ncorrect pointed construction and ornament, and that any analysis of\nGothic work undertaken without taking them into consideration must\ninevitably lead to erroneous conclusions.\n\nThe truth of these principles is now universally admitted in works that\ntreat of pointed architecture, but to Pugin belongs the honor of having\nfirst laid them down and having shown how important they were to the\nright understanding of the lessons handed down to us in the wondrous\nstructures of the past.\n\nHis next work was _An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture\nin England_. It is a brilliant defence of Gothic art, intended specially\nto prove that it is still \u201cthe only correct expression of the faith, the\nwants, and climate of our country.\u201d\n\nAs a specimen of Pugin\u2019s amusing style when describing the incongruous\nproductions of modern architecture, we cannot do better than quote the\ndescription of a nineteenth-century cemetery contained in this book; we\nonly wish we could reproduce the delightful picture that accompanies the\ntext:\n\n    \u201cThere are a superabundance of inverted torches, cinerary urns, and\n    pagan emblems, tastefully disposed by the side of neat gravel walks,\n    among cypress-trees and weeping willows.\n\n    \u201cThe central chapel is generally built on such a comprehensive plan\n    as to be adapted (in the modern sense) for each sect and\n    denomination in turn as they may require its temporary use; but the\n    entrance gate-way is usually selected for the grand display of the\n    company\u2019s enterprise and taste, as being well calculated from its\n    position to induce persons to patronize the undertaking by the\n    purchase of shares or graves. This is generally Egyptian, probably\n    from some associations between the word catacombs, which occurs in\n    the prospectus of the company, and the discoveries of Belzoni on the\n    banks of the Nile; and nearly opposite the Green Man and Dog\n    public-house, in the centre of a dead-wall (which serves as a cheap\n    medium of advertisement for blacking and shaving-strop\n    manufacturers), a cement caricature of the entrance to an Egyptian\n    temple, two and a half inches to the foot, is erected, with\n    convenient lodges for the policeman and his wife, and a neat pair of\n    cast-iron hieroglyphical gates which would puzzle the most learned\n    to decipher; while, to prevent any mistake, some such words as 'New\n    Economical Compressed Grave Company\u2019s Cemetery\u2019 are inscribed in\n    _Grecian_ capitals along the frieze, interspersed with hawk-headed\n    divinities, and surmounted by a huge representation of the winged\n    Osiris bearing a gas-lamp.\u201d[107]\n\nFootnote 107:\n\n  _An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture_, p. 12.\n\nIn 1844 he published his next important work, _The Glossary of\nEcclesiastical Ornament and Costume_. It is a thoroughly practical book,\ndesigned to supply correct descriptions and patterns for the use of\nthose who manufacture the various ornaments employed in the ritual of\nthe church, which were at that time of the most incorrect forms and in\nthe worst taste.\n\nHis other literary productions were numerous but of less importance,\nbeing for the most part of a controversial character, and we pass on to\nexamine, as far as our limited space permits, Pugin\u2019s career and\ninfluence as a practical architect. Catholic emancipation, in freeing\nthe church from the galling restraints to which she had been so long\nsubjected in England and Ireland, opened for her a new era of liberty\nand prosperity in those countries. True, she did not regain that wealth\nwhich had been sacrilegiously torn from her at the Reformation; still,\nshe was enabled, through the generosity of her children, to expend large\nsums in the construction of churches somewhat more worthy of the august\nmysteries she celebrates than those poor edifices she had been so long\nforced to use.\n\nAs a Catholic of undoubted talents, Pugin soon found that his\narchitectural capacity was appreciated by his co-religionists, who\nentrusted to him the construction of all their principal churches. Few\namong them, indeed, were, by their size or importance, calculated to\ngive full scope to Pugin\u2019s genius; nevertheless, to the smallest\nbuilding he always devoted long study and attention and a scrupulous\nfidelity to the principles he had laid down in his writings, although in\nmany cases it was extremely difficult to do so, owing to the small\namount of money that could be expended on the work. Among the many\nchurches he designed we may mention, as the best specimens of his skill,\nthe cathedrals of Birmingham, Southwark, Nottingham, Killarney, and\nEnniscorthy; the churches of St. Wilfrid\u2019s, Manchester; St. Marie\u2019s,\nLiverpool; St. Giles\u2019, Cheadle; St. Bernard\u2019s Abbey, Leicestershire; St.\nAugustine\u2019s, Ramsgate.\n\nIn all these churches the exterior beauty has been more or less\nsacrificed to interior ornament and decoration, Pugin preferring to\ndevote all the money possible to beautifying those parts which were most\nclosely connected with the presence of his God, when the funds did not\npermit him to adorn fully both exterior and interior. This has often led\nhis critics to misjudge his capacity as an architect; even Sir C.\nEastlake falls into this error, and, though a sincere admirer of Pugin,\ndoes not hesitate to assert that \u201cof constructive science he probably\nknew but little.\u201d That his greatest power lay in ornament and detail may\nno doubt be true; still, we are fully convinced that had he found the\nsame opportunities of displaying his knowledge as a scientific\narchitect, and had he not been trammelled by the constant necessity to\nkeep down expense, he would have amply proved to the world how unfounded\nwere these accusations.\n\nIn comparing Pugin with the architects who have succeeded him people\noften forget the difficulties _he_ had to contend against. He had to\nrevive and educate the whole series of artisans whose combined labors\nare required to construct the smallest Gothic edifice\u2014sculptors,\ncarvers, iron-workers, painters, and decorators. When he began his\ncareer as a practical architect he had to design every smallest item\nrequired for his buildings, and, what is more, often personally to\nsuperintend their manufacture; a lock, a screw, a nail of correct\npointed design were then things that had no existence.\n\nIf we take up now a book of that period, we can scarcely believe that\nignorance and absurdity could go so far as to call Gothic the designs we\nsee there depicted under that appellation. It is solely to Pugin\u2019s\nuntiring energy, to his conscientious love of his art, and to his\nwonderful fertility of invention\u2014gifts which even his adversaries cannot\ndeny him\u2014that we owe the change that has been wrought in a few years.\n\nThe important progress in metal work, which now places at the disposal\nof the architect and builder material and designs almost equalling the\nbest products of the middle ages, is completely due to him; in this, as\nin another long-lost branch of art\u2014glass-staining\u2014he found in Mr. J.\nHardman, of Birmingham, one thoroughly competent by his practical\nknowledge and refined taste to assist him in carrying out his reforms.\n\nHow many other branches of industry, connected directly or indirectly\nwith medi\u00e6val art, could be mentioned in which the influence of Pugin\u2019s\nlabors can be traced!\u2014the production of encaustic tiles, silk\nembroidery, wood-carving, the manufacture of church plate and furniture\nof all kinds, even household articles and jewelry. Sir C. Eastlake truly\nremarks: \u201cThose establishments which are known in London as\necclesiastical warehouses owe their existence and their source of profit\nto Pugin\u2019s exertions in the cause of rubrical propriety.\u201d[108] He might\nhave added with equal truth that the many beautiful objects we admire in\nthem owe their existence to the principles he established by his\nwritings and to the endless models which his unrivalled facility of\ninvention placed at the disposal of the public.\n\nFootnote 108:\n\n  _History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 153.\n\nIf a proof were wanting of the hold that the revival of which Pugin was\nthe leading spirit was taking on public opinion, it is the fact that a\nParliamentary committee, in drawing up the terms of the competition for\nthe plans of the new Houses of Parliament, stipulated that the designs\nshould be Gothic or Elizabethan. It has often been regretted that Pugin\ndid not take part in this competition, and his reasons for not doing so\nhave never been quite satisfactorily explained.\n\nBarry, the architect selected for the new buildings, showed his\nappreciation of Pugin\u2019s capabilities and his esteem for his talents by\napplying to him for designs for all the important interior decorations\nand furniture. The beauty of these parts shows how well suited he was\nfor the task; many consider them the most perfect parts of the edifice,\nthe exterior, notwithstanding its real merits, having numerous\nfaults\u2014some of them, it is true, inherent to the style adopted\u2014Tudor or\nperpendicular.\n\nBesides the many churches and other religious edifices which Pugin\ndesigned, he devoted considerable attention to domestic architecture;\nand among the best specimens he left may be mentioned Bilton Grange,\nAdare Manor, and Scarisbrick Hall, Chirk Castle and Alton Towers; the\nlast two he only restored and altered. But perhaps his happiest effort\nin this style was his own house at Ramsgate, which is, in every detail,\na perfect specimen of a medi\u00e6val residence, strongly illustrating how\ndeeply imbued Pugin was with the spirit and traditions of the past. So\nthoroughly Gothic were all his feelings and tastes that we firmly\nbelieve it would have been impossible for him to design a building in\nany other style.\n\nWith Pugin\u2019s death, which occurred in 1854, we shall terminate this\nshort sketch of one of the most wonderful revivals of the present age.\nWe have told how Gothic architecture became extinct as a practical art,\nhow its theory was forgotten and misunderstood for centuries, its very\nname kept in remembrance only by a few rare lovers of antiquity. We have\ntraced the first dawn of a change in public taste, originated by the\nserious works of men versed in the history of ancient art, and inspired\nby a love of its grand productions.\n\nIn what a different position we leave it now! The master spirit that had\nbreathed a new life into its almost inanimate form has passed away; his\nmortal remains are sleeping in the hallowed transept of that beautiful\nchurch at Ramsgate, the designing and decorating of which had been to\nhim such a labor of love; but, unlike many reformers, he had lived to\nsee his cherished dreams realized; he had lived to see the mystic\nsteeple and the high pitched roof once more ascend to heaven from the\ncrowded cities and the wooded fields of his country; he had lived to see\na long array of distinguished names consecrate their gifts to that one\nstyle he had loved and for which he had labored.\n\n\n\n\n                    ALONG THE FOOT OF THE PYRENEES.\n\n\nWe followed the old Roman way along the foot of the Pyrenees\u2014a\ndelightful route, picturesque on one side and fair on the other, and\neverywhere abounding in historic and legendary memories. Every age has\nleft its impress here, as every geological period has left its strata in\nthe mountains. Many of the cultivated hills are crowned with the ruins\nof feudal times. The plains are blooming with a thousand traditions and\nmarvellous events that have sprung up from the contests with the Moors\nin the eighth century. Numerous remains of ancient art are constantly\ncoming to light from the soil to prove that, during the Roman occupancy\nof the land, many wealthy patricians established themselves in this\nregion, at once attractive to the eye and favorable to health. The\nVisigoths also, who once held possession of the country, have left\nbehind them memorials of their barbarity in the martyrs who are still\nhonored; and the Huguenots and Revolutionists ruined churches and\ncloisters that are still deplored.\n\nAt length we came to Martres-Tolosanes\u2014the ancient Callagorris\u2014an\nindustrious place on the left bank of the Garonne containing about two\nthousand inhabitants. Clouds of smoke hover over it by day, and flames\nand sparks stream up at night, from the numerous potteries which supply\nall the neighboring region with dishes and tiles, and pave all the\nby-roads with broken crockery. The streets are narrow, and the begrimed\nhouses seem inclined to stray off on the road to Spain, as if to breathe\nthe pure mountain air. There is an interesting old church here that was\nconsecrated in the year 1309. The baptismal font is an ancient\nsarcophagus, set up on four pillars, its sides divided by colonnettes,\nbetween which are holy emblems and other carvings. In one chapel there\nis a sculptured retable over the altar, with the shrine of St. Vidian\nsupported by chained Moors\u2014not covered with precious stones, or a work\nof art, like so many of the shrines of Italy, but a mere urn of gilded\nwood. On great festivals this is taken down and placed before the\ngrating of the sanctuary, surrounded by lights and flowers. The bust of\nthe saint is placed above it, the head shaded by nodding white plumes to\ngive it a martial character, in view of St. Vidian\u2019s achievements, the\nface painted more or less after nature, the shoulders covered with a\ngilded mantle of imperial fashion, and the neck adorned with a collar,\nor necklace, of blue and white crystal\u2014probably the offering of some\ndevout peasant. In another chapel, on such days likewise full of flowers\nand tapers, is St. Vidian\u2019s ivory comb exposed in a kind of monstrance,\nas if the object of particular veneration. It is rudely carved, and the\nteeth which used to disentangle the long blond locks of the warrior\nafter battle are of portentous size and length, and jagged from the\nconflict. But those were not days of gentle measures. This comb is of\nconsiderable celebrity in the country, not merely on account of its\noriginal use, but also because of the curious tale that hangs around it.\n\nIn the golden ages, when kind Heaven directly intervened in human\naffairs more frequently than is thought to be the case now, and did not\nsuffer sacrilegious deeds to go unpunished, a peasant woman of the\nneighboring canton of Caz\u00e8res, who had come to Martres to attend St.\nVidian\u2019s fair, went into the church to pay her devotions at the shrine,\nand, finding it empty, was induced by some diabolical inspiration to\nsteal the wondrous comb, which was not then kept under glass as now. She\nhid it under her scarlet _capulet_, and, rejoining her husband at the\nmarket-place, set out for home. The afternoon was drawing to a close.\nSome rays of the declining sun still brightened the gray tower of Mauran\namong the mountain oaks, but the evening shadows had begun to gather in\nthe valley below. Accordingly, they hurried along the road that bordered\nthe river, the irons on their shoes clattering over the stones and\ngiving out an occasional spark. The woman\u2019s feet, however, often\nfaltered, and, contrary to custom, her tongue was mute. But this was no\naffliction to her husband, and he pretended not to observe it. At\nlength, on crossing the boundary that separates Martres from Caz\u00e8res, he\nsuddenly found himself alone, and, hearing a cry, looked around. His\nwife remained fastened on the line, as if by some invisible influence,\nwith one foot in the parish of Martres and the other in that of Caz\u00e8res,\nwithout the power of moving. He hurried back to her assistance, but, in\nspite of herculean efforts, he could not move her an inch, more than if\nshe had been Lot\u2019s wife. Night was now coming on fast. Not a ray of the\nsun was left on St. Michael\u2019s tower, and they were only half way home. A\ncart from the mountains came by, drawn by three cows, and he begged the\ndriver\u2019s assistance. The woman seized hold of the cart. The driver\ngoaded the cows. They were usually gentle and tractable, as becomes the\nfemale nature, but they now set off as if suddenly gone mad, leaving the\npoor woman behind, her arms nearly dislocated with her efforts, but her\nfeet still glued to the ground. Then came along some Spaniards with\ntheir mules covered with gay tassels and bells. New efforts were made to\nremove her. She clung desperately to bridle and harness, but the mules\nso reared and kicked that she was obliged to give up the attempt.\n\u201cCertainly the devil must have a hand in this,\u201d said the husband. The\nwoman rent the mountains with her cries, and at length was forced to\nconfess the deed she had done. It was evidently a case in which the\nspiritual powers alone could be of any avail, and, as she could no more\ngo back than forward, her husband sent to Martres to make known the case\nand ask the benefit of the clergy. As St. Vidian would have it, they\nwere all keeping solemn vigil at his shrine, and, taking the torches\nthat stood around it, they came hastening out with cross and banner, and\nas soon as they took possession of the relic the woman had stolen, her\nfeet recovered their liberty. After this the comb was kept under lock\nand key, and, at a later day, was placed in the reliquary where it now\nis. Of course so stupendous an event caused a great sensation in the\nvalley, which had not been so stirred up since the Norman invasion, and\nmade the comb not only an object of universal curiosity but of increased\nveneration. The legend is related to this day. It is pretended that the\nwomen of Caz\u00e8res are a little spiteful about it, and dress their shining\nblack hair with much more care than their neighbors at Martres, probably\nto show they have no need of the comb of St. Vidian.\n\nSt. Vidian figures everywhere in this region. Charming legends, handed\ndown from father to son for ages, have thrown quite a veil of poetry\nover numberless places. They are not very clear as to the precise place\nof the saint\u2019s birth, but they are quite positive that he was one of the\n_preux_ who served under Charlemagne, and had even a dash of imperial\nblood in his veins. In his youth he became a hostage for his father, who\nhad been taken prisoner by the Basques of Luceria, then idolaters. They\nsold the young Frank as a slave. An Englishman bought and adopted him,\nand as soon as Vidian was sufficiently inured to the use of arms he\norganized a crusade against Luceria, which he pillaged and completely\ndestroyed. Of course such a feat recommended him to his imperial\nkinsman. Charlemagne invited him to his court and created him duke.\nAbout this time the Saracens crossed the Pyrenees and began to ravage\nthe plain of Toulouse. Vidian joined the imperial hosts who came to the\nrescue of the land, and entrenched himself with his followers at\nMartres, then called Angonia. He defended the place so bravely against\nthe enemy that for a while it was supposed saved, but, surprised by an\nambuscade near a fountain where he had gone to stanch his wounds, he was\nslain after a stout resistance, and the town taken and devastated. When\nit rose from its ruins it took the name of Martres in memory of those\nwho were martyred in trying to defend it.\n\nIt is certain that all this part of France was once overrun by the\nMoors. They, and the Normans after them, probably destroyed not only\nmost of the ancient Christian churches, but the monuments left by the\nRomans. History has not recorded all the efforts made to repel them, but\na confused memory of the struggle has been left in the minds of the\npeople, and, colored by time and the warm southern imagination, these\nmemories have become a genuine cycle of poetic traditions, not the less\nfounded on fact because only written with the sword and blood of their\nancestors.\n\nThe country around Martres is full of character and beauty. The Garonne,\nfresh from its mountain sources, winds through the verdant plain. To the\nsouth are broad terraces and wooded hills, and behind is the grand\nbarrier of mountains, their summits all crystal in the morning light,\nand at evening all rose and amethyst. No wonder the Romans thought it\nrivalled Italy, and established themselves here. On one of the\nneighboring plateaus have been found the remains of a magnificent Roman\nvilla that must have belonged to some wealthy person of luxurious and\ncultivated tastes, to judge by the objects brought to light from time to\ntime. In 1826 a vault was found by a laborer, and excavations were\nsystematically made which led to the discovery of sumptuous apartments\npaved with mosaics and marble, with remains of columns, statues, and\nbas-reliefs, and fine bathing-rooms with furnaces and earthen pipes, and\nall the accessories of Roman luxury. Among the works of art that have\nbeen found here are about forty busts and medallions of Roman emperors\nand empresses from Augustus down; a white marble statue of a reclining\nnaiad; the beautiful head of another statue called the Venus de Martres;\nmedallions of Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Cybele, and Atys; large\nbas-reliefs of Serapis, the labors of Hercules, etc., and several\nbronzes. These form quite a gallery of ancient art in the museum at\nToulouse, where we saw them in the old cloister of Augustinian friars.\n\nBeneath one of the plateaus is a pretty fountain with a cross near it,\nin the midst of gentle undulations of verdure, shaded by a grove. Here\nSt. Vidian had his encounter with the Moors and was slain. The pebbles\nin the spring are said to be still stained with his blood. Every year\nhis exploits are celebrated here by a mimic battle between the Moors and\nChristians, in which nearly all the male population take part. It is\nsaid the brilliant costume of the Saracens is so attractive to the\nyounger portion that they show a lamentable disposition to enter the\nservice of the infidel. However, by dint of cautious measures, both\narmies are kept about equal. They consist of nearly one hundred and\ntwenty-five men each, of whom fifty are horsemen. The Moorish cavaliers\nwear red and white turbans with silver trimmings; green stomachers\nadorned with a yellow crescent; orange coats turned out with red\nfacings; girdles of scarlet silk; and blue pantaloons of Oriental\namplitude. It will at once be perceived that nothing could be more\ngorgeous. The infantry are less pretentious. They content themselves\nwith the white pantaloons of the French hussar, but make up for this\nwith bright orange vests a Mameluke might envy. The Christian knights\nwear a black pasteboard helmet with a silver cross on the front, a blue\ntunic, and a tin cuirass that is quite dazzling in the sun. The\nfoot-soldiers are dressed in gray, with blue caps, and a silver cross on\ntheir breasts. Both armies are furnished with tall lances, and each has\nits standard. That of the Moors is green and orange. On it gleams the\nominous silver crescent. The Christians\u2019 is blue and bears the\nredoubtable figure of St. Vidian.\n\nThe battle takes place on St. Vidian\u2019s day. The relics of the saint are\nexposed in the church. High Mass is celebrated with the utmost pomp.\nEven the followers of Islam are so unfaithful to their traditional\nintolerance as to attend and present arms at the Elevation of the Host,\nin utter disregard of the Prophet. Mass over, the clergy and people go\nin procession to the miraculous fount, bearing the shrine and chanting\nthe hymn of St. Vidian. There they bathe the bust of the saint in memory\nof his wounds. These traditional services concluded, the military ardor\nof the soldiers begins to assert itself. The two armies draw up on the\nneighboring field. Prodigious acoustic performances are made on the drum\nof the commune. Military evolutions begin. The banners fly. Red, yellow,\nand blue uniforms flash across the green field. The cavaliers show\nthemselves true paladins. Such curveting and prancing have not been seen\nsince the days of Charlemagne and Haroun al Raschid; at least, on such\nsteeds\u2014mostly farm horses the worse for wear. Sometimes the contest\nbecomes too warm and real. However, their ardor never lasts longer than\nis warranted by tradition. The Moorish flag is invariably captured by\nthe Christians, and the battle-field deserted till the next anniversary\nof St. Vidian\u2019s martyrdom.\n\nVigilantius, the first heresiarch that troubled the peace of Christian\nGaul, was a native of Callagorris. He was of a roving turn and a lover\nof novelty. In early life he crossed over into Spain and there became an\ninn-keeper. Then we hear of him as a priest at Barcelona. He made the\nacquaintance of St. Paulinus (afterwards of Nola) in Spain, who was\ninduced to give him a letter of recommendation to St. Jerome. Furnished\nwith this, he went to the Holy Land, but there he took sides with the\nenemies of St. Jerome and attacked the monastic life, celibacy of the\nclergy, the veneration of relics, the use of candles in the daytime,\netc. St. Jerome, sarcastically referring to his original calling, told\nhim the faculty of testing wine and that of expounding the Scriptures\nwere not quite the same, and advised him to acquire the elements of\ngrammar and the other sciences, and then learn to be silent. His\ncountrymen do not seem to have been influenced by his example, however,\nbut have always been remarkable for their confidence in the saints and\nveneration for relics.\n\nFive or six miles beyond Martres we came to St. Martory, so named from a\nholy monk of the East whose beautiful legend is related by St. Gregory.\nOne evening this saint, on his way to a neighboring monastery, overtook\na poor leper forced by fatigue and disease to rest by the wayside.\nFilled with intense compassion, St. Martyri, as he is otherwise called,\nspread his cloak on the ground, placed the leper thereon, and, carefully\nwrapping him up, took him on his shoulder and proceeded on his way. The\nabbot of the monastery, seeing him coming, cried: \u201cHasten, my brethren,\nto open the gates. Behold Brother Martyri coming, bearing the Lord.\u201d\nWhile they were gone to execute his command the leper descended from the\ngood monk\u2019s shoulders, and, taking the form under which the Redeemer is\nusually represented, he addressed him in these words: \u201cMartyri, thou\nhast had pity on me on earth; I will glorify thee in heaven.\u201d And, while\nthe monk was gazing at him in speechless amazement, he ascended to\nheaven. When St. Martyri entered, the abbot asked what he had done with\nthe person he was carrying. The saint replied: \u201cOh! had I known who he\nwas, I would have held him by the feet!\u201d And he related how light he had\nseemed on the way. The body of St. Martory is still revered in the\nchurch.\n\nNot long after leaving St. Martory we came in sight of the towers of St.\nGaudens at one end of a broad plateau, once the place of a Roman\nencampment. Behind it are the mountains that enclose the beautiful\nvalleys of Aure and Campan, the Pic du Midi, and the whole of the mighty\nchain that binds sea to sea. Below is a vast plain, fertile and smiling,\nsupposed to be the bed of a lake in which the waters of the Neste once\nmingled with those of the Garonne. On the other side are to be seen the\nancient thermal place of Labarthe, overlooked by a feudal tower and a\nvillage that dates from the fourth century, called Valentine, in honor,\nit is said, of Valentinian II., who was assassinated in Gaul Narbonnaise\nin 392. Here and there in the fields are found remains that attest the\nimportance of the place under the Romans\u2014fragments of tombs,\nbas-reliefs, and antique vases. At one corner of the church of Valentine\nis the head of a Roman soldier with his helmet on, and near it a white\nmarble urn. Inserted in the wall of the church is a marble slab with a\nLatin inscription, thought to be of the fourth century, which may be\nthus rudely rendered:\n\n\u201cNymphius, whose limbs are cold and stiff in eternal sleep, reposes\nhere. His soul is in heaven. It contemplates the stars, while his body\nis left to the repose of the tomb. His faith dispelled the darkness that\nseemed to envelop it. O Nymphius! the renown of thy virtues raised thee\nto the very stars and placed thee in the zenith. Thou art immortal, and\nthy glory will be perpetuated in ages to come. The province honors thee\nas its father. The entire population made vows for the preservation of\nthy life. At the celebration of the games due to thy munificence the\nspectators on the gradations of the arena testified their joy by\nacclamations. Once thy beloved country, at thy command, assembled its\nmagistrates and spoke worthily by thy lips. Now our cities, deprived of\nthee, are plunged in mourning, and the senators, in consternation, are\nincapable of action. They are like the human body that, deprived of its\nhead, falls lifeless and inert, or a flock without its shepherd that\nknows not which way to direct its steps. Serena, thy spouse, abandoned\nto grief, erects this monument to thee, and finds in this pious duty a\nslight solace for her pain. Thy companion for eight lustres, she only\nthought and acted by thee. At thy side life seemed sweet. Now, abandoned\nto her sorrow, she sighs for the eternal life, hoping that which she now\npossesses may be brief.\u201d\n\nWhat a tale might be woven out of the epitaph of this old Roman, who\ndied fourteen hundred years ago in this remote valley\u2014made up of\ndomestic bliss, political honors, the happiness that virtue alone can\nbestow, and an untimely death mourned by the public and, above all, by\nthe gentle-hearted Serena!\n\nThe Romans knew how to choose their sites. Nothing can exceed the charm\nof this region, especially in the month of May, when we visited it for\nthe first time. The fresh valleys, the clear streams, the unexpected\nviews at every turn, the harmonious outlines of the landscape, are a\nperpetual delight to the eye. The fertile plain of Valentine especially\nis so lovely that all the mountain-tops seem crowding together to gaze\nat and admire it, and they send down their purest streams to preserve\nits freshness and beauty.\n\nOn the sides of the plateau that overlooks Valentine a young shepherd,\nnamed Gaudentius, led his flocks to pasture in the latter part of the\nfifth century. His mother, a holy woman of the name of Quitterie, had\nbrought him up in the practice of the most fervent piety. The country at\nthat time was in possession of the Visigoths. Euric had succeeded to the\nthrone by slaying his brother, Theodoric II. He was a man of great\nmilitary genius, who extended his conquests in Gaul from the Loire\nbeyond the Rhone, and carried war beyond the Pyrenees with so much\nsuccess that he conquered most of the Peninsula. Toulouse was thus made\nthe capital of an immense empire that extended from Provence to\nAndalusia. Euric was a fanatical Arian, and, attributing his success to\nhis fidelity to his principles, he began a violent persecution of the\nCatholics, though they constituted a large part of his subjects.\nExecutioners were frequently his missionaries, and one of these\nsummarily opened heaven to the young shepherd Gaudentius, who, refusing\nto apostatize, gave a last look at his mother, who encouraged him, and\nsubmitted to martyrdom. His remains were carefully transported to the\nplace of his residence, and, after the downfall of the Visigoths, an\noratory was erected over his grave.\n\nSuch miracles were now wrought through the instrumentality of St.\nGaudens that his fame extended all through the country, people came to\nlive around his tomb, and a village soon sprang up that took his name.\nMore than a thousand years passed away without diminishing the affluence\nat St. Gaudens\u2019 tomb, but in the sixteenth century the town was taken by\nMontgomery the Huguenot, the church stripped of its ornaments and\ngreatly injured, the statues broken, the tombs desecrated, and most of\nSt. Gaudens\u2019 relics thrown into the flames. But that was a way of\nreforming the Huguenots had.\n\n    \u201cN\u2019est ce pas r\u00e9former, quand on trouve une \u00e9glise\n    Trop riche, lui ravir ses tr\u00e9sors anciens?\u201d\n\nsays the old Plainte de la Guienne of 1577 with a bitterness that is\nquite natural. The bullet-holes made in the church are still pointed\nout. This is a noteworthy building of the Romanesque style, with round\narches, clustered columns, and carved capitals. Each aisle ends in a\nchapel, and a choir is at the apsis. Over the altar is a statue of the\nVirgin that, before the Revolution, belonged to the neighboring abbey of\nBonnefont, now completely destroyed. This statue is the production of\nPierre Lucas, the founder of the academy of art at Toulouse. A priory\nwas formerly attached to the church of St. Gaudens, dependent on the\nabbey of St. Sernin at Toulouse, but it has been totally destroyed. The\nold cloister of Pyrenean marble, built by Bernard I., Bishop of\nComminges, and of the race of its counts, has also been destroyed. Of\nthe tombs that once lined the arcades, only one here and there is left,\nwith its touching medi\u00e6val inscription, and perchance some consoling\nemblem of religion, such as a cluster of grapes on a vine branch,\nrecalling the Saviour\u2019s words, \u201cI am the vine and ye are the branches\u201d;\nthe monogram of Christ; the Alpha and Omega, etc.\u2014symbols of hope graven\non the cold marble tomb. And there is an ancient portal over which used\nto hang the horseshoes of Abderahman\u2019s steed, which, according to\ntradition, plunged and reared when his master attempted to pillage the\nshrine of St. Gaudens, and thus lost its shoes. The horse of Montgomery\nseems to have been of a coarser nature, and as insensible as his\nferocious owner to the spiritual influences around the tombs of the\nsaints.\n\nThere is a kind of mournful pleasure in sitting down among the ruins of\nsuch old cloisters, listening to the echoes of past times, and trying to\ndecipher the pious inscriptions on the tombstones among the rank grass,\nand to divine the history of those who lie beneath\u2014once centres of fond\naffection, but now forgotten and unknown. Through the rifts in the wall\nis seen the peaceful rural valley, with the Pyrenees in the distance,\nresplendent in the light; and the contrast between all that is graceful\nand sublime in nature, and the desolation of this spot once beautified\nby art and hallowed by religion, is exceedingly touching. How peaceful,\nhow religious, this cloister must have been, where paced the silent,\nprayerful monk among the tombs! And there is a sacredness in its present\ndesolation that appeals to the heart; if the solemnity of the ancient\narches is wanting, there is no lack of beauty in the lovely vistas among\nthe picturesque mountains and delicious valleys.\n\nSt. Gaudens is a place of four or five thousand inhabitants, with old\nblackened houses full of industry. The country around is densely\npopulated, and at certain seasons many go into the neighboring districts\nto add to their slender earnings. The young men have a commercial taste,\nand all through the Pyrenees you meet peddlers and colporteurs from St.\nGaudens, hawking their small wares with amusing pertinacity. The girls,\ntoo, in harvest-time descend to the neighboring valleys to offer their\nservices, and there are many popular _rondeaux_ that allude to them.\n\n    \u201cLas fillos de Sen Gaoudens nou n\u2019an d\u2019argent,\n    Las qui nou n\u2019an qu\u2019en boul\u00e9ren:\n      Faridoundaino, qu\u2019en boul\u00e9ren.\u201d\n\n\u2014The girls of St. Gaudens are penniless, and those without money desire\nit. Tum-te-tum, yes, desire it.\n\n    \u201cAou pays bach, anem! anem!\n      Coill\u00e9 d\u2019argent!\n    En sega blat et dailla hen,\n      Faridoundaino, n\u2019en gagnaren.\u201d\n\n\u2014Down to the valleys let us go, go! Money to seek, by reaping grain and\nraking hay. Tum-te-tum, we shall gain some.\n\nOn the outskirts of St. Gaudens is shown the house where St. Raymond was\nborn\u2014the celebrated founder of the order of Calatrava, which rendered\nsuch glorious services to Spain, and thereby to all Christendom, in the\nstruggle with the Moors. It is a humble birthplace for one who gathered\nunder his banner the haughtiest grandees of Spain. His companion,\nDurand, was also a native of St. Gaudens. They both became monks at the\nnoted abbey of Escale-Dieu, where they inured themselves by austerities\nfor the mission Providence had in reserve for them. There would seem to\nbe but little in common with the peaceful pursuits of the Cistercians\nand the valiant exploits of the knights of Calatrava, to those who know\nnothing of the bracing discipline of monastic life.\n\nNot far from St. Gaudens is the chapel of Notre Dame du Bout-du-Puy\u2014a\nplace of pilgrimage, enriched with indulgences by Pope Innocent XI. It\nis under the continual guardianship of a hermit. This Madonna is\nparticularly invoked by people in danger of death. Among the _ex votos_\non the wall is the picture of a child carried away by a neighboring\ntorrent, the mother kneeling on the bank with eyes and arms raised\ntowards heaven, where Mary appears, commanding the waves to bring back\nher child.\n\nWe have mentioned the tower of Labarthe. The viscounts of this name were\nthe lords of the Four Valleys for several centuries, and played an\nimportant _r\u00f4le_ in the history of Bigorre. The fifth Vicomte de\nLabarthe married the grand-daughter of Eudoxia, the daughter of Emmanuel\nComnenus, Emperor of Constantinople, who died at Rome in the odor of\nsanctity, and was buried at the church of the Vatican. Geraud de\nLabarthe, Archbishop of Auch, put on the cross and accompanied Richard\nthe Lion-hearted to the Holy Land as the prefect of his army. One of the\nglories of this race is Marshal Paul de Labarthe, Lord of Thermes, who\nlived in the sixteenth century and saw six kings succeed each other on\nthe throne of France. He took part in the siege of Naples, and, made\nprisoner by the corsairs, endured a severe captivity for two years. He\nafterwards distinguished himself in the Piedmont war and fighting in\nScotland against the English, and was finally created Marshal of France.\nHe was so noted for his humanity that the Huguenots said he could not\nhold his place as governor of Paris because he was \u201ctoo little inclined\nto slaughter.\u201d Some of his descendants still live in Bigorre.\n\nOn our way to Bagn\u00e8res de Bigorre we stopped to visit the abbey of\nEscale-Dieu, at the bottom of a deep valley enclosed among the hills.\nThe name is derived from _Scala Dei_\u2014the ladder of God\u2014a ladder to aid\nman in his ascent to heaven! No name could be more appropriate for a\nmonastery where, as Wordsworth says, paraphrasing the words of St.\nBernard:\n\n    \u201cMan more purely lives; less oft doth fall;\n    More promptly rises; walks with nicer tread;\n    More safely rests; dies happier; is freed\n    Earlier from cleansing fires; and gains withal\n    A brighter crown.\u201d\n\nThis abbey is on the banks of the Arros, a river noted for its impetuous\ncharacter and sudden overflows. It has its source in the valley of\nOueil, the ancient _Vallis Oculi_\u2014so called from its shape, where it is\nsaid three barons once could breakfast together without leaving their\nown domains. Near by is a little hamlet called Mayleu, on the edge of a\ntorrent, where on stormy nights pale lights are said to wave to and fro\non the current, which the mountaineers say are caused by the soul of an\nold miser that agitates the waters\u2014emblem of his restless life, spent in\ngrasping the goods of others with insatiable avidity. His influence\nsurely extends all along the Arros.\n\nThe valley of Escale-Dieu was given to a community of Cistercian monks\nin the twelfth century by Beatrix, Countess of Bigorre, in order, as she\nsays in her charter, that she \u201cmight be accounted as a sister in Christ\nby the brethren of Escale-Dieu in their watchings, and fastings, and\nprayers, and obtain the redemption of her soul, her husband\u2019s, her\nfather, Centulle\u2019s, her mother, Amable\u2019s, and other relatives\u2019.\u201d The\nCistercians were famous as agriculturists, and in bestowing on them\nlarge tracts of land the old lords of the middle ages ensured the best\nmeans of bringing the country under cultivation and humanizing the\ninhabitants. The monks built a church here under the invocation of SS.\nPeter and Paul, which was consecrated October 23, 1142, by the\nArchbishop of Auch, in the presence of the Countess Beatrix and her\nhusband, many abbots and neighboring lords, and an immense crowd of\npeople. This church became the St. Denis of the counts of Bigorre, who\ndoubtless thought to rest here in peace till the end of the world; for\nthe abbey was at that time so remote from the highways of travel that\nits solitude was almost unbroken. The Countess Beatrix was one of the\nfirst to be buried here, but her tomb was broken open at the Revolution,\nand the remains, spared by centuries, fell into dust at contact with the\nair.\n\nThe first abbot of Escale-Dieu was a son of the Vicomte de Labarthe, and\nhis successors, over forty in number, were mostly from the great\nfamilies of the country. The house was immediately dependent on the Holy\nSee, and the Sovereign Pontiff forbade any one to rob, burn, make any\narrest, commit murder, or do any violence on its domains.\n\nOne peculiarity about its history is that, contrary to most great\nmonasteries, no town or village ever sprang up around it. It remained\nsolitary in its valley, studying \u201cthe secret lore of rural things\u201d and\npruning the wings of Contemplation, unconscious that Providence was to\ngive it a mission in the world seemingly incompatible with the spirit of\nthe order. The monks became so numerous, however, that two colonies were\nsent across the Pyrenees under the charge of St. Raymond and Durand, to\nfound the abbeys of Yergo and Fitero. In 1147 the town of Calatrava, the\nbulwark of Andalusia, was taken by Alfonso, King of Castile, and\nentrusted to the care of the Knights Templars, who held it for ten\nyears. Then the success of the Moors made them fear they would not be\nable to defend it any longer, and they resigned the place to the king.\nThe latter, embarrassed at having it thrown on his hands, offered it to\nany one who would undertake its defence. St. Raymond, indignant to see\nknights, vowed to the defence of religion, thus abandon the post of\ndanger, asked the honor of taking their place. The king willingly\nconsented. St. Raymond went through the provinces preaching a kind of\ncrusade, and twenty thousand soldiers ranged themselves under the\nCistercian banner. Their success made him conceive the idea of cementing\nthe union of the knights with his order. The abbot of Escale-Dieu did\nnot at first approve of the design. \u201cWhat an idea,\u201d said he, \u201cfor\nsolitaries by profession to convert a monastery into a school of war,\nand flatter themselves tumultuous exercises can be combined with the\nsilence of prayer and the chanting of Psalms!\u201d A chapter of the\nCistercian order was held, but the Kings of France and Castile, and the\nDuke of Burgundy, overcame the scruples of the abbot, and the pope\nissued a bull authorizing the affiliation of the Knights of Calatrava\nwith the Cistercian Order as lay brothers. All the houses in Spain were\nsubjected to the rule of the abbot of Escale-Dieu, who had the right of\nvisiting and inspecting them till the secularization of the knights.\n\nThe most brilliant era in the history of Escale-Dieu is the thirteenth\ncentury. Two saints had sprung from the house (for we must not forget\nSt. Bertrand of Comminges, one of the most popular saints of the\nPyrenees, whose tomb is still honored in the town called by his name);\nit held rule over ten monasteries in Spain; and it was greatly enriched\nby the neighboring lords, particularly by the counts of Bigorre, who\nmade it their burial-place. The Countess Petronilla, so famous for her\nfive husbands, was a great benefactress of the house. Besides endowing\nit during her life, she bequeathed it, at her death, all her gold and\nsilver vessels and reliquaries, her jewels, rings, and precious stones,\nher dresses (probably for vestments), sheets, and blankets. Her first\nhusband was Gaston, Viscount of Bearn, who took sides with Count Raymond\nof Toulouse, but was reconciled to the church before his death. The\nsecond was Nu\u00f1ez Sancho of Aragon, whom she repudiated under pretext of\nconsanguinity. The third was Guy de Montfort, son of the great opponent\nof the Albigenses, who was killed at the siege of Castelnaudary. The\nfourth, Aymar de Ran\u00e7on, who died about the same time as her second\nhusband. And finally, Boson de Matas, Lord of Cognac. After these five\nchapters she died at the Abbey of Escale-Dieu in great need, it is\nthought, of expiatory prayers and good works. Henry III. of England was\ncaptivated by the beauty of her daughter Amate, and three other princes\nsought to obtain her hand in marriage; but she married Gaston VII. of\nBearn, and two of her daughters, by the intermediation of Abbot Bernard\nof the house of Castelbajac, married princes of Aragon.\n\nOne of the viscounts of Lavedan also became a benefactor to the abbey,\nand in his deed of conveyance declares he gives it the soil, the rocks,\nthe vegetation, the fruit, leaves, all that rises from the land towards\nheaven, and all it contains in its depths.\n\nRising over the valley of Escale-Dieu are the ruins of the old feudal\ncastle of Mauvezin, like a vulture\u2019s nest on the cliff, overlooking the\nwhole country. It was once considered impregnable, and was, after that\nof Lourdes, the most important fortress in Bigorre. From this castle\nwent many a valiant knight to the Crusades. One of them, in making his\npreparations to go beyond the seas with St. Louis, gave to \u201cGod and\nMadame St. Mary of Escale-Dieu\u201d fifty sols of Morlaas money[109] from\nthe rents of the thermal springs of Capvern.\n\nFootnote 109:\n\n  A sol Morlaas was worth about 2.4 francs.\n\nIn early times the abbey found a kind protector in the castle; but when,\nat a later period, it became the stronghold of freebooters, who only\nissued forth to pillage the lowlands and fat abbeys, the good monks of\nEscale-Dieu had reason to call it a _Mauvais Voisin_\u2014a bad neighbor\u2014a\nname that has ever since clung to it.\n\nWhen the English took possession of the country after the treaty of\nBr\u00e9tigny, the Black Prince established a garrison of soldiers here, who\nrendered themselves as famous for their brigandage as for their heroic\nexploits. When the Duke of Anjou and Duguesclin went to the Pyrenees in\n1374 to root the English out of the land, the castles of Lourdes and\nMauvezin long resisted their stoutest efforts. The latter was besieged\nby eight thousand men, but the castle was so strong that it would have\nheld out a long time, had not the supply of water been cut off by the\ncapture of the outer cistern. The garrison now suffered all the horrors\nof thirst under a burning sun. Froissart says the weather was\nexcessively warm, and not a drop of rain had fallen for six weeks. There\nwas no choice but to surrender. Captain Raimounet de l\u2019Ep\u00e9e, the\ncommander of the fortress, like the true Gascon he was, made the best of\nhis fate, and offered to yield up the castle on conditions that were the\nmost advantageous to himself and his soldiers. Unwilling to lose any of\nhis plunder, he stipulated that they should be allowed to depart in\nfreedom, taking with them all they and their sumpter-horses could carry.\nThe duke consented, saying: \u201cGo about your business, every man to his\nown country, without entering any fort that holds out against us; for,\nif you do, and I get hold of you, I will deliver you up to Josselin [the\nexecutioner], who will shave you without a razor.\u201d\n\nRaimounet had fought well for the English, but he had an eye to the main\nchance, and he now showed the nature of his bravery by entering the\nservice of the Duke of Anjou and continuing, under the _fleurs-de-lis_\nof France, the pillaging he had so long practised under the leopards of\nEngland. What he had not seized in the name of St. George he now took in\nhonor of St. Denis, and thus filled both pockets at once. He died\nfighting by the side of the Duke of Anjou under the walls of Naples.\n\nThe sixteenth century, so fatal to innumerable churches and monasteries\nin France, did not spare the abbey of Escale-Dieu. The Huguenots now\ninvaded the peaceful valley and proved far worse than the old troopers\nof Raimounet de l\u2019Ep\u00e9e. The first band came in 1518 and burned the\nstables and the abbot\u2019s residence. In 1567 a more formidable company\nappeared that put the monks to flight and took possession of the abbey,\nwhich they made the centre of their operations, issuing suddenly forth\nfrom time to time, like birds of prey, to plunder some church, or\nmonastery, or well-garnished priest\u2019s house. Blasphemies now resounded\nbeneath the arches only accustomed to the voice of prayer and psalmody.\nAll religious emblems were destroyed. The sanctuary angels feared to\ntread witnessed their orgies. At length, by the combined efforts of some\nof the lords of Bigorre, they were routed from the abbey, but before\nleaving they set fire to it and nearly destroyed it. In this destruction\nwas included the fine old Romanesque church of the twelfth century,\nwhere St. Raymond and St. Bertrand had so often prayed, and the cloister\nthey had so often paced in silent meditation. It is a poor comfort to\nknow that the leaders of this sacrilegious deed were taken and executed\nat Toulouse. The monks returned to Escale-Dieu, but only to find it in\nruins. In the course of time, however, it was rebuilt, but in an\ninferior style, as suited their diminished means, and the house led a\nprecarious existence till the French Revolution, when it was once more\nravaged, the very tombs violated, and the monks for ever dispersed.\n\nThe abbey is now owned by a layman who is more interested in agriculture\nthan arch\u00e6ology. It contains, however, but little that is ancient. At\nthe end of a long file of poplars you see the dome and white walls of\nthe church, a building of the seventeenth century, now a grange. There\nis a flower-garden on the site of the ancient cloister, and in the walls\nare encrusted a few of the old columns with palm-leaves sculptured on\nthe capitals, emblem of spiritual victory. And the hallowed name of\nEscale-Dieu, which once gave laws to Spanish knights, is now degraded to\na mere post station.\n\nMauvezin itself became the hold of the Huguenots under Captain de Sus in\n1584, and they made the castle more than ever worthy of its name. They\nextended their ravages as far as St. Bertrand of Comminges, and the name\nof their leader became a terror in the land. Now the castle is in ruins,\nwhich are as melancholy as its history. The square, massive tower that\nwithstood so many attacks is roofless, windowless, and dismantled.\nBeneath is the vaulted dungeon where the prisoner once groaned in\nvain\u2014dark and hopeless as the tomb. Over one of the doors of the tower\nis an escutcheon on which the arms of Foix are quartered with those of\nBearn, with the inscription _F\u00e9bus m\u00e9 f\u00e9_\u2014Ph\u0153bus made me; for here lived\nfor a time the famous Gaston Ph\u0153bus of Bearn. The kite and the osprey\ninhabit it now. The hoarse notes of birds of prey well suit the place\nwhere once resounded the war-cries of Raimounet de l\u2019Ep\u00e9e and Captain de\nSus.\n\nTwo leagues from Mauvezin is Bagn\u00e8res de Bigorre, one of the most\npopular watering-places in the Pyrenees. Here \u201c_Esculapius est sans\nbarbe et sans rides_\u201d says the poet Lemierre. Long before you arrive you\nsee the tower of the Jacobins rising into the air light and slender as a\ncolumn. It is a clean, attractive town in a circular valley surrounded\nby hills cultivated to the very top, or covered with woods whose shady\npaths are full of mystery. The valley is watered by several streams, and\ncooled by mountain breezes that are delicious in summer. Numerous canals\nconvey the waters of the Adour through most of the streets of the town,\ngiving a certain freshness to the air, and a supply of water for\ndomestic purposes. An old author attributes the foundation of the place\nto Venus and Hebe, and says it was here the god Mars came to be healed\nwhen wounded at the siege of Troy. It was, at least, frequented by the\nRomans, who gave it the name of _Vicus Aquensis_. Their homages to the\nnymphs who guard the springs are still to be seen graven on marble, such\nas: _Nymphis pro salute sud, Sever. Seranus_ V. S. L. M.\n\nLike most of the towns of this region, Bagn\u00e8res was formerly held by the\nVisigoths, Saracens, Normans, and English one after the other, but seems\nto have been spared by the Huguenots, who perhaps were more afraid of\noffending the water-nymphs than the saints. The people, it is said,\npropitiated their leaders by sending them occasionally a tribute of\nbutter and maize. The town, notwithstanding its antiquity, has but few\nancient remains. There is a feudal tower or two that formed part of the\nold fortifications, necessary when, as Froissart says, it was so often\nworried and beset by the garrison at Mauvezin. The old church of the\nTemplars is standing, but used for profane purposes.\n\nThere are many agreeable promenades around Bagn\u00e8res. One of these is to\na green hollow among abrupt cliffs, called the _Elys\u00e9e-Cottin_, from\nMadame Cottin, who was very fond of this quiet nook. It was here she is\nsaid to have conceived the noble character of Malek Adhel, which so\ndelighted us in our youth, and wrote not only _Mathilde_ but some of her\nother works. It is a charming retreat with a fountain in the bottom of\nthe valley, in her time shaded by fine beeches and ash-trees, which have\nsince been cut down.\n\nThe All\u00e9e Maintenon is so called in honor of Mme. de Maintenon, who\naccompanied the Duc du Maine here for his health. This All\u00e9e begins at\nthe end of the town, and, climbing a steep hill, proceeds along the\nplateau of Pouey till it comes to a spot where you can see the whole\nplain of Bigorre, and the waters of the Adour dashing down the steep\nsides of the mountains. Here, taking the road to Campan, you soon come\nto the place where once stood the Capuchin convent of M\u00e9doux, founded in\nthe sixteenth century by Susanne de Grammont, Marchioness of Monpezat.\nIt was particularly renowned for a miraculous statue of the Virgin,\nhonored under the name of _Sancta Maria in Melle dulci_, corrupted into\nNotre Dame de M\u00e9doux. The convent was destroyed during the Revolutionary\nperiod, but the Madonna, so dear to popular piety, was saved and now\nadorns the high altar of the church of Ast\u00e9. The people say it was\nmiraculously transported through the air and thus saved. It is of white\nmarble, and a genuine work of art, by an Italian sculptor. It was the\ngift of one of the viscounts of Ast\u00e9, who were generous patrons of the\nmonastery. The expression and pure outline of the face, the dignity of\nthe attitude, and the graceful flow of the drapery excite the admiration\nof every visitor.\n\nA modern villa now occupies the place of the convent. It is in the midst\nof a fine park watered by a stream that comes pouring out of a cool\ngrotto. Nothing could be more delightfully rural. Not far off is an old\nfeudal tower, and beyond is Baudeau, the birthplace of Larrey, the\nfavorite surgeon of Napoleon. The Vicomte de Castelbajac has sung the\nbeauties of this spot where once stood\n\n    \u201cUne chapelle hospitali\u00e8re\n    Toujours ouverte au p\u00e9lerin,\n    Jamais il n\u2019y frappait en vain;\n    Et le malheur et la mis\u00e8re,\n    La pauvre veuve et l\u2019orphelin,\n    Y trouvaient toujours la pri\u00e8re\n    Et l\u2019aum\u00f4ne du Capucin.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                           \u201cCATHEDRAL WOODS,\u201d\n                       MANCHESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.\n\n\n    Hushed grow our voices as our footsteps fall\n      These darksome woods\u2019 high fretted roof beneath,\n      Whose living arches, sprung from living sheath,\n    Are organ-pipes for winds to play withal.\n    We leave, without, the meadow\u2019s autumn glare\u2014\n      Its Tyrian wealth of asters prodigal,\n      Its pomp of scarlet-robed cardinal,\n    Its gentian that doth heaven\u2019s livery wear.\n    So leave we, too, the sparkle of the sea,\n    And land-locked beach where waves break lazily.\n\n    Herein we seem among the hills at rest;\n      Their balm by breath of salt wind undefiled;\n      Freshness of streams, and strength of great rocks piled,\n    Seem by our souls in this calm shade possessed,\n    Where hemlocks stretch their dusky branches o\u2019er\n      The scattered rocks, whereto the green moss clings,\n      Catching the prisoned sunbeam as it flings\n    A miser\u2019s portion of its golden store,\n    As if it feared to break the shadow deep,\n    To mar some vigil these grave giants keep.\n\n    Here only mountain incense seeming fills\n      The lofty arches, by sea-wind unbent,\n      That rise as if with height still nobler blent:\n    Some peak, cloud-piercing, 'mid the sunlit hills\n    Whose glamour holds us fast, whose blossoms lie\n      The darkness of the broken rocks amid,\n      Whose written speech in these lithe ferns is hid,\n    Whose forests whisper in the winds\u2019 low sigh.\n    Should any bird this inland silence break,\n    Sure in his song the mountains\u2019 soul would wake.\n\n    Hearken! breaks through the silence soft a sound\n      Faint as the thought of half-forgotten dream.\n      Not speech so sad is that of mountain stream\n    That from all loftiest heights doth reckless bound,\n    Scattering its broken life in shining drift\n      Of constant dew that mocketh at the sun.\n      Nor breathes the wind in such low, measured tone\n    When doth it lightly leafy branches lift\u2014\n    This wakes and dies in mournful monotone:\n    The sea\u2019s vast life dashed out against a stone!\n\n    Some law this chant seems ever to obey\u2014\n      Advancing, swells, now sinketh in retreat,\n      Sad-voiced like life that knoweth but defeat,\n    Yet still with patient purpose keeps its way.\n    Joy-burdened silence of the hills, farewell!\n      And salt sea-wind, thy carven choir reclaim!\n      Brave sun, set all these dusky trunks aflame!\n    Lost are our mountains in yon ceaseless swell\n    That, shoreward rolling, lapsing quietly,\n    Holds all the strength of the untiring sea.\n\n    The land grows little, and we crave the blue\n      No earthly shade e\u2019er shutteth from the sun,\n      The barren sands whereon the light waves run\n    But rest not, bidding evermore adieu,\n    And evermore returning, bringing gifts\n      They give and take, and still give o\u2019er again.\n      We crave the vastness of the salty plain!\n    As sea-bird on unbreaking billow drifts\n    Our hearts with that soft plashing throb in time\u2014\n    Longing, we list our dim cathedral chime.\n\n    One well might paint the hemlock solitude,\n      The quiet shadow that the sunshine breaks;\n      Even in color give the song that wakes\n    At windy touch amid the peaceful wood.\n    Limned all might be, indeed, so cunningly\n      That one should hear the babble of glad stream,\n      E\u2019en catch the climbing mountains\u2019 happy gleam;\n    But\u2014who could paint the murmur of the sea?\n    Who dream, amid these dark boughs closing o\u2019er,\n    The song eternal of the broken shore?\n\n\n\n\n                       JULIETTE: A NORMAN STORY.\n\n\n                                   I.\n\n\nMarriage is in one respect not unlike greatness: some are born to it,\nsome achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. And the last-named some\nare apt to find it as unprofitable an acquisition as to Napoleon the\nLittle it proved to be the nephew of his uncle.\n\nNow, M. de Boisrobert was a born bachelor, and, left to himself, a\nbachelor he would have died. But who shall gainsay fate? Upon him gayly\nbaccalaureating Fate fixed her eagle eye and made up her mind that he\nshould marry. Not without reason has Fate been made a female. When a\nperson of that charming but inflexible sex makes up her mind that any\nbachelor of her acquaintance shall marry, we know what happens. Married\nM. de Boisrobert accordingly was, with what direful consequences to the\npoor gentleman the reader shall see.\n\nUp to his forty-fifth year Messire Guillaume Georges de Boisrobert,\nSieur de Boisrobert and Saintange, had lived the happy life of a country\ngentleman upon his estates in Normandy, near Evreux, satisfied with\nhimself and with the world. Indeed, he had every reason to be satisfied,\npossessing as he did a fine ch\u00e2teau, a princely income, an honorable\nname, an easy conscience, and the respect of all who knew him. From the\nsummit of his towers, look which way he would (and his sight was keen,\nas so good a sportsman\u2019s should be), he could scarce fix the boundary of\nhis domains. Farms, meadow-land, and woodland, his broad acres stretched\nfor many a mile along the blue waters of the Eure; upon his pastures fed\nsheep and cattle by the hundred; in his stables neighed scores of\ngallant steeds. Yet, strange to say, with all his wealth, envy had no\nword for him, nor was he even decried more than it was fitting a rich\nand handsome bachelor should be. Certain maiden ladies of uncertain age,\nto whose charms he had, perhaps, been ungallantly cold, sometimes,\nindeed, made light among themselves of his pretensions to noble birth.\nThat, truly, was the simple gentleman\u2019s weakness, and he loved to style\nhimself after the stately fashion written above.\n\n\u201cHe De Boisrobert, forsooth!\u201d Mlle. Rein\u00e9 might say over her tatting (or\nis it tattling the ladies call it?). \u201cHe was never aught but plain\u201d\n(\u201cplain indeed!\u201d Mlle. Gudule would giggle, pointing the _mot_ with her\ncrochet-needle. Ah! thou thoughtest otherwise, fair Gudule, of his\nbeauty when the embroidered slippers, and watch-pockets, and what-nots\nworked by thy own fair fingers\u2014or thy maid\u2019s\u2014deluged the ch\u00e2teau and\nmade largesse for its kitchen!)\u2014\u201cplain Guillaume Robert till his father,\nthe notary, got an army contract and left him money enough to buy the\nwood in which his dismal old ch\u00e2teau is buried\u2014the stingy old hunks!\u201d\n\nNow, this was not entirely true; and these fair Ariadnes were, to say\nthe least, uncharitable. But it must be remembered, for the credit of\nthe sex, that these events took place very long ago\u2014so long ago, indeed,\nas the time of that great and glorious monarch, Louis XIV.\u2014\u201cle doyen des\nRois,\u201d as he called himself\u2014whose majesty was like the sun (which orb,\nindeed, depicted in the act of illuminating the world, he modestly took\nfor his device), and whose grandeur was indisputably shown in the fact\nthat he could eat more for dinner than any man in his kingdom.[110] In\npoint of fact, no small number of his loving subjects, owing to their\nsovereign\u2019s majestic and princely appetite, had rarely anything to eat\nat all. But to return to our sheep.\n\nFootnote 110:\n\n  Read the monarch\u2019s usual _menu_ in the memoirs of the Princess\n  Palatine, who seems to look with a certain _na\u00efve_ admiration on the\n  trencher prowess of her august kinsman: \u201cThe king devours with ease at\n  a single meal four basins of different kinds of soup, a pheasant\n  whole, a partridge, a dish of salad, two slices of ham, some mutton\n  with gravy, a plate of pastry, and for dessert (_O dura messorum\n  ilia!_) a quantity of hard-boiled eggs and fruits of every sort, the\n  whole washed down with abundance of wines.\u201d Here, at least, he might\n  justly claim to be _nec pluribus impar_.\n\nM. de Boisrobert was not stingy. On the contrary, his open-handed, and\neven profuse, hospitality endeared him to all the men about him, who\nhad, no doubt, their own private reasons for liking him, as some of the\nwomen had theirs for looking upon him with a different feeling. The\nmanner of his living was almost lordly; and when he was at home, it was\nnothing but junketing and merriment from month\u2019s end to month\u2019s end. An\nenthusiastic sportsman himself, his stables and his kennels contained\nthe best that money could buy; while his huntsmen, his gamekeepers, and\nhis beaters were a small army in themselves. Being so rich and so\ngenerous, he was naturally looked upon with great respect, and even\nliking, through all the country round; and many a man who had little\nreverence for aught besides would doff his hat most humbly to the\nwell-furnished larder of that excellent M. de Boisrobert.\n\nIt must be said, however, that in his case\u2014what is unhappily not always\ntrue\u2014this respect was rightly his, for better reasons. Amiable, simple,\nand sincere, a scrupulous observer of his word, his charity was greater\nthan his hospitality, and his piety was as unbounded as his wealth.\nEvery morning he was first at Mass in the little village church of\nBoisrobert, whose excellent _cur\u00e9_ was his favorite and, it may be said,\nhis only intimate associate. His best friends, indeed, he counted among\nthat admirable class, whose sterling and unobtrusive virtues he\nthoroughly appreciated. It was strange that so worthy a _penchant_ was\ndestined to lead him into the great danger of his life. Of the great\nfolks our friend was a little shy; and as for the small farmers and\n_hobereaux_, or \u201csquireens\u201d (to borrow from the familiar speech of\nIreland a word which alone fitly translates it), who made the bulk of\nthe neighboring landed proprietors, their tastes and habits were little\ncongenial to his own. So good Father Bernard and he were much together;\nand a pleasant sight it was to see the two friends placidly angling,\nside by side, for the fish which somehow a French angler seems quite as\nwell satisfied never to catch; or, in the bright summer evenings,\nplaying bowls with all the zest of school-boys on the village green. No\nmore welcome guest than Father Bernard entered the gates of the Ch\u00e2teau\nde Boisrobert; and when the November nights grew chilly, and the logs\nwere piled high and glowing in the wide Norman hearth (its owner always\nquoted Horace at such times, and old M\u00e8re Chicon, the housekeeper, knew\nas well as any one that _dissolve frigus_ was the Latin for \u201cstir up the\nfire and fetch a bottle of Burgundy,\u201d and had had, indeed, many bouts\nthereanent with the village schoolmaster, in which that worthy was not\nalways triumphant), our hero liked nothing better than to engage his\nfriend in a contest at chess, or _trictrac_, or _piquet_, or, over a jug\nof Norman cider or the aforesaid Burgundy, to discuss the movements of\nthe court, with which he professed to be in constant communication.\n\nThat was, as we have said, the honest gentleman\u2019s foible\u2014almost his sole\none; he secretly worshipped rank, and often sighed to think that he, who\nmight\u2014and, he sometimes added to himself, should\u2014have been a De Rohan\nwas only a De Boisrobert, barely a gentleman, by virtue of the lands his\nmoney had bought. Yet, if not the rose, he had at least lived near the\nrose. The son of a notary himself, he was yet distantly connected with\none of the noblest names in France, as he was by no means slow in making\nfolks aware.\n\n\u201cMy good cousin, De Beaumanoir,\u201d he would say in an off-hand way,\npronouncing the name _tout sec_, like the provincial ladies in the\n_Roman Comique_, though to his face he never ventured to address him\notherwise than as M. le Comte\u2014\u201cmy good cousin De Beaumanoir writes me\nthat he is to visit Saint-Aignan at his country-seat, and will have me\nto be of the party.\u201d\n\nOr, mysteriously: \u201cThe army\u2014but this, you conceive, my friend, is\nbetween ourselves\u2014a secret, mind you, of state\u2014the army moves on\nFlanders this week. I have it direct from Beaumanoir.\u201d\n\nIt was then, as you may read in Scarron\u2019s sprightly pages, a common\nambition of provincial gentlemen to be thought on familiar terms with\nthe great folks of the court. Truly, an extraordinary time!\n\nAt these _na\u00efve_ confidences the _cur\u00e9_, who knew his friend\u2019s failing,\nbut respected his virtues, smiled, if at all, to himself.\n\nBut M. de Boisrobert\u2019s reverence for his noble kinsman went further than\ntalking of him in season and out of season. He gave a more substantial\nproof of his regard in making him his sole heir. \u201cThe money should go\nwith the title,\u201d he said; \u201cthe family must be kept up.\u201d It seemed to him\na little price to pay for the privilege of being admitted for a month or\ntwo in the year to the rather frigid hospitality of the H\u00f4tel\nBeaumanoir, of being nightly snubbed by the bluest blood in France, and\nof having down a great man or two for a day in the shooting season, to\nconvert the Ch\u00e2teau Boisrobert to his enamored fancy into a new\nVersailles. His noble cousin he would gladly have had stay longer; but\nthe count, after yawning through forty-eight hours of _ennui_,\ninvariably left. The lands of Boisrobert he wanted; its simple and\nplacid life he could not stomach. His palate was seasoned to higher\nflavors.\n\nNot to put too fine a point on it, M. the Count de Beaumanoir was as\ninsolent, imperious, and ungrateful a scoundrel as was to be found in a\ncourt where gentry of his pattern were rather a drug. Had it not been\nthat he enjoyed the confidence and familiarity of a still greater rogue\nthan himself\u2014no less a one, to wit, than Monsieur, the brother of the\nMost Christian King\u2014he would long since have come to grief. He was more\nthan suspected of a share in the mysterious poisoning of the hapless\nHenrietta of Orleans, and it was only the credit of his patron and his\nown well-known courage and skill as a swordsman that kept these doubts\nfrom taking form.\n\nSuch was the heir whom our worthy M. de Boisrobert had selected for the\nreversion of his vast estates; and his promise once given, the count\ndetermined that it should be kept.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\n\nDaybreak of a pleasant morning in October, 1681. In the court-yard and\nstables of the Ch\u00e2teau de Boisrobert, and in the great farm-yard near\nby, all is bustle and confusion. Grooms and footmen, herdsmen and\nfarm-servants, are scurrying to and fro, with lanterns and lighted\ntorches, through the gray dawn, tumbling over one another in their\nhaste, shrieking out contradictory orders at the top of their lungs,\nclamoring and making all the noise possible, as though they had taken a\ncontract for the purpose and felt they had but a limited time to fulfil\nit. In the farm-yard the heavy Norman horses are being harnessed, with\ncollars that would be in themselves a load for a horse of our degenerate\ndays, to the unwieldy Norman carts, already loaded with huge sacks of\nwheat and barley; further on, in the barns, a prodigious lowing and\nbleating and bellowing tell where Pierrot and Hugues are marshalling\ntheir herds; in the court-yard, saddled and bridled, are stamping and\nsnorting the steeds which shall bear M. de Boisrobert and his bodyguard\nof two armed domestics to the great fair of Moulin-la-For\u00eat. Himself\nbooted and spurred for the journey, that gentleman stands upon the\nterrace of the ch\u00e2teau, overlooking these preparations; chiding here,\nencouraging there, animating all by word and gesture. M. de Boisrobert\nhas not been a nobleman long enough to forget that he is a farmer, and\nprefers to be his own steward. He finds it saves time and temper as well\nas money.\n\nBy dint of much exhortation and shrill volubility of expletives in the\ncurious Norman _patois_ all is at last in readiness, and they are off,\nwith many tender partings and tearful embraces between Blaise and\nMadelon, and much scolding from M\u00e8re Chicon the housekeeper, and fervent\nadjurations to the _Bon Dieu_ to bring them a good market and a safe\nreturn. The latter prayer may seem superfluous, as the distance is but\nthirty miles and they are a stout party. But it is the day of the famous\nMandrin, most redoubtable of robbers, and of the terrible _chauffeurs_\nwho extort the farmer\u2019s hidden hoard by roasting his feet at his own\nfire; so there is some room for trepidation in the bosoms of the simple\npeasant-girls whom this animated company soon leave behind.\n\nWe have not space to follow the great cavalcade as it goes bellowing and\nbaaing and shrieking and _sacrr\u00e9ing_ over the white roads between the\nhedges and the apple-orchards to the great fair. We cannot even stop\nwith M. de Boisrobert at the tidy little _auberge_ of the Pomme d\u2019Or for\nthe welcome _d\u00e9jeuner_ of _soupe aux cro\u00fbtes_, to be followed by ham,\nand perhaps a _poulet_ with the freshest of eggs and salad, and the most\ndelicious of cheeses, and a most refreshing draught of cool cider from\nthe great stone jug. Nor can we do more than glance at the humors of the\nfair\u2014much like other fairs, for the matter of that\u2014with its inevitable\njugglers and tumblers and charlatans, swallowing flames as if they were\nsausages, and pulling endless yards of ribbon from their mouths, to the\ndelight of gaping rustics; its gipsies and gingerbread hawkers; its\nshrill-voiced peasant women, in high Norman caps, selling eggs and\npoultry; its shriller-voiced ballad-singers piping out:\n\n    \u201cSi le roi m\u2019avait donn\u00e9\n    Paris sa grand\u2019 ville,\u201d\n\nor some other favorite _chanson_ of the time. These joys we must pass\nlightly by, to say that, before the afternoon was well over, M. de\nBoisrobert had already sold his entire venture at an excellent profit,\nand it was rumored about the fair that he would go home richer by 20,000\nfrancs (equal to 80,000 now) than when he came. The interest in the\nlucky capitalist increased; it extended even to his horses, and one or\ntwo simple rustics went so far as to push their way, during the\ntemporary absence of the grooms, into the stables, there to gaze in\nopen-mouthed admiration upon the steeds that had the honor of bearing\u2014so\nhistory renews itself\u2014M. C\u00e6sar de Boisrobert and his fortune.\n\nThe hour for departure drew nigh. As the days were getting short and the\nhomeward ride was long and lonely, and, as already hinted, far from\nsafe\u2014few roads in France were safe in those days after nightfall\u2014M. de\nBoisrobert commanded an early start. He himself was to ride on ahead,\nattended only by his two mounted valets, leaving the wagoners and\nherdsmen to follow more leisurely with the carts. The horses were\naccordingly brought forth and saddled, and the worthy squire was just\nsetting foot in stirrup when he was accosted by a _cur\u00e9_, who, calling\nhim by name, politely craved leave to ride with him, as their road lay\nin the same direction. M. de Boisrobert assented more than gladly, for\nnot only was company desirable, but a _cur\u00e9_ the company he most\ndesired, and which could be accepted, as would not have been the case\nwith every comer, without suspicion. So they set forth together.\n\nThe _cur\u00e9_ turned out a most agreeable travelling companion, and M. de\nBoisrobert secretly felicitated himself on the chance which had thrown\nthem together. So charmed was he with his new-found friend that, when\nthe latter pressed upon him the offer of a supper and a bed at the\nvicarage, he wavered, until reminded by the sum he had about him of the\nwisdom of pushing on. But even while he doubted came a most distressing\nmishap. The horse ridden by one of the servants stumbled, fell, and,\nbefore his rider had fairly scrambled to his feet, rolled over stone\ndead. There was nothing for it but to mount Blaise behind Constant, and\nso get on as best they might. But, lo and behold! scarcely had Constant\ndrawn rein for the purpose than, with what seemed to the startled\nhearers almost a shriek, the beast he bestrode set off at a furious\ngallop, which soon left his luckless rider on the ground with a broken\nleg. And, strange to say, the poor animal had run but a few yards\nfurther when he too stopped, staggered, and\u2014_pouf!_ before one could say\nJack Robinson, or its equivalent in Norman French, he is as dead as the\nvery deadest of door-nails or herrings.\n\nWhatever M. de Boisrobert may have thought of this odd coincidence, he\nhad little leisure to dwell upon it; for the next instant his own steed\nwas in convulsions, and, barely giving him time to spring from the\nsaddle, like the others rolled over dead. How account for so singular a\nfatality? Had some poisonous weed got into their fodder? had some\nvenomous reptile stung them in their stalls? or\u2014uneasy doubts crept into\nthe good gentleman\u2019s mind\u2014had they been foully dealt with by reptiles in\nhuman form who meant to waylay and rob, if not murder, the travellers?\nIf the latter, it would be indeed most prudent to accept the good\n_cur\u00e9\u2019s_ hospitality. His house was luckily not far off, and the\ndisabled servant being first made comfortable in a wayside cabin, and\nthe sound one despatched to the nearest town for a surgeon, M. de\nBoisrobert and the _cur\u00e9_ took their way to the home of the latter.\n\nNight had fallen when they reached it, but enough light still remained\nto show that it was a partly-ruined ch\u00e2teau, dating probably from the\ntime of the Crusades. One wing had been so far reconstructed as to be\nhabitable, and the ancient chapel, the _cur\u00e9_ explained, had also been\nput in order to serve as the village church. \u201cMy parish,\u201d he added with\na sigh, \u201cis too poor to build a better.\u201d A moat, still filled with green\nand stagnant water, surrounded the walls; a few planks served for a\npathway across it, where once had hung the feudal drawbridge; a dark and\nsnake-like ivy crawled up the crumbling walls; dense woods cast about it\na funereal gloom. Altogether its outward aspect was sombre and\nforbidding in the extreme, and M. de Boisrobert could not repress a\nshudder or stifle a sinister presentiment as he looked upon his quarters\nfor the night. Had his host been anybody but a _cur\u00e9_, he would have\nfelt like drawing back even then.\n\nA little old man, who filled in the modest household by turns the\ncomprehensive functions of butler, valet, groom, gardener, waiter, cook,\nand general factotum, took their horses in silence, but with a curious\nglance at the visitor the latter could not help remarking, and the\n_cur\u00e9_ led the way to the drawing-room. This was a lofty, vaulted\napartment almost bare of furniture, on the walls of which flapped\ndismally a few tattered pieces of tapestry, the relics of old-time\ngrandeur. A faggot or two crackled and sputtered feebly on the gloomy\nhearth. Near it, busied apparently over woman\u2019s work of some kind, were\nseated an old woman of repulsive aspect and a young girl, the latter of\nwhom the _cur\u00e9_ introduced as Juliette, his niece, and, briefly\nrequesting her to entertain their guest, excused himself to see to the\nlatter\u2019s entertainment for the night.\n\nAnd now, as the heroine of this exciting history has at last arrived\u2014a\nlittle tardiness, as you know, messieurs, must be forgiven to her sex\u2014it\nseems only becoming that she should have a chapter to herself.\n\n\n                                  III.\n\n\nLovely? Of course she is lovely. What a ridiculous question! Who ever\nheard of a heroine who wasn\u2019t lovely, still less a heroine who was also\nthe niece of a rob\u2014_Peste!_ The cat was almost out of the bag that\ntime\u2014so nearly out, in fact, that we may as well slip the noose and let\nher go at once. Scat! And now, the author\u2019s mind being freed of an\nenormous load, he breathes more freely and announces that our luckless\nM. de Boisrobert has literally fallen into a den of thieves. For what\npurpose otherwise that artful hint about the rustics prying into the\nstables, the horses falling dead upon the way, the elaborate setting\nforth of the gloom and desolation hanging like a pall over the ruined\nch\u00e2teau\u2014to what end, do you suppose, was all this expenditure of\nliterary artifice, except to prepare the reader\u2019s mind for some\nblood-curdling and harrowing event? But the _cur\u00e9_? the _cur\u00e9_? Why,\nsimply no _cur\u00e9_ at all: a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing, as there were then\nbut too many in France.[111]\n\nFootnote 111:\n\n  It should be said here that the main incident on which this tale is\n  founded is true, and that this sacrilegious disguise was in those days\n  frequently assumed by French robbers the better to disarm suspicion.\n  The fact is in itself a striking testimony to the implicit confidence\n  which the clergy of France have always inspired, and deserved.\n\nOf this, however, as yet M. de Boisrobert knew nothing. Filled with\nvague forebodings of evil he could neither define nor reason down, he\nfelt but little in the humor for talk, and still less\u2014being, as you\nremember, in his tenth lustrum\u2014for flirtation. So, after one or two wise\nremarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, or the latest\nopera, or whatever other topics gentlemen-farmers then chose to break\nthe ice of conversation with a pretty girl, had been answered _more\nvirgineo_ with shy blushes, or faltering monosyllables, or embarrassed\nand embarrassing silence, M. de Boisrobert betook himself to the window\nto look out upon the surrounding country. A full moon threw upon every\nobject a lustre like that of day, and\u2014ha! what is this he sees in the\ncourt-yard? Can that be his host, the _cur\u00e9_, talking so confidentially\nto those exceedingly sinister-looking chaps (one of whom he now\nremembers to have had pointed out to him at the fair as a coiner of base\nmoney, the other as a more than suspected thief), and handling those\nthree exceedingly long and ugly-looking poniards!\u2014ugh! how their keen\nedges glitter in the moonlight as the rascals run their dirty thumbs\nalong to try their temper.\n\nM. de Boisrobert turned from the window with a gesture of affright and\ndespair, and beheld Juliette standing before him, no longer a timid\nchild but a lovely and courageous woman, one finger upon her lip, the\nother pointing to the ill-featured duenna, who had had the good manners\nto go to sleep. In a few rapid whispers, and still more eloquent\ngestures, she explained the danger and her unalterable resolve to save\nhim or perish in the attempt. Whether it was her words or her beauty, M.\nde Boisrobert felt instantly reassured. Indeed, had he known anything of\nthe course of such adventures, he must have felt so from the moment he\nlaid eyes on her. For what other purpose except to save him could he\nsuppose so lovely a creature was to be found in so vile a den? And let\nit here be said for the benefit of scoffers that the present writer is\nwell aware how often this incident has been used for purposes of\nfiction\u2014at least ten thousand times in the English language alone. Yes;\nbut does not the very frequency of its use prove it to be founded on\nfact, that some time or other it was true? Very well; this is the time\nit was true. Besides, who has said that Juliette is to succeed in her\nnoble but rash endeavor? Suppose\u2014now just suppose\u2014she were to fail; in\nwhich of your fictions do you find a stroke of originality like that? If\nthe historian were revengeful; if he had a mind to distort facts, as\nhistorians in very remote ages are said sometimes to have done\u2014well,\nwell, we shall see.\n\nIn her hurried warning Juliette had made shift to tell M. de Boisrobert\nthat it was meant to put a sleeping potion in his wine, and afterwards\nto enter his chamber and kill him while still under the influence of the\ndrug.\n\n\u201cDo not for your life refuse to drink,\u201d she added, \u201cbut be careful to\neat the apple I shall offer you after it, and which will contain the\nantidote to the drug.\u201d\n\nScarcely had she ended when the pretended _cur\u00e9_ came in with his\nprecious comrades, whom he introduced as parishioners. (\u201cA fit flock for\nsuch a shepherd!\u201d thought poor M. de Boisrobert.) Supper was served at\nonce, and all went as the young girl had foretold. The wine was drunk\nand the apple duly presented and eaten with a confidence that must seem\ntruly sublime under the circumstances, remembering, too, that one of M.\nde Boisrobert\u2019s remote ancestors had lost his entire patrimony through\naccepting a similar gift from a near female relation. Feigning weariness\nand sleep, the traveller begged to be excused and was shown to his room.\n\nNo sooner was he alone than he began to examine his means of defence and\noffence. The flints, of course, were taken from his pistols and the\nbolts removed from the door\u2014they would be poor robbers, totally unworthy\nthe attention of an enlightened reader, who would neglect such obvious\nprecautions as these. Somewhat disconsolately M. de Boisrobert looked\nunder the bed and into the wardrobe, but found no comfort there. Then he\npiled all the furniture against the door, drew his sword, said his\nprayers, set his teeth, thought of Juliette (O middle-aged and most\nforlorn of Romeos!), and awaited the conspirators.\n\nHe had not long to wait. Scarcely had he taken position when a stealthy\ntread outside, a fumbling at the latch, and probably a strong odor of\ngarlic penetrating through the keyhole, announced their arrival. The\ndoor was first softly, then strongly, pushed, and then, as the\nunlooked-for resistance showed their plot was discovered, a furious\nvolley of oaths was followed by an onset that made the barricade\ntremble. Now should we dearly love to entertain the reader with the\ndescription of a terrific combat _\u00e0 l\u2019outrance_\u2014also _\u00e0 la_\nDumas\u2014wherein M. de Boisrobert, calmly awaiting his foes\u2019 approach,\nfalls upon them with such ferocity that in a twinkling he has one\nspitted like a lark, another cloven to the chine, and the third in\nheadlong flight and bawling lustily for mercy, but pricked sorely in\ntender places by the relentless sword. But, alas!\u2014such is the fatal\nlimitation of your true story\u2014nothing of the sort took place. On the\ncontrary, our hero was in all probability horribly frightened and\nthoroughly glad to see a secret panel suddenly slide back, and a white\nhand thrust through the opening, while the sweetest voice he had ever\nheard begged him to make haste. To seize that hand\u2014and who shall blame\nhim if he pressed it to his lips?\u2014to dart through the opening\u2014quick!\nquick! good Jean!\u2014to close the panel, is the work of an instant.\nScarcely is it shut when cr-rack! crash! bang! go door and barricade,\nand the foiled assassins are heard stamping and swearing furiously about\nthe deserted room. If you could but have seen their faces and heard\u2014no,\nit would not have been edifying to hear their language. But the\nfugitives are safe. Need it be said that the foresight of the faithful\nJean (who, of course, follows his young mistress, having, indeed, waited\nthis long time in the robber\u2019s den only for a chance to be on hand in\nthis emergency) had provided horses, on which they soon reached Evreux,\nwhere they lodged an information, which, there being no police there to\nspeak of, led to the prompt arrest of the ruffians.\n\nPlacing the lovely Juliette in a convent, M. de Boisrobert returned\nhome. But it was observed that he hunted less than formerly, that he was\noften closeted with Father Bernard and his notary, and that he spent\nmuch time in settling his affairs. Need the result be told? What in the\nworld is a middle-aged bachelor to do whose life is saved by a lovely\nmaiden of spotless virtue? For, be it known, the fair Juliette, left an\norphan only a week before, had, by her dying father, a rich farmer of\nBr\u00e9zolles, been consigned to the guardianship of this wicked brother,\nwhose evil courses he was far from suspecting. All that is as plain as a\npikestaff; as it is that in less than six months after, just long enough\nto get the trousseau ready (from the Worth of the day, of course) and to\nsee the wicked uncle comfortably hanged, the bells of Friar\nLawrence\u2019s\u2014we should say of Father Bernard\u2019s\u2014little church at Boisrobert\nrang out a merry answer to the problem last propounded.\n\nWhen the distant echoes of these wedding chimes reached the ears of M.\nle Comte de Beaumanoir at Paris, he was not at all angry, as people\nthought he would be. Oh! dear, no. On the contrary, he only smiled,\nshowing a remarkably fine set of teeth. So that people said he was a\nbrave man, this poor M. le Comte, and not by any means as black as he\nwas painted. And, indeed, a great many folks began to commiserate him\nand to abuse M. de Boisrobert.\n\n\n                                  IV.\n\n\nWell?\n\nWell what?\n\nWhy, what came of M. de Beaumanoir showing his teeth?\n\nOh! that? Nothing\u2014just nothing at all. That\u2019s the trouble, you see, of\ntelling a true story: one\u2019s imagination is hampered at every step. It\nwould have been most delightful and exciting to have invented a\nfrightful tale of the count\u2019s vengeance; how he slew his recalcitrant\nkinsman, immured his weeping bride in a dungeon for life, and laid waste\nthe lands of Boisrobert with fire and sword, etc., etc. But the truth\nis, he did nothing of the kind. Indeed, his teeth were speedily drawn,\nand he was glad to get away with his worthless life. The false _cur\u00e9_\nconfessed before his death that the count had suborned him to kill his\nkinsman as he returned from the fair, promising him a sum equal to that\nwhich he would be sure to find on M. de Boisrobert\u2019s person, and even\nsuggesting the disguise. He little thought that the very scheme he\nfondly imagined was to secure him his coveted inheritance was destined\nreally to lose it to him for ever. So ever come to grief the\nmachinations of the wicked! This last escapade was a little too much\neven for courtly morals, and Monsieur was quietly advised to hint to his\nmurderous favorite that his health would probably be the better for a\nchange of air.\n\nAnd the fatal consequences resulting from this marriage?\n\nYes, yes, of course; how stupid to forget it! Well, a cynic might say\nthat for a bachelor to marry at all, especially at forty-five\u2014but never\nmind the cynic. Their married life was surely not unhappy? Let us hope\nnot. Do Romeo and Juliet ever throw teacups at each other over the\nbreakfast-table because that duck of a spring bonnet is not forthcoming?\nIn romances certainly not; but in true stories\u2014hem! Let us trust,\nhowever, that peace reigned eternal over the domestic hearthstone at the\nCh\u00e2teau de Boisrobert. But his marriage had cost its owner an illusion\u2014a\nlife-long illusion; and that is a painful thing at forty-five.\nDisenchantment seems to come harder as one gets older and has anything\nleft to be disenchanted of. He ceased to believe that rank and birth are\nthe same as goodness, or even greatness, and it cost him many a pang,\nand no doubt a great deal of real though whimsical unhappiness, to be\nforced thus suddenly and radically to readjust his scheme of life. But,\nin spite of the adventure which gave him a wife, perhaps because of it,\nhe never lost his faith in _cur\u00e9s_ or in Juliette; and the games of\nbowls and of _trictrac_ were all the pleasanter for the sweet face that\nthenceforth lit them up, and the romping curly-pates that disturbed them\nand in time effaced from their fond father\u2019s memory his lingering regret\nfor the loss of a noble heir.\n\n\n\n\n                           TO AUBREY DE VERE.\n   AFTER READING \u201cPOEMS OF PLACES\u2014ITALY,\u201d EDITED BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.\n\n\n    I stood in ancient church, ruined and vast,\n      Whose crumbling altar of its Lord was bare,\n      Whose shattered windows let in all the glare\n    Of noonday heat, and noise of crowds that passed\n    With careless jest, of malice not assoiled.\n      Within, fast-fading angels still lent grace\n      Of art, believing, to the holy place\n    That cruel hands of its best gift despoiled.\n    With weary feet I trod the broken floor,\n      With tearless eyes the maim\u00e8d aisles gazed down,\n      When, lo! afar a waxen taper shone,\n    Burning a hidden altar clear before:\n    Here hastened I, here knelt\u2014O poet true!\n    Thine was the light that shone my sorrow through.\n\n\n\n\n                  COLONIZATION AND FUTURE EMIGRATION.\n\n\nGod has apparently chosen the United States as the theatre for the\ndemonstration of the truth that the Catholic Church is the church of the\npeople. She has always been the church of the people; many of her most\nsevere persecutions have been caused by the stand she has taken in\nbehalf of popular rights and individual freedom against the tyranny of\nkings and the exactions of nobles. But never before has she been\nfurnished with so large a field for the manifestation and development of\nher popular and democratic character as has been prepared for her here.\nIt is her destiny, we believe, to save the republic from the ruin to\nwhich the sects and their offspring, the atheists, would lead her. Even\nthose of our Catholic readers who may not fully share this belief will\nadmit that, to all seeming, the Catholic Church is destined to play an\nimportant part in the future history of our country\u2014at least that she\nhas grown in numbers, material wealth, and social influence during the\nlast thirty years to an almost marvellous degree.\n\nA better or more certain method of accomplishing the work of the church\nin the United States could scarcely have been devised than the\ncongregation of a large share of the Catholic emigration in our great\ncities. The Catholic Church in the United States is not \u201ca foreign\nchurch\u201d in any other sense than the Bible, or Shakspere\u2019s plays, or\nHomer\u2019s poems are \u201cforeign\u201d books; she is, as they are, and far more\nthan they are, the common inheritance of all, and she is as much at home\nhere, and as rightfully at home, as she is or ever was in any other\nland. Indeed, the church of God is not and cannot be foreign to any of\nGod\u2019s creatures. But a large proportion of her children in the United\nStates at present are either of foreign birth or are the descendants of\nforeign-born persons in the first or second generation. These people did\nnot bring the Catholic Church with them to America: they found her here;\nshe had always had an existence here since Christopher Columbus planted\nthe cross upon San Salvador, and since the Jesuit priests sailed up the\nSt. Lawrence and down the Mississippi rivers. If, however, the\nemigration which has poured into this country since 1840 had not\narrived, or had it come from non-Catholic countries, and had the growth\nof the church here been dependent wholly, or even chiefly, upon the\nnatural increase of American Catholic families and upon converts from\nProtestantism or heathenism, the church in America to-day would have\nbeen numerically insignificant; which is only the same as to say that,\nif emigration had ceased after the first European exodus, the population\nof the United States to-day would be equally insignificant.\n\nWe may form some idea of what the progress of the church under these\nconditions would have been here by remembering what it has been in\nEngland since the cessation of the active persecutions which followed\nthe Reformation. There are about 1,800,000 Catholics in England to-day.\nOf these not less than 800,000 are Irish, French, German, Spanish, and\nItalian emigrants or their children; the remaining 1,000,000 represent\nall the converts of English birth, as well as the descendants of the old\nCatholic families who always retained the faith. Half a century has\nelapsed since the English Catholics were emancipated from the last\nremnant of the persecuting and restrictive legislation which had\noppressed them since the days of Elizabeth. During this half-century the\nchurch in England has been free\u2014free in its own government, free in its\nwork of propagating the faith and of bringing back the English people to\nthe religion which their fathers had cherished for a thousand years.\n\nYet, with some advantages that Catholics in the United States did not\nand do not yet possess, the growth of the church in England during the\nlast fifty years has been vastly less than the progress she has made in\nthis country during the same period. In 1830 there were more Catholics\nin England than in the United States; since then the church in both\ncountries has been equally free, with the advantages at the start on the\nside of England. But now the Catholics in the United States outnumber\nthose in England more than fourfold.\n\nIn 1830, according to the most trustworthy estimates, there were 600,000\nCatholics in England and 475,000 in the United States; now they number\ntwo millions there and from six to seven millions here. In England\nto-day the church has a cardinal, twelve suffragan bishops, and 2,064\npriests; in the United States she has a cardinal, 66 archbishops and\nbishops, and 5,297 priests. In England, according to the English\n_Catholic Directory_ for last year, there were 997 Catholic churches, 7\ntheological seminaries, 312 ecclesiastical students, 15 colleges, 38\nasylums, and 5 hospitals. In the United States, according to the\nAmerican _Catholic Directory_ for the same year, there were 5,292\nCatholic churches, 34 theological seminaries, 1,217 ecclesiastical\nstudents, 62 colleges, 219 asylums, and 95 hospitals.[112]\n\nFootnote 112:\n\n  These figures, as far as they relate to the institutions of the church\n  in England, are probably not entirely correct. The _Register_ from\n  which we have quoted contains no tabular statement of these\n  institutions, and we have been compelled to arrive at the totals by an\n  enumeration of our own, the accuracy of which has been rendered\n  doubtful by the confused manner in which the statistics of each\n  diocese were given. However, our figures cannot be very greatly at\n  fault.\n\nWe have drawn out this comparison for the purpose of accentuating our\nformer remark that the marvellous growth of the church in the United\nStates during the last half-century has been mainly due to emigration\nfrom Catholic countries. Had it not been for these accessions, it is\ndoubtful, in our opinion, whether the church in the United States would\nto-day equal in numbers the church in England. But would its growth have\nbeen so great, so pronounced, so commanding to the attention of all\nbeholders, had this emigration been directed away from the cities and\ndispersed throughout the rural and agricultural sections of the country?\nA little reflection will, we think, show that this question must be\nanswered in the negative. It would have availed the church nothing had\nthese emigrants been placed in their new homes under conditions where\nthe preservation of their faith in any practical form would have been\nalmost impossible; where they would have been deprived of the care and\ncounsel of their spiritual guides and of the sacraments necessary for\nsalvation; where their children would have remained unbaptized, their\nmarriages have been degraded to civil contracts, and their souls starved\nand enfeebled by the absence of the Bread of Life. Yet that this would\nhave been the fate of the great majority of them, had they not\ncongregated in the cities, cannot be doubted, unless, indeed, God had\nchosen to work another miracle in their behalf and to create for them a\nmiraculous supply of priests\u2014a supply so large that every little hamlet\nin the far-off wilds of the West and North should have been furnished\nwith a spiritual director.\n\nSome boast of having even nine millions of Catholics in the republic;\nbut it can be shown that there are perhaps half as many more Americans\nnow living who are the children of Catholic parents in the first or\nsecond generation, but who have lost their faith and grown up as\nProtestants or without any religion at all, chiefly because their\nparents had gone into districts where there were no priests, and where\nthe exercise of their religion, save as a spiritual meditation, was\nimpossible.[113] It was only when the Catholic emigrants began to arrive\nhere in large numbers, and to dwell together by hundreds and thousands\nand tens of thousands in the great cities, that it became possible,\nhumanly, to provide for their religious wants and for their Catholic\neducation. How nobly they have themselves furnished the material means\nfor this work the statistics given above show. They have mainly done it\nfor themselves. In England the Irish Catholics, in their works of\ncharity and in the erection of their churches, have often been aided by\nthe contributions of their wealthy English fellow-Catholics; but in\nAmerica the foreign-born and the descendants of the foreign-born\nCatholics have for the most part built their own churches, their own\nconvents, seminaries, and schools, and have received but little aid from\ntheir co-religionists of native ancestry. Indeed, in some instances\nwithin our own knowledge it is the latter who have been the\nbeneficiaries of the former; and many an American Catholic to-day is\nindebted to the charity and self-denial of German, French, and Irish\nCatholics for the services of the priest who was the means of his\nconversion, and for the erection of the church in which he hears Mass.\nWe repeat that all this was made possible by the congregation of our\nCatholic emigrants in the cities, and that the most deplorable\nconsequences would have followed had not this congregation taken place.\n\nFootnote 113:\n\n  A very ingenious statement was published some time ago in one of our\n  journals, setting forth what was believed to be \u201cthe constituent\n  elements of the population of the United States in 1870.\u201d This\n  statement may be thus summarized: In 1784 the entire white population\n  of the United States was 3,172,000 persons; of these 1,141,920 were of\n  Irish birth, 751,280 were of other Celtic races, 841,800 were of\n  Anglo-Saxon extraction, and 427,000 were of Dutch and Scandinavian\n  birth. The total immigration to the United States from 1790 to 1870\n  was 8,199,000 persons, of whom 3,248,000 came from Ireland, 796,000\n  from Anglo-Saxon races; and 4,155,000 from all other sources. The\n  total population in 1870 was 38,500,000; and this vast number was thus\n  analyzed:\n\n         Joint product in 1870 of Irish colonial    14,325,000\n         elements and subsequent Irish\n         immigration, including that from Canada\n\n         Joint product in 1870 of Anglo-Saxon        4,522,000\n         colonial elements and subsequent\n         Anglo-Saxon immigration\n\n         Joint product in 1870 of all other         19,653,000\n         colonial elements and all subsequent\n         immigration, including the negroes\n\n                                                         \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\n\n                                                    38,500,000\n\n  From these figures was drawn the somewhat startling deduction that the\n  population of the United States in 1870 was composed of 24,000,000 of\n  Celtic birth or origin (Irish, Scotch, French, Spanish, and Italian),\n  and that of these 14,325,000 were of Irish birth or origin, 4,522,000\n  of Anglo-Saxon birth or origin, and that the remaining 9,978,000 were\n  of neither Celtic nor Anglo-Saxon extraction. We are not in any way\n  responsible for the accuracy of these figures; but that they express\n  at least an approximation to the truth we do not doubt.\n\nIt is not, moreover, in spiritual matters only that our emigrants have\nbeen wise in congregating in the cities. One must remember the condition\nin which the great majority of them landed here during the years when\nemigration was at the flood-tide, and then compare with that their\npresent state and the future which is before them and their children.\nThey were desperately, or apostolically, poor, because they came from\nlands where it was impossible for them to acquire anything beyond the\nmeans of bare subsistence. They were uneducated, because they had been\nthe subjects of governments whose studied policy it was to keep them in\nignorance. They had neither the capital nor the knowledge necessary to\nrender them successful as independent agriculturists. Labor was most\nabundant in the cities, and in the cities they remained. What have they\ndone there? If you seek their monument, look around you! Behold not only\nthe 57 Catholic churches (12 of them built almost or quite exclusively\nby Germans, 1 by Poles, 1 by Italians, 1 by Bohemians, 1 by Frenchmen,\nand 30 by Irishmen), the 17 monasteries, the 22 convents, the\nmagnificent Protectory, the theological seminary, the 3 colleges, the 22\nselect schools, the 19 asylums, the 4 homes for aged men and women, the\n4 hospitals, and the 85 parochial schools of which the city and diocese\nof New York alone boast; but the great business houses, the large\nmanufactories, the numberless smaller though important factories,\nstores, and shops belonging to the foreign-born and foreign-descended\npopulation of this metropolis; make a similar examination of what this\nclass of our citizens have done in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Boston,\nHartford, Portland, Springfield, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, St.\nPaul, Albany, Buffalo, Newark, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, San\nFrancisco, and twoscore more of our large cities; and then compare these\ntruly magnificent religious, moral, charitable, commercial, and\nindustrial results with all that the same people could have accomplished\nhad they been scattered as sheep without shepherds throughout our\nWestern and Northern wilds, destined to lose their faith, deprived of\nthe support and strength which common association and common interest\nafford, and doomed, most probably, to lives of hopeless poverty and\nunremunerative struggle. God has been too good to them, and to the\ncountry in which they have become so important a factor, to permit this,\nand what the arrogance of man has so often stigmatized as folly has\nproved to be the highest and best wisdom both for eternal and for\ntemporal ends. The whole number of foreign emigrants who have landed in\nthe United States during the first 75 years of this century was\n9,526,966. We showed in a former article[114] what proportion of these\nhas remained in the cities; and we have now pointed out some of the\nresults of this congregation.\n\nFootnote 114:\n\n  \u201cThe European Exodus,\u201d THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877.\n\nWe must not be understood, however, to convey the idea that a very\nconsiderable proportion of our foreign-born Catholic citizens have not\nmade homes for themselves in the rural districts of the country, under\nconditions which rendered it possible for them to continue the active\nexercise of their religion, and that the happiest results have not\nfollowed. In the New England States, in New York, New Jersey, and\nPennsylvania, in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, in Wisconsin, Iowa,\nMissouri, and Minnesota, the number of Irish and German Catholic\nfarmers\u2014well-to-do, prosperous, and faithful\u2014is very large. In the New\nEngland States the increase of this class has of late been marked. The\nfarms throughout this section are generally small; their native\nowners, especially when they are young men, find it difficult to\nextract from them incomes large enough to supply their desire for the\nluxuries of life; they are often anxious to try their fortunes in the\ncities or in the West; whenever one of them offers his little estate\nfor sale the purchaser is most likely a German or Irishman, whose\nwants are more modest, and who finds it quite possible to derive from\na farm of twenty or thirty acres a comfortable subsistence for his\nfamily. This change in the proprietorship of the soil in New England\nhas gone on to an extent much larger than is generally known; and one\nwould labor under a serious mistake who supposed that the foreign-born\nand foreign-descended population of New England was altogether, or\neven unduly, congregated in the cities. There are in New England,\naccording to the last _Catholic Directory_, 539 Catholic priests, 508\nchurches, 167 chapels and stations, with a Catholic population of\nabout 890,000 souls; and it is evident from an examination of the list\nof the churches that a large proportion of them are in the small towns\nand rural districts of these States. It may be unwelcome news to our\nProtestant readers, but it is true, that nearly 25 per cent. of the\npresent population of New England is composed of Roman Catholics. It\nmay be still more unpleasant for them to learn that nearly 70 per\ncent. of the births in that region are those in Roman Catholic\nfamilies. New England, indeed, promises to be the first portion of the\ncountry which is likely to become distinctively Roman Catholic. The\nimmigration into New England is small, but it is mostly composed of\nCatholics; the increase of population is very largely Catholic; the\nemigration is almost entirely non-Catholic. From this digression from\nour main subject we return with the remark that the rural Catholic\npopulation in the Middle and Western States\u2014a population largely\ncomposed of foreign-born citizens and their descendants\u2014constitutes a\nmost important factor in the material strength of the Catholic body,\nand that, as we shall show, the future course of foreign emigration\nshould, and most probably will, tend mainly to increase this class.\n\nThe late decline in emigration to the United States, and the present\nlull, amounting almost to stagnation, which has taken place in it,\ntogether with the fact that there is abundant reason to suppose that\nthis lull is but temporary and that emigration will again ere very long\npour in upon us, suggest some reflections respecting the changed\ncharacter which that emigration will probably assume, the changed\nconditions under which it will be carried on, and the changed duty of\nthe Catholic body in the United States towards it. What was so\nessentially necessary in the past will be necessary, under these new\nconditions, no longer; what was so often impossible in the past will now\nbecome generally easy of accomplishment. The Catholic Church in the\nUnited States has passed through the stage of its infancy and\nfeebleness, and has entered upon the period of its manhood and strength.\nFirmly planted throughout the land, it fears nothing and can watch over\nand abundantly protect the faith and the education of its children. In\nevery State and Territory, save Alaska, at least one bishop; in seven\nStates two bishops; in five States three bishops; in one State six, in\nanother State eight bishops, and with more than 5,000 priests\u2014surely\nwith this army of shepherds the sheep and the lambs of the flock can be\nfed and guarded from the wolves of infidelity, sectarianism, and\nbigotry. God has built up his church in the republic in the manner, and\nchiefly through the agencies, which we have pointed out, and has thus\nfitted her, armed her, and made her strong for the great work which\nstill lies before her. That work is the conversion of the non-Catholic\nportion of our fellow-citizens; the nurture of Catholic children; and\nthe care, the protection, and, if need be, the conversion of the\nemigrants who, in the future, are to come to us from the Old World. It\nis only with this latter branch of her duty that we now deal. Emigrants\nto the United States have hitherto arrived here chiefly as isolated\nindividuals, or at best as isolated families. There have been some\nattempts at colonization\u2014that is, in bringing in one company a large\nnumber of individuals and of families, destined to migrate together to a\nspot already selected for them, and which they are to occupy as a\ncommunity. Most frequently these attempts at colonization have been\nsuccessful. Where they have failed the failure has been due to some\nincapacity or dishonesty on the part of the agents who had the matter in\ncharge, and not to any vice in the system itself. There is evidence to\nshow that emigration in future will be to a great extent, and may be\nalmost wholly, conducted on the colonization principle. We have already\nsaid that emigration from Ireland in the future would most probably be\nconfined within small limits; but if anything could stimulate it, it\nwould be the development in Ireland of wise plans for colonization,\ncarried out by men of probity, experience, and practical wisdom. Our\nchief sources of emigration, however, for some years to come, are likely\nto be England, Scotland, Germany, France, Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland,\nSweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Russia. There are causes at\nwork which even now are stimulating emigration from each of these\ncountries, and these causes may attain great strength. As an instance of\nthe curious manner in which apparently insignificant causes, originating\nat a distance, produce large effects, we may mention the fact that the\nshipping of fresh meat from this country to Great Britain\u2014an enterprise\nonly in its infancy\u2014has already so seriously unsettled the relations\nexisting between landlords and farmers in England and Scotland that the\nlatter are declaring their inability to make both ends meet, and are\nturning their thoughts towards emigration. So general and so serious is\nthis feeling that the leading journal of Scotland has sent to this\ncountry a trusted member of its permanent staff (the editor of its\nagricultural department for many years), with instructions \u201cto make the\nfullest possible inquiry into everything connected with the\nstock-raising department of agriculture\u201d in the United States, extending\nhis researches to Texas, \u201cwhere he proposes to examine thoroughly the\nsystem of cattle and sheep breeding and raising carried on in that State\non so immense a scale, and to obtain all the information that is to be\nhad with respect to the breeds of cattle, the methods taken to improve\nthe quality of the stock, and Texan agricultural methods and\ncircumstances generally.\u201d He is then to visit other States for the same\npurpose, and \u201call along his route he will take note of all the phases\nand conditions of agriculture, and of the suitability of the States for\nadvanced farming.\u201d The results of his investigations, published in\nScotland and England, will enable the farmers there \u201cto determine the\nfull significance of the competition of American cattle-growers in the\nBritish dead-meat market,\u201d and in all probability determine many of them\nto emigrate to this country, with their capital and their skill, to\nengage in this competition on the American side.\n\nFarming in England and Scotland\u2014especially in Scotland\u2014has long been a\nprecarious and hazardous business; and now the reduction of four or six\ncents a pound in the price of beef which has been caused by the\nimportation of about 1,000 tons of American beef and mutton every week\nat Glasgow and Liverpool, threatens to be the last straw to break the\nback of at least the Scotch farmer. Irish agriculturists likewise depend\nto a great extent for their profits upon the money received for their\ncattle, and they, too, will feel as severely as their Scottish friends\nthe ruinous consequences, to them, of a reduction of twenty-five per\ncent. in the market value of their principal commodity. Thus the\nemigration of the well-to-do farmers of the United Kingdom is likely to\nbe stimulated, and these agriculturists, most probably, would need but\nlittle persuasion to induce them to emigrate, if they emigrated at all,\nin colonies, and not as isolated families or individuals. So, also, as\nrespects the future emigration from the Continent of Europe. Different\ncauses are at work in each of the countries above named, but they all\ntend to the same result.\n\nWe have already hinted that the emigration of the future will be of a\ndifferent class from the emigration of the past. At the present moment,\nand probably for some time to come, it would be dishonest, cruel, and\nunwise to encourage the emigration to this country of people without\ncapital\u2014those who must earn daily wages in order to live. Hitherto the\ngreat majority of our emigrants have been people of this class, and most\nfortunate is it that they came in such vast numbers. The time will again\narrive, no doubt, when this class will be once more necessary and\nwelcome among us, and when they will come, as they have come before, in\nthousands and tens of thousands. But at present they are not needed\nhere; to bring them hither would be cruel to us as well as to\nthemselves. The emigrants whom we need, and who are for some time most\nlikely to come, are those who possess considerable worldly wealth at\nhome, but who, like the English, Scotch, and Irish farmers of whom we\nhave spoken, find it difficult to provide sufficiently for their\nincreasing families, or wish to secure for them, in the New World,\nbetter fortunes than they can hope for in the Old. On the European\nContinent, and especially in Germany, other causes are at work which are\nmorally certain to promote emigration. The war in the East may be\nlocalized\u2014although all the probabilities point to a different\nconclusion\u2014but even now it has increased the burdens which oppress the\nGerman people, and rendered the \u201cblood-tax\u201d that they are compelled to\npay heavier and harder to bear. There is probably no intelligent man in\nGermany who does not look forward to a not distant day when that country\nwill be again engaged in a desperate conflict; and meanwhile the\nmilitary service exacted from every German citizen, and the cost of\nmaintaining the army, press with a crushing weight upon the country. A\nthoughtful and experienced writer in one of our daily journals\u2014a writer\nwho, if we mistake not, has himself had extensive experience in the\norganization of emigration enterprises\u2014thus treats of this subject:\n\n    \u201cBut it is in Germany that the fears awakened throughout Continental\n    Europe will contribute most powerfully to a renewal of interest in\n    the subject of emigration among classes to whom this country even\n    now presents all requisite advantages. The stern methods employed by\n    Bismarck to repress emigration movements\u2014his interference with the\n    freedom of American citizens who dared to speak of the attractions\n    held out by the fertile West, and his suppression of whatever seemed\n    likely to facilitate emigration to the United States\u2014were all called\n    forth by the anxious desire of people to escape the liability to\n    military service. The military glories of the empire had charms for\n    the cities, which acquired delusive appearances of prosperity. Among\n    the population of rural districts the situation was different. The\n    burdens and penalties of war, and of a system which exacts incessant\n    preparation for war as a condition of national safety, have among\n    these people stimulated the feeling in favor of emigration to a\n    degree which the action of the Imperial Government has imperfectly\n    controlled. The dread, vague before, will now be a reality. What, as\n    a mere contingency, has sufficed to foster the wish to leave the\n    Fatherland is now so near a certainty that the movement in favor of\n    emigration needs but a guiding hand to assume large proportions. And\n    the emigration available is of the description which, discreetly\n    operated upon, should be attracted rather than repelled by the\n    considerations which have driven wage-earners back to Europe. Those\n    who would gladly get out of Germany to save their sons from service\n    in the army look to the land for a livelihood, and would form\n    valuable accessions to the Western States. As far as Germany is\n    concerned, the difficulty is in reaching this class. Agencies that\n    might be freely used in England or Holland are in Germany\n    unavailable. All that seems possible there is to provide authentic\n    information through channels which would not conflict with local law\n    or incur the suspicion which, in view of recent experience,\n    interested representations are likely to excite. Might not our\n    consular agencies be utilized, not as emigration bureaux, but as\n    means of supplying to those who seek it information in reference to\n    lands and farms in the West and South, and to other matters\n    connected with the opening or purchase of farms, and stocking and\n    working them? The laborious head of the Statistical Bureau some\n    years ago compiled a volume of statistics which to the working-men\n    of the Old World was invaluable. The manual at present needed would\n    deal with the phases of the emigration question, and would be much\n    more than an accumulation of figures. It would be more legitimate\n    than half the matter which emanates from the department and is\n    printed at the public cost; and it would contribute to a revival and\n    increase of the only immigration which can be honestly encouraged in\n    the face of hard times.\u201d\n\nThe French have never shown much anxiety for emigration; but the\narrivals of emigrants from that country have increased during late\nyears, and were slightly larger last year than in 1875. In France the\nburdens which are felt in Germany are also a cause of suffering, if not\nof complaint; and emigration from France, if the proper means for\nstimulating and directing it were employed, might reach large\nproportions. In Holland causes like those to which we have alluded as\npotent in Great Britain exist. The emigration from Russia has hitherto\nbeen of a peculiar character; it has consisted mainly of the Mennonites,\nwhose anti-war principles impelled them to escape from the military\nservice exacted from all Russian subjects, and from which only the\ntemporary and partial concessions of the czar exempted some of them. The\nmission now undertaken by Russia is of a character which will compel her\nruler, ere he has finished his task, to press every one of his subjects\ninto the military service, directly or indirectly. The desire for\nemigration from Russia may be expected to increase, although some time\nwill probably elapse before large results can be hoped for from it. The\nemigration from Austria has thus far been small. The total arrivals of\nemigrants from that country at the port of New York during the last 30\nyears have been only 21,677, of whom 1,210 came last year and 1,088 in\n1875. But Austria is a country especially fit to emigrate from, and the\nincentives which are powerful in Germany will ere long be felt in\nAustria also. From Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, and\nPoland emigration of the better class may with reason be anticipated;\nand even from Italy, which has sent us 42,769 emigrants since 1847,\nconsiderable accessions may be expected.[115]\n\nFootnote 115:\n\n  During the year ended December 31, 1876, 157,440 immigrants arrived in\n  the United States, of whom 102,960 were males and 54,480 females.\n  Their ages were: under fifteen years, 26,608; fifteen and under forty,\n  111,764; forty years and upward, 19,068. The countries of last\n  permanent residence or citizenship of the immigrants were: England,\n  21,051; Ireland, 16,506; Scotland, 4,383; Wales, 294; Isle of Man, 8;\n  Guernsey, 1; Germany, 31,323; Austria, 6,047; Hungary, 475; Sweden,\n  5,204; Norway, 6,031; Denmark, 1,624; Netherlands, 709; Belgium, 454;\n  Switzerland, 1,572; France, 6,723; Italy, 2,980; Malta, 2; Greece, 24;\n  Spain, 597; Portugal, 816; Gibraltar, 16; Russia, 6,787; Poland, 854;\n  Finland, 22; Turkey, 59; Arabia, 13; India, 22; Burmah, 9; China,\n  16,879; Asiatic Russia, 83; Japan, 6; Asia, not specified, 14; Egypt,\n  3; Liberia, 14; Algeria, 9; Africa, not specified, 17; Quebec, 15,545;\n  Nova Scotia, 3,200; New Brunswick, 1,494; Prince Edward Island, 437;\n  Newfoundland, 58; British Columbia, 484; Mexico, 532; Central America,\n  14; U. S. of Colombia, 20; Venezuela, 37; Guiana, 3; Brazil, 28;\n  Argentine Republic, 6; Chili, 20; Peru, 11; South America, 10; Cuba,\n  880; Porto Rico, 17; Jamaica, 23; Bahamas, 559; Barbados, 32; other\n  West India Islands, 43; Cura\u00e7oa, 14; Azores, etc., 960; Bermudas, 29;\n  Iceland, 30; Mauritius, 3; Sandwich Islands, 20; Australasia, 1,261;\n  East Indies, 16; and born at sea, 23.\n\n  During the month ended April 30, 1877, there arrived at the port of\n  New York 7,353 immigrants, of whom 4,553 were males and 2,800 females.\n\n  The countries or islands of last permanent residence or citizenship of\n  the immigrants were as follows:\n\n  England, 1,500; Scotland, 191; Wales, 46; Ireland, 1,364; Germany,\n  2,184; Austria, 286; Sweden, 415; Norway, 67; Denmark, 171; France,\n  241; Switzerland, 183; Spain, 58; Italy, 350; Holland, 60; Belgium,\n  26; Russia, 35; Poland, 34; Hungary, 37; Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia,\n  and Newfoundland, 25; Cuba, 19; Sicily, 18; India, 14; Mexico, 8; U.\n  S. of Colombia, 4; Venezuela, Bermuda, and born at sea, 3 each;\n  Greece, China, and Peru, 2 each; Turkey and Iceland, 1 each.\n\nWe have before us a collection of documents relating to colonization in\nthe West and Northwest. One of them describes the admirable plan of the\nCoadjutor-Bishop of St. Paul for Catholic colonization in Minnesota. In\na powerful letter addressed, on the 16th of September last, to the\nPresident of the Board of Colonization of the Irish Catholic Benevolent\nUnion, the bishop dwells upon the evils which have followed the\nsettlement of our Irish emigrants in the large cities\u2014evils which we\nhave no wish to belittle; but he also confesses that the misfortunes of\nthose who went into the rural districts were equally deplorable. He\nremarks:\n\n    \u201cThose who\u2014exceptions to the rule\u2014did move forward into the country,\n    in search of homes on the land, suffered in many instances from the\n    absence of proper and systematic direction no less than their\n    companions in cities. They lost their faith. They strayed away from\n    church and priest, from Catholic associations, and in certain States\n    to-day there are whole districts where you hear the purest of Celtic\n    names, and where, nevertheless, not one man proclaims himself a\n    Catholic or smiles at the mention of the old land.\u201d\n\nAnd then, after a charming picture of a certain little Irish Catholic\ncolony in the West, of which he says that, beginning in poverty and\nhardship twenty years ago,\n\n    \u201cTo-day those families are prosperous\u2014rich; their children are as\n    innocent and as true as if they had always breathed the atmosphere\n    of the most Catholic of lands; the number of families has doubled,\n    through mere natural increase; their district of country is for ever\n    secured to the church,\u201d\n\nBishop Ireland goes on to say that the results of his own colonization\nlabors in Minnesota may be thus described:\n\n    \u201cWe began last February. Our first step was to secure the control of\n    117,000 acres of land, situated in Swift County, belonging to the\n    St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. There was at the time in the county\n    about as much more vacant government land open for settlement under\n    the pre-emption and homestead acts. The price of the railroad land\n    was fixed, so that during the time it was to remain under our\n    control the company could not advance its figures. We at once placed\n    a priest in the colony, whose duty it was to direct and advise the\n    immigrant as well as to minister to his spiritual wants. An office\n    was opened in St. Paul, where the immigrant would be received on his\n    arrival from the East, and where all letters of inquiry would be\n    answered. Two weeks after publication of our plans had been made in\n    the Catholic press, immigrants commenced to arrive, and up to the\n    date at which I am writing over eight hundred entries have been made\n    by our people on government land, and about 60,000 acres of railroad\n    land have been occupied. We permit no speculation, so that each\n    quarter section generally represents a family, persons, as a rule,\n    being allowed to take more land only when they have grown sons, who\n    soon will themselves need a home.\u201d\n\nHe then gives a letter from the register of the Land Office, showing\nthat the number of land entries made in Swift County from January 1 to\nJune 1, 1876, was 1,317, and saying that over 800 of these were made by\n\u201cyour people.\u201d The register adds:\n\n    \u201cIn this connection allow me to bear testimony to the intelligence,\n    integrity, and good order always manifested by your colonists in all\n    their business relations with this office. I can now call to mind no\n    instance in which one under the influence of liquor has been in this\n    office. Cases of profanity are extremely rare; in no instance have\n    we had trouble or contention with any one. They are model colonists.\n    I know this opinion to be shared by all who come in contact with\n    them.\u201d\n\nThe bishop adds:\n\n    \u201cWe have already in the colony two churches; one more will be built\n    in spring. Two promising towns have sprung up\u2014De Graff and Randall.\n    In De Graff there are some forty houses, stores or residences, a\n    large brick-yard, a grist-mill; a grain elevator and a convent\n    school are to be put up during the winter. The settlers, whom I had\n    the pleasure of visiting a month ago, are full of hope and delighted\n    with their prospects. Last spring Swift County was a wild,\n    untenanted prairie; to-day on every side new houses and\n    freshly-broken ground meet the eye. Our expenses in organizing and\n    directing the colony were large; still, we were able to meet them by\n    direct revenue from the colony itself. Each settler paid a small\n    entrance fee, and we sold town lots. We have also reserved from sale\n    some choice sections of land, which can at any time, if there is\n    need, be disposed of at a high advance over the original price; so\n    that we are safe against all losses in our enterprise. As soon as a\n    settlement is formed the land advances at once in value; one farm\n    bought in Swift County last spring at two dollars per acre has been\n    sold since at nine dollars per acre, and a settlement that embraces\n    three or four hundred families always affords room for a valuable\n    town-site. The two excellences which I deem our Minnesota plan\n    possesses are the following: We had control of the land; this is\n    necessary to ward off speculation and preserve the land for our own\n    colonists. No sooner would twenty families be settled in a district\n    than the surrounding land would be bought up by speculators or\n    strangers, if you had not complete control over it in some manner.\n    Next, we began the colony with a priest on the spot; the presence of\n    a priest does more than any other agency to attract immigrants and\n    to encourage them in their difficulties. We have been so well\n    satisfied with our work in Swift County that our programme for next\n    year includes the opening of two new colonies.\u201d\n\nOur space does not permit us to summarize even the accounts of the other\nCatholic colonization movements which have come under our notice. These\nmovements are serious and important, and those engaged in them should\ntake every possible precaution to prevent them from falling into the\nhands of careless, incompetent, or dishonest persons. The work, it\nappears, will have two chief departments\u2014the home and foreign agencies.\nThe former will undertake and supervise the task of selecting and\nsecuring proper localities for colonies, and of procuring as settlers\nfamilies and individuals already resident here, but whose interests\nwould be promoted by their translation to these new homes; the foreign\nagencies would be employed in diffusing the necessary information among\nthe classes in Europe who would be most likely to emigrate, and who\nwould be the most desirable emigrants, and in inducing them to join new\ncolonies already established or to form others of their own. The\n_Catholic Advocate_, of Louisville, Ky., in some well-considered remarks\non the subject, says:\n\n    \u201cNow, it is our opinion that a great impetus could be given to this\n    good work if the directors of the colonization project could so\n    manage as to awaken the Irish people at home to the value of the\n    movement; if they could have their plans placed in all their\n    development before that class in Ireland from which emigration\n    recruits its numbers. This could be best and most efficiently done\n    by inducing the formation of corresponding organizations in the old\n    country. There are very many thousands of people in Ireland, with\n    farming-stock worth two and three and four hundred pounds sterling,\n    holding their lands by an insecure tenure and at a rack-rent, who\n    would come out to this country to-morrow, with all their valuables\n    converted into gold, if they knew or understood the advantages of\n    the colonization scheme. As it is now, they only hear about it. It\n    comes to them by newspapers, as a kind of far-off echo. It is not\n    brought forcibly to their notice. Its benefits are not urged upon\n    them personally. There is no persuasion about it, and it is as a\n    dead interest to the great majority of the people, who, if they only\n    knew and understood it thoroughly, would grasp at it. The British\n    government was very earnest in its efforts to colonize Australia and\n    New Zealand some years ago, and the advantages it had to offer were\n    far and far away from those offered by the Catholic colonization\n    movement amongst us. But how did the British government act? It sent\n    agents amongst the Irish and English and Scotch, prepared with maps\n    and pamphlets and lectures, to impress the value of their project\n    upon the people at home and put it immediately before their eyes.\n    What was the consequence? Numbers of emigrants came forward, and of\n    a class which had the means to colonize, and they settled in\n    Brisbane, Queensland, and New Zealand, where they are to-day\n    prosperous and promising. We do not say that paid agents should be\n    sent to Ireland for the purpose we indicate, but it would be very\n    easy to communicate with influential persons there to put before\n    them the value of forming organizations in connection with Bishop\n    Ireland\u2019s scheme, with the St. Louis scheme, and any others that may\n    be started. What is required is emigrants with some capital, and\n    this is the way to get them.\u201d\n\nBishop Ireland, in the letter from which we have already quoted, sets\nforth at some length what such a body as the Irish Catholic Benevolent\nUnion could do in this work. It could constantly agitate the subject of\ncolonization, and it could establish a national bureau of information,\nwhich would collect information, publish pamphlets, secure the\nco-operation of bishops and priests, and open colonies of their own. But\nthe \u201ccrowning stone in the work of colonization,\u201d in the bishop\u2019s\nopinion, would be \u201cthe formation of joint-stock colonization societies.\u201d\nHe says:\n\n    \u201cBy no other means can the poor among our people\u2014those most in need\n    of homes\u2014be colonized. However successful our Minnesota plan may\n    seem to have been, it does not reach the poor. We have received\n    hundreds of letters from most deserving persons, to whom we were\n    obliged to answer that we had no place for them in our colony. How\n    many there are who have simply means to bring them West, but who can\n    neither pay for land nor maintain themselves while waiting for the\n    first crop! A joint-stock company would give them land on long time,\n    at reasonable rates of interest, and would also advance them small\n    sums to assist them in opening their farms. The plan might be\n    somewhat as follows: The executive power of the company should be in\n    the hands of most reliable business men. Stockholders would be\n    promised that their money would be paid back in five years, with\n    interest at six per cent. per annum, and, in order that men of all\n    classes might take part in the work, shares would be put at low\n    figures. The inducement to take shares is that good is done to our\n    fellow-countrymen without any loss to ourselves. The company\n    purchases a tract of land; cash in hand, the land would cost but\n    little. Immigrants, in purchasing it from the company, would give\n    back a mortgage, promising to pay the full price in four or five\n    years, with interest at eight per cent. per annum. An industrious\n    settler could not fail to meet such obligations. If he failed to do\n    so, the land reverts to the company, worth much more than it was\n    when first purchased. The company derives its expenses from the two\n    per cent., which it charges the settlers over what it pays its\n    shareholders; but to protect itself the better it could sell the\n    land at a slightly increased figure, especially a few choice pieces;\n    it could also lay out for its profit a town-site, and sell the lots.\n\n    \u201cThere should be colonies in every State where cheap lands are to be\n    found. The movement should be made general, our entire Irish\n    Catholic people entering into it: one class coming forward with\n    advice and money, the other profiting, for their own good and that\n    of their religion, of the assistance offered to them. What is to be\n    done must be done quickly. The time is fast passing when cheap lands\n    can be had in America. Already the tide of immigration\u2014bearing,\n    alas! but a small number of our people\u2014has crossed the Missouri,\n    leaving in its wake but inconsiderable portions of unoccupied land,\n    and reaching even now the limits of the arable lands of the\n    continent. Patriotism and religious zeal are two great incentives to\n    action for Irish Catholics. Colonization is a work upon which both\n    can be most easily brought to bear.\u201d\n\nAlready one such joint-stock company has been formed\u2014on the 10th of\nApril last\u2014in St. Paul, in which the bishop and the coadjutor-bishop of\nthat see have taken shares.\n\nIt will henceforth be the duty of the church in America to see that no\nCatholic family landing on our shores and seeking a new home in our\nWestern States and Territories shall be permitted to stray beyond her\ncontrol, but shall be conducted to localities where her priests are\nalready prepared to receive them, and where their fellow-citizens will\nbe bound to them by the ties of faith. Catholics in this land are\nalready about as one in six. We receive accessions every day from the\nranks of the Protestant sects; few, if any, of our own number fall away\nfrom us; the emigration of the future, to a great extent, will be in our\nhands. Thus will the church in America\u2014where to-day, to use his own\nwords, our Holy Father \u201cis more truly Pope than in any other land\u201d\u2014grow\nin strength and beauty, and thus will she be prepared, when the hour\ncomes, to save the republic for which her sons, from the hour of her\nbirth until now, have shed their blood, and given their toil and their\nprayers, in unstinted measure.\n\n\n\n\n                            A THRUSH\u2019S SONG.\n\n\n                  Underneath a leafy cover,\n                    Green with morning-wealth of June,\n                  Wanting still, like gift of lover\n                    Craving even greater boon,\n    Deeper chords of light to perfect summer\u2019s fulness, love\u2019s high\n       noon;\n\n                  Just apart from all the glitter\n                    Of a busy crystal world\n                  Where, amid quick human twitter,\n                    Pond\u2019rous engine huge arms hurled,\n    Leaping shuttle wrought bright fancies, girded wheels obedient\n       whirled;\n\n                  Just a little from the glimmer,\n                    From the footfalls\u2019 tuneless tread\u2014\n                  With the distance ever dimmer\u2014\n                    Rose, so calm o\u2019ershadow\u00e8d,\n    Sound of lusty drum and hautboy, with clear flute voice interlaid,\n\n                  Notes exultant loud outpouring\n                    Chant of nations, lightly bound\n                  With frail melody, up soaring\n                    O\u2019er the people gathered round,\n    Resting from the glare a little, from the wearing sight and sound.\n\n                  Ears of loyal Briton tingling\n                    Hark\u2019ning there, \u201cGod save the Queen\u201d;\n                  Erin\u2019s children\u2019s tears commingling\n                    At \u201cThe Wearing of the Green,\u201d\n    Thinking of a loveless bondage, truer trust that might have been.\n\n                  Sounds of wrathful people seeming\n                    Storming through the \u201cMarseillaise,\u201d\n                  Stirred a land, nigh dead in dreaming,\n                    Through Hortense\u2019s song of praise,\n    Through its wailing sadness tolling bells of old chivalric days.\n\n                  Through sad France\u2019s slumber breaking\n                    Germany\u2019s triumphant hymn,\n                  Armed peoples, eager waking,\n                    Watching Rhine-lights growing dim,\n    Hearing clear a weary nation struggling sore with spectres grim.\n\n                  In the nations\u2019 anthems swelling\n                    Ever twanged some chord of wrong:\n                  Broken notes in anguish welling\n                    Even in our starlit song\u2014\n    Shadowy notes from swamp and prairie mingling with the suffering\n       throng.\n\n                  Stilled at last the music\u2019s clamor,\n                    Drum and hautboy laid to rest,\n                  Softly through the silence\u2019 glamour\n                    Stole the light wind of the west,\n    Gently parted the green branches, tenderly each leaf caressed.\n\n                  And a sudden thrill of sweetness,\n                    Mellow, careless, glad, and clear,\n                  Love\u2019s noon-song in its completeness,\n                    Poured in peaceful nature\u2019s ear\n    From a thrush\u2019s throat of silver\u2014happy song without one tear\u2014\n\n                  Fell like precious, heav\u2019n-dropped token\n                    'Mid the elements of strife,\n                  'Mid the melodies, grief-broken,\n                    Blare of trumpet, shriek of fife\u2014\n    Only with undarkened blessing was the thrush\u2019s singing rife.\n\n                  Where the ways were broad and ordered\n                    England\u2019s Indian blossoms flamed;\n                  Here, where guarding thickets bordered,\n                    Bloom of May June\u2019s sunshine claimed,\n    Lifting, 'mid the throngs of people, glance, half-fearing,\n       half-ashamed;\n\n                  Trembling at the cymbals\u2019 crashing\n                    Through the ancient solitude,\n                  Till the thrush\u2019s sweetness flashing,\n                    With its wild-wood joy imbued,\n    Seemed a covenant from heaven, arc of promise, rainbow-hued.\n\n                  In the upper silence singing,\n                    Hidden minstrel, unafraid,\n                  In the sunlit branches, swinging,\n                    By the west wind, whispering, swayed,\n    All the lower tumult silenced in the clear, blue depths o\u2019erhead;\n\n                  Whence the peace of heav\u2019n, descending,\n                    Filled the bird\u2019s song, true and clear,\n                  Lightsome duty sweetness lending,\n                    Joy o\u2019erbrimming in its cheer,\n    Freedom on his pinions resting, sunshine soft, and heaven near.\n\n                  Careless strength and free heart blending\n                    In each note\u2019s melodious mirth,\n                  Calm within a pure soul bending\n                    Praising for its heavenly birth,\n    For its gift of soaring pinions, lightening so the bonds of earth.\n\n                  With that clear and sudden sweetness\n                    Sober fancies swept along,\n                  And its wild-wood, perfect meetness\n                    Seemed our country\u2019s truer song\u2014\n    Sunshine soft, and heaven near it, and no undertone of wrong.\n\n                  So, methought, her clear voice, ringing,\n                    Should in strength of freedom rise,\n                  With the sweetness of its singing\n                    Every evil exorcise;\n    Blessing for her children winning through her nearness to the skies.\n\nPHILADELPHIA, June, 1876.\n\n\n\n\n                       THE CONGREGATION OF CLUNY.\n   TRANSLATED FROM SCHOEPPNER\u2019S \u201cCHARACTER-BILDER DER GESCHICHTE DES\n                             MITTELALTERS.\u201d\n\n\nAt the close of the ninth century the great wealth of the Benedictine\nOrder in France had produced a relaxation of discipline and a departure\nfrom regular observance in many of its monasteries which brought it into\na state of decadence. One principal source of this degeneracy lay in the\nwant of all organic union binding together the distinct monasteries,\neach one of which was exclusively subject to its own abbot. It is true\nthat in earlier times the bishops exercised a certain jurisdiction over\nthem; but this was seriously impeded by the fact that the abbot was\nfrequently equal to the bishop in power and in external consideration.\nThe pope was too distant; disorder could strike deep root before any\ninformation would reach him, and even then he was ordinarily able to\nemploy only indirect methods of remedying the evil. This seems to have\nbeen felt by all those who, from the tenth century onwards, endeavored,\nby various additional statutes, explanations, and stricter applications\nof the Rule of St. Benedict, to bring back those who were subject to it\nto a more conscientious fulfilment of the obligations of their religious\nprofession. At the time when the Carlovingian dynasty, represented in\nthe person of Charles the Simple, was verging toward extinction, William\nthe Pious, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Auvergne, in concert with his\nduchess, Ingeburga, formed the plan of founding a new monastery. He took\ncounsel respecting the carrying out of his design with Hugh, Abbot of\nSt. Martin\u2019s at Autun.\n\nIn company with the duke and duchess Hugh made an exploration of their\ndomains in search of a suitable location, and selected a meadow on the\nbanks of the little river Grosne, near an agreeable cascade, where a\nchapel in honor of the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter had been already\nerected. The duke objected that this was his favorite hunting-ground,\nand that the noise and tumult of deer-chasing would frequently disturb\nthe quiet of the monastery. \u201cWell, then,\u201d replied the abbot, \u201cdrive away\nthe hounds and bring in the monks; you well know which of the two will\nbring you the most favor with God.\u201d The duke cheerfully assented to this\nproposition, and took measures for the erection of a monastery in honor\nof the apostles SS. Peter and Paul upon this territory, of which he had\nbut recently acquired the possession.\n\nAt the recommendation of Hugh, Berno was invited from a neighboring\nmonastery to become the first abbot. He was succeeded by Odo, the son of\na Frankish knight, who had been brought up at the court of Duke William,\nhad afterwards devoted himself to the religious state, and was at the\ntime of his election in the maturity of his manhood. Odo saw that in\nmany monasteries the end of the religious vocation had been entirely\nforgotten, and, in order that he might restore the primitive discipline\nof St. Benedict, he determined to reform the monastic state in\naccordance with its original spirit and intention, and to induce the\nmonasteries in his own vicinity to adopt his reformation. He was a man\nwell fitted to undertake such a task, by his personal austerity, his\nself-devotion to the good of others, and his extraordinary charity,\nwhich was so great that he was ready at any time to bestow all he had\nupon the poor, without any thought of reserving on one day what might be\nnecessary for the next. The influence of his personal character, and the\neffect of his active efforts during a prolonged life, were so great that\na number of monasteries became affiliated to the one over which he\nimmediately presided. He is, therefore, properly speaking, the founder\nof the Cluniac Order.\n\nHis meek and humble successor, Aymard, won for himself by his amiable\nvirtues the confidence of all the brethren of the order, and the favor\nof the great and powerful, who were profuse in conferring upon it\nliberal gifts, charters of protection and privilege. His successors in\noffice, Majolus, Odilo, and Hugh I., were all equally eminent by their\nable administration, their great influence in all the most important\necclesiastical and political movements of their time, and their high\nfavor with emperors, kings, and princes. Emperors, kings, popes, and\nbishops maintained intimate relations with the abbots of Cluny, and all\nthe great and powerful nobles of the country sought their advice in\nmatters of importance. Three Sovereign Pontiffs were taken from Cluny to\nfill the chair of St. Peter. When the son of a king was obliged to\nbecome a fugitive, he sought for a refuge at Cluny, and princes who were\nweary of life and disturbed by remorse of conscience came there to do\npenance among the brethren. The rulers of foreign countries were lavish\nof their donations to the order, the popes were equally munificent in\nconferring marks of their high favor, and bishops were eager for the\naffiliation of the most important monasteries in their dioceses with\nCluny. The immense revenues which flowed into its coffers from all\ncountries in the world became at last proverbial.\n\nThe internal discipline and external splendor of Cluny were maintained\nin an undisturbed permanence and stability for a period of two\ncenturies. At the end of that time both were grievously shattered by the\ndisastrous administration of the unworthy Abbot Pons, a man of worldly\nlevity in character and manners, haughty and ambitious in his\ndisposition, whose whole course of official conduct was such as to\nthreaten the complete downfall of the order. After a length of time he\nwas formally impeached and tried at the tribunal of Rome, by which he\nwas deposed from his office as abbot. Disregarding this sentence, he\nseized anew on the possession of the monastery of Cluny by force of\narms, but was soon after overpowered and cast into a prison, where he\nwas carried off by a sudden attack of fever.\n\nAfter a short period of only three months, during which the abbatial\nchair was occupied by Hugh II., Peter the Venerable was placed over the\nCluniac Order, which he ruled for thirty-nine years, precisely during\nthe period of St. Bernard, who was his intimate friend, and whom he\nsurvived about three years. His activity, prudence, and universal\nreputation, the intellectual power, deep learning, and exalted virtue\nwhich merited for him the appellation of Venerable by which he is\ndesignated in history, sufficed not only to heal Cluny from the wounds\ninflicted on it by the Abbot Pons, but to raise the whole order to its\nhighest summit of importance, and to make the monastery which was its\ncentre flourish in a state of unexampled spiritual and temporal\nprosperity. If we consider the many journeys which this great abbot\nundertook on affairs of the utmost importance connected with the public\ninterests of the day, it would seem that he was exclusively a statesman;\nhis vast correspondence seems sufficient to have employed the time of\none whose whole attention was given to counselling all sorts of persons\nseeking his advice by letters; his theological works are like the\nproductions of one actively occupied in study; the strictness with which\nhe observed and enforced upon his subjects in the cloister the monastic\nrule indicates a contemplative ascetic; his administration of the\ntemporalities of his monastery presents him in the light of an able\nfinancier and man of business. The world was filled with his fame, and\nhis order attained the highest zenith of its glory during his\nadministration, which ended at his death, during the Christmas-tide of\nthe year 1156.\n\nAll the special rules of the Cluniac Order were based upon the Rule of\nSt. Benedict. The ecclesiastical chant and the service of the choir\nemployed much more time and attention, according to the customs of\nCluny, than in other Benedictine monasteries. As far as possible,\nuniformity was enforced in the different houses after the model of the\nmother-house. Besides the special prayers which each one said according\nto his own devotion, one hundred and thirty-eight psalms were prescribed\nto be recited daily, which was usually done while engaged in performing\nthe various tasks; and even in the great heats of summer, on the days\nwhen talking was permitted, there was only time for a recreation of half\nan hour. Every negligence or mistake in the choir-service received\ninstantly a reproof. This was regarded as a spiritual military service,\nin which no individual caprice or negligence could be tolerated. Special\ncare was exacted on the greater festivals of the church, and their high\nimportance was recognized by the greater length of the choral song, the\nreading of longer lessons, and a more fervent devotion. During High Mass\nno Low Masses were allowed to be said, so that no one could in that way\nconsult his own convenience and escape from the public and solemn\ncelebration. The moment of the departure of one of the brethren from\nthis world was treated as a specially solemn occasion. As soon as he had\nreceived Extreme Unction a wooden cross was put under his head in place\nof a pillow. All who could possibly attend were obliged to assist at the\nlast agony of the dying man, and, although at other times running\nthrough the corridors was strictly forbidden, it was specially ordered\nwhenever the passing-bell announced that one of the brethren was about\nto depart this life. Special revenues were devoted to all charitable\npurposes, and their conscientious expenditure strictly enjoined. There\nwas a particular endowment for eighteen poor men who were perpetually\nsupported by the mother-house. Six brothers were appointed for the\nservice of the poor, one of whom waited on them, another acted as porter\nof their hospital, two others furnished the wood out of the forest for\ntheir fires, and two had charge of ovens for baking bread, to be given\naway in alms to the poor. Everything remaining on the tables of the\nrefectory after the meals was taken by the almoner for distribution\namong the poor. A cover was laid for each one of the most distinguished\nbenefactors at every meal, even though they were living at a great\ndistance or had been long dead, and all their portions were taken for\nthe poor. Twelve loaves, each weighing three pounds, were prepared each\nday for widows, orphans, feeble and aged persons. On Holy Thursday the\nceremony of foot-washing was performed for as many poor men as there\nwere brothers in the community, all of whom were afterwards served at\ndinner. On certain special occasions, and on all the festivals when the\ntable of the brethren was better served than usual, more abundant alms\nwere distributed. The almoner was bound to make a weekly visitation of\nthe houses in the village near the monastery, that he might find out\nevery poor person who was sick, and furnish him with food, wine, and\nmedicines. The number of poor persons who regularly received aid was\nestimated at seventeen thousand. The Abbot Odilo sold the ornaments of\nthe church and a crown presented by the German emperor Henry II. in\norder to relieve the wants of the people during a famine. The\nsubordinate monasteries were required to imitate in this generous\nalms-giving the example of Cluny, and a similar observance of\nhospitality was also exacted. Precise rules were laid down for the\nreception of visitors of different ranks and conditions, who were\ncontinually arriving at the monastery on foot or on horseback. If they\nwere ecclesiastics, they were not only invited to partake of the\nhospitality of the monastery, but also to participate in its religious\nexercises. Every one who travelled on foot received a certain amount of\nbread and wine on his arrival and at his departure. If the poverty of\nthe house did not permit anything more than a temporary shelter and a\nfriendly reception, this, at least, was to be cheerfully given to every\none. The prior was not to consider what was within his means, but to go\nbeyond them in providing for the wants of strangers. Frequently, when\nthey had consumed all the provisions of the larder, the monks had to\nendure hunger until new supplies, which often came unexpectedly, were\nfurnished by royal and noble benefactors.\n\nThe life of the monastic brethren was austere. Besides the regular and\nvery long choir-service, which no one was dispensed from attending, the\nfasts were frequent. The flesh of quadrupeds was never allowed, and on\nthe ferial days and the entire period from Septuagesima to Easter, not\neven fat could be used in preparing the food. The principal article of\ntheir daily diet was beans, with an occasional allowance of eggs and\ncheese, and more rarely of fish. After night prayers no one could taste\nfood or drink anything without special necessity and permission. The\nviolation of these rules and of the law of strict poverty was considered\nas a grievous transgression, exposing the offender to excommunication\nand privation of Christian burial.\n\nObedience, the pivot of all the virtues of an ecclesiastic, was regarded\nas having a higher and more extended obligation for religious. Its\ndisregard was esteemed worthy of the severest punishment, and the\nincorrigible were subject to expulsion. Priors and other officials were\ntwice admonished, and afterwards deposed without any hope of\nrestitution. The observance of a strict rule of silence was regarded as\na specially efficacious help to the acquisition of perfect spiritual\nvirtues, and, in the opinion of the Abbot Odo, monastic life was utterly\nworthless without it. Absolute silence was invariably observed during\nmeal-times, and during all times of the day throughout Lent and several\nother penitential seasons. The Cluniac monks became so expert in the use\nof the sign-language through their disuse of speech that they might have\ndispensed with talking altogether without the least inconvenience. The\nmost perfect silence and stillness, undisturbed even by hasty and noisy\nwalking through the cloisters, reigned throughout the monastery.\n\nEvery fault must be expiated by penance, or at least an acknowledgment\nbefore the abbot. Those who were late must remain standing or prostrate\nuntil a sign was given to them to repair to their places. The tardy at\ntable received also a penance. Public offences received public penances,\nin order that every one might have sensible evidence that the community\nwas vigilant in observing the behavior of each individual member.\nSmaller offences were punished by solitary confinement, making a station\nat the church-door, or exclusion from the common exercises. Those which\nwere more serious were punished by flagellation, and, if the offence had\nbeen public, the penance was administered at the door of the church\nwhile the people were assembling for Mass, and the cause of it announced\nto them by an official of the monastery. For the gravest faults the\nculprit was put in irons or imprisoned in a dark, underground dungeon.\nSt. Hugh\u2019s maxim was that a monastery is not dishonored by the faults of\nits members, but by their impunity. Several brothers were appointed to\nmake the rounds of the monastery at intervals, and to declare in chapter\nevery disorder which they observed, whereupon due penance was inflicted\non the delinquents. This duty devolved on the prior for the first hour\nof the night, and at intervals during its progress, with a special\ncharge of watching that all the doors were properly closed and fastened.\n\nSuch a special care was observed in regard to cleanliness that the most\nparticular housekeeper could not be more thorough or exact in a\nwell-regulated private family than were these monks of Cluny in their\ndomestic arrangements. This care for cleanliness showed a deep\npsychological insight into the close connection between this exterior\nvirtue and interior purity, which is often endangered and damaged by a\nslovenly disregard of outward propriety. Articles of clothing and all\nthe bed and table furniture were regularly changed according to an\ninvariable rule. Careful supervision was observed towards the novices in\nrespect to their personal neatness in such minute particulars as\nwashing, combing their hair, etc., and conveniences for these purposes\nwere provided in abundance for all, that they might easily make use of\nthem when they came in from work to go to the choir or the refectory.\n\nThe clothing was very plain, in contrast to the worldly elegance and\nvanity in dress which prevailed in many other religious communities, but\nall the different articles of dress were provided in abundance, with two\ncomplete outfits for each one. The winter clothing was made to suit the\nseason and the climate, warm and comfortable; for the men who made the\nregulations of Cluny were not so narrow-minded as to adhere scrupulously\nto purely exterior customs which were suitable to Italy but utterly\nunfit for the ruder climate of the North.\n\nThe sick were cared for with the most tender solicitude, six brothers\nwere deputed to the service of the infirmary, and the best ass in the\nstables was set apart to haul wood for the fire. The infirmarian was\nalways provided with spices and wholesome herbs to make the food of the\nsick more appetizing and wholesome. Meat was provided for them every\nday, and even on fasting-days. A certain part of the presents made to\nthe monastery was assigned to the purchase of comforts and delicacies\nfor the sick and weakly. They were dispensed from the rule of silence,\nand only required to refrain from abusing the privilege of talking. The\nabbot and grand-prior were required to make frequent visits to the sick,\nand the cellarer was bound to see each one, in company with the\ninfirmarian, every day, and inquire what kind of food he wished for and\nin what way it should be prepared. As soon as one was released from the\ninfirmary he came to the chapter, and, standing up, said to the prior:\n\u201cI have been in the infirmary and have not kept the rules of the order\naccording to our obligation.\u201d The prior answered: \u201cMay God pardon you!\u201d\nwhereupon the convalescent brother went to the place of the penitents\nand recited the seven penitential psalms or seven _Pater Nosters_.\n\nAs for the interior legislation and administration of the order, a\ngeneral chapter was held at Cluny once a year, where all the abbots,\npriors, and deans of the entire congregation were bound to appear under\npain of deposition, those only who lived in distant countries being\nexempted from attendance oftener than once every two years. Every\nquestion which related to the rules was submitted to this chapter, and\nto the votes of all the brethren of the monastery of Cluny. Each one was\nobliged to make known in the chapter, without any regard to personal\nconsiderations, whatever he had noticed in any of the houses or in any\nindividual member of the order which was worthy of censure, and was\nprotected from any unpleasant consequences which might possibly ensue\nafterwards to himself from his disclosures. All priors whose\nadministration or personal conduct was censurable were deposed by the\nchapter; and, finally, they made an examination of all the novices of\nthe congregation.\n\nAs soon as the chapter was dissolved the supreme power reverted to the\nabbot of Cluny. He appointed all the priors and confirmed all the\nabbots-elect, being strictly forbidden to receive any presents or\nperquisites in connection with any such official act. He could make such\nregulations as he saw fit in all the houses; all his sentences upon\nindividual delinquents which were in conformity with the canons were\nbinding; and in the interval between the capitular assemblies he could\ndepose from all offices without appeal. He was bound to share as much as\npossible in the common life of the other monks, to be with them in the\ncommon dormitory and at the common table, and to use the same food, the\nonly mark of distinction being that he was served with wine of a better\nquality and with two loaves at dinner.\n\nNext in rank and authority came the grand-prior, appointed by the abbot\nwith the counsel of the elders of the monastery and the assent of the\nchapter. Under the abbot\u2019s supreme direction he presided over all the\nspiritual and temporal offices of the monastery, with a special\noversight of those brothers who were charged with out-door employments\non the cloistral domains. Every year, after the vintage, he made an\ninspection of all the farm-lands, examined the stores laid up in the\nbarns and cellars, and directed the division of the fruits of the\nharvest for the use of those who resided in the outlying farm-houses,\nand for the general use within the monastery.\n\nThe interior order of the house was under the oversight of the prior of\nthe community, who had several assistants, and in case of absence a\ndeputy. The rule prescribed that no account should be taken of birth or\nother personal considerations of human respect in the choice of prelates\nand officers, but only of moral virtue, experience, and prudence. No\nabbot or prior, not even the abbot-general of the congregation, was\nallowed to travel without some of the brethren in his company, as\nwitnesses of his conduct and associates in fulfilling the devotions\nprescribed by the rule.\n\nWe can form some estimate of the extent of the monastic buildings of\nCluny from the circumstance related in history, that in the year 1245\nPope Innocent IV., with twelve cardinals and his entire suite; also two\npatriarchs, three archbishops, eleven bishops, with their respective\nsuites; farther, the king of France, with his mother, wife, brother, and\nsister, and the whole of their retinue; the emperor of Constantinople,\nthe crown-princes of Aragon and Castile, several dukes and counts, and a\ncrowd of knights, ecclesiastics, and monks, were accommodated within the\nprecincts of the monastery without encroaching on any part of it which\nwas ordinarily occupied by the community or incommoding any of the\nbrethren.\n\nThe fine arts were made to contribute to that which is their highest\nend\u2014the service of religion\u2014in the Cluniac Order more than in any other\ncontemporary institute. They were all employed in harmony and unity with\neach other to enhance the splendor of the divine service. The candles\nand lamps by which the church was lighted were placed in costly hoops\nbeset with precious stones. Instead of candelabra, trees artistically\nwrought in bronze stood near the altar, having the lighted candles\nprescribed for the solemn ceremonies blazing among their branches.\nPaintings covered the walls; the windows were richly ornamental and\nfilled with colored glass. Costly tapestry and hangings,\nbeautifully-carved stalls, a decorated pavement, chimes of bells of\nunusual size, reliquaries of gold whose beauty of workmanship even\nsurpassed their costliness, chalices, ciboriums, and monstrances of\ngold, sparkling with jewels, vestments heavy and stiff with cloth of\ngold, and all else that was magnificent in sacred art and decoration,\nmade the church of Cluny a theme of praise and admiration throughout all\nFrance. It was probably at the date of its erection the largest in the\nworld, and rested upon sixty-eight columns, each eight and one half feet\nin diameter. Thirty-two of these pillars supported the vast dome, and\nthe whole edifice, which was built in the peculiar form of an\narchiepiscopal cross, was regarded as one of the most splendid monuments\nof the Roman style of architecture in France. Sculpture, carving, and\npainting rivalled each other in the decoration of this magnificent\nchurch, and there still remained at the beginning of the present century\na representation of the Eternal Father on a gold ground in the vaulting\nof the apse, ten feet in height, which retained all its original\nbrilliancy of color. The choir-stalls, which were of a comparatively\nlate period, were two hundred and twenty-five in number at the time of\nthe suppression\u2014showing how numerous the community had become\u2014and the\ntowers were filled with a great many bells, the largest of which were\nmelted down to cast cannon during the religious wars. At present but\nlittle remains of this grand structure in a state of ruin. During the\nFrench Revolution the whole was sold for building material for the sum\nof twenty thousand dollars, and thus rude force destroyed this grand\nwork of the spirit of Christianity.\n\nThe cultivation of science was fostered in the Cluniac Order with much\ngreater care and zeal than in some of the other monastic bodies. Its\nfounders were more solicitous for the promotion of intellectual labor\nthan for material industry. The Abbot Peter wrote: \u201cIn virtue of a\nspecial privilege, the abbots of Cluny from ancient times promoted\nliterary occupations with zeal and energy. It is not the desire of\nwinning a high reputation which stimulates them to write books, but the\nfeeling that it would be shameful to neglect the imitation of their\npredecessors, the holy Fathers of the church, and thus to prove\nthemselves degenerate sons.\u201d Under such superiors the brethren were not\ndeterred by any ill-grounded scruple from applying themselves to the\nstudy of the heathen classics, and in fact considered this study as a\nvaluable auxiliary to the investigation of the Sacred Scriptures. The\nworks of the great ecclesiastical writers were fully appreciated and\ndiligently perused, and the valuable manuscripts collected in the\nlibrary of Cluny were not considered as a mere assortment of curiosities\nfor the sake of show, but as useful implements for the cultivation of\nscience, and in a generous spirit of liberality were freely lent to\nother monasteries for the sake of making copies or recensions. The books\nused for the church service were written out in a beautiful, ornamental\ntext, richly adorned with initial letters executed in the most elaborate\nstyle of art; and those who were engaged in this kind of work, if it\nwould not admit of interruption, were excused from choir for the time\nbeing. The ability and industry of the Cluniac monks in collecting\nmanuscripts and preserving precious monuments of ancient history have\nbeen recognized even in later times, and abundant documents of that zeal\nfor the promotion of science which was not damped by the earnestness\nwith which religious discipline was enforced have come down to our own\nday.\n\nThe confraternity of Cluny, which had speedily risen to a high\nconsideration throughout France, attained to a higher and more\nsolidly-established reputation during the period extending through\nnearly forty years of the administration of Peter the Venerable. The\nrenovation of the Benedictine Order in its original spirit which had\nbeen effected by the Cluniac reform became renowned in other countries\nas well as in France, and awoke the desire of attempting to accomplish\nthe same happy results elsewhere by the use of similar methods. Every\nfounder of a new monastery in France desired to introduce the rule and\nsubmit to the supremacy of Cluny. Kings, princes, and bishops urged upon\nthe already existing monastic communities, especially when they had\nfallen into disorder, incorporation with the Cluniac congregation.\nDuring the rule of Peter the Venerable it was increased by the addition\nof three hundred and fourteen monasteries, collegiate foundations, and\nchurches, and at its most flourishing period it embraced within its\nlimits more than two thousand distinct houses. At the time of the\nCrusades it extended itself even beyond the sea. Cluniac houses were\nfounded in the valley of Josaphat and on Mt. Tabor, and in the time of\nAbbot Peter a monastery in a suburb of Constantinople was united to the\nmother-house, over which he presided.\n\nMen of all conditions who desired to do penance for their sins, to seek\na refuge from the dangers of the world, or to find spiritual direction\nand come under a holy influence for their own sanctification, sought to\nmake reparation and deserve the grace of God by rich gifts to Cluny, to\nconsecrate themselves to God in some house of the order by the religious\nvows, or to secure for themselves by becoming affiliated to it a share\nin the sacrifices and prayers perpetually offered within its sacred\nenclosures. It is related that Count Guy of Macon, who had been a bitter\npersecutor of the order, one day presented himself at the gates of Cluny\nin company with his son, several grandsons, thirty knights, and the\nwives of each one of the noble group respectively, all of whom demanded\npermission to take the vows of religion. Under the sixth abbot, Hugh I.,\nthree thousand monks were present at one general chapter. The crowd of\napplicants for admission became so great that Hugh VI. was once\ncompelled to issue an edict forbidding the reception of any new\ncandidates during a term of three years. Under Peter the Venerable the\nnumber of monks resident at Cluny increased from two hundred to four\nhundred and sixty, some of whom, however, led a solitary life as hermits\nin the neighboring forests.\n\nThe popes were lavish in their grants of privileges to Cluny and the\nmonasteries connected with it. Alexander II. decreed that no bishop or\nprelate should have the right of excommunication in respect to the\nCluniac congregation. Urban II. allowed the use of episcopal insignia to\nthe abbot, and Calixtus II. conceded to him the special privileges of a\ncardinal. The brethren of the order were even permitted to have the\ncelebration of Mass continued for their own benefit during an interdict.\n\nThere is nothing which shows more clearly the high esteem in which Cluny\nwas held than the decree of Pope Innocent IV. in the third session of\nthe Council of Lyons: that accredited copies of all the official\ndocuments relating to the diplomatic intercourse of emperors, kings, and\nother princes with the Roman Church should be deposited in its archives.\nThis important and precious collection was still in existence at the\noutbreak of the Revolution.\n\nThe history of Cluny has a very great importance in connection with the\ngeneral history of the medi\u00e6val period, but especially with the great\necclesiastical reformation of Gregory VII., which was prepared by the\ninterior working of the order within the church. For many prudential\nreasons the fact that the great ecclesiastical movement of the eleventh\ncentury had its source in the monastery of Cluny was kept out of sight\nas much as possible; but it is proved by abundant evidence, and Gregory\nVII. himself, who was its prior when St. Leo IX. persuaded him to return\nwith him to Rome in 1049, speaks of the peculiar and intimate relations\nbetween Cluny and the Holy See.\n\n\n\n\n                         THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.\n\n\n                                  VII.\n                              ST. AGATHA.\n\n\n    \u201cShe hath no breasts\u2014is cruelly maimed withal:\n      What shall we do for her, when spoken for,\n      Our little sister? Sheathe her, if a door,\n    In boards of cedar; if she be a wall,\n    Build up a house of silver,[116] and instal\n      Her worship\u201d\u2014so the monks. O bleeding core\n      Of maidenhood, thy Spouse and King shall pour\n    Balm in thy wounds, the lilies\u2019 growth recall!\n\n    When Etna belched forth Phlegethon, and rolled\n      Its molten flanks upon Catania,\n    The saint\u2019s veil they did reverently unfold\n    And wave it in the face of fire\u2014Behold!\n      Piled black against the convent\u2019s wall to-day,\n      That Red Sea curdled by Saint Agatha!\n\nFootnote 116:\n\n  Song of Solomon viii. 8, 9.\n\n\n                                 VIII.\n                               ST. LUCIA.\n\n\n    \u201cWhat\u2019s this? Two human eyes upon a dish?\n      Wretch! what dost mean?\u201d \u201cLucia sends thee these;\n      She greets thee: 'Be no longer ill at ease;\n    They are thine! When mine, a spirit devilish,\n    With them, with pink bloom and pale limbs, did fish\n      For men\u2019s souls.\u2019\u201d Quick! to her\u2014ere horror freeze.\n      Her wan lips smiled beneath the bandages:\n    \u201cThou hast languished for mine eyes\u2014have, then, thy wish!\u201d\n\n    She raised the fillet\u2014the youth dropped as dead.\n      \u201cLook up!\u201d a sweet voice spake, \u201cand praise the Lord!\u201d\n    He obeyed trembling\u2014O illumined head!\n      Low with an altered spirit he adored.\n    Thenceforth an angel\u2019s eyes, her own instead,\n      Lighted her to her martyrdom\u2019s reward.\n\n\n                                  IX.\n                              ST. URSULA.\n\n\n    A bower of woven palms! In white arrayed,\n      Marshalled beneath that verdant canopy\n      By fair-haired Ursula of Brittany,\n    Eleven thousand martyrs, each a maid!\n    For England\u2019s heir, Etherius, had obeyed\n      His bride\u2019s will, honoring her virginity.\n      To Rome on pilgrimage, by river and sea,\n    They sailed, and prettily the bold mariner played.\n\n    Saint, dear to tender years! thou and thy doves\n      Fell pierced with many arrows, and the Rhine\n      With blood of innocents ran red as wine\u2014\n    Still teach that to the pure Death\u2019s kiss is Love\u2019s!\n      Still teach it, though thy mortuary shrine\n    May moulder, while the stream to ocean moves!\n\n\n\n\n                         THE UNKNOWN EROS.[117]\n\n\nFootnote 117:\n\n  _The Unknown Eros, and Other Odes._ London: George Bell & Sons. 1877.\n\nThere seems a growing and lamentable tendency among English poets in\nthese days to divide themselves up into schools. We have the\nTennysonian, the Swinburnian, the Rossettian, as a little earlier we had\nthe Lake school, the Byronic, and so on. In these schools of poetry, as\nin schools of painting, there are certain marked features peculiar to\neach and forming, as it were, the common property of that one. Certain\ntones and colors belong to this: subdued grays, royal purples, dim and\nfar-away lights on meadow and mere. Another is a lustier flesh-and-blood\nschool: its men and women are decidedly, though musically, improper. The\nchoice expressions and tender care that the other lavishes on the\nbeauties of nature this one devotes to a maiden\u2019s hair, or her cheek, or\nher nose, the droop of her lashes, or the arch of her brow. A third\naffects the mystic in matter and form; the more incomprehensible it is,\nthe finer the poetry. It is like the \u201cvague school\u201d in painting. One is\nsometimes puzzled to know whether the picture be a battle-piece, a\nlandscape, a portrait, or a nightmare on canvas. And so they go on.\n\nThis follow-my-leader tendency is unquestionably a mark of feebleness.\nIt would be so in any art; it is obviously so in an art that springs\nfrom inspiration, and is thus necessarily original. A poet is\ncomprehensible; a school of poets is absurd. Imagine a school of Homers,\nof Virgils, of Dantes, of Shaksperes, of Miltons, of Byrons! Why, the\nworld could not hold them.\n\nWeak as our days may be in original poets, they are strong at least in\nnumbers. Probably, unless in the days of good Queen Anne, never before\ndid such a constant and voluminous stream of English verse roll through\nthe press. Most of it falls still-born on the market; yet nothing seems\nto discourage the poets. From Tupper to Tennyson they publish and\npublish and publish all the time. Yet there is not a living English poet\nto-day\u2014unless Aubrey de Vere, whose best work has been his latest\u2014who\ndid not establish whatever fame he has almost a quarter of a century\nago, and whose poems since that period have not shown a marked and\nsteady decline.\n\nIn the author of _The Unknown Eros_ we find a man who has certainly\nsomething new to say; who follows no leader; who has thoughts, and a\nmode of expressing them, all his own; who cares less for how than for\nwhat; whose work compels attention, and who depends in nowise on the\njingle of words, the tricks of adjective and rhyme\u2014the ballet-dancing,\nso to say, of the English language\u2014for his attraction. Indeed, in\nrespect of form he is far behind the other poets of the time. He almost\ndisregards it. Yet, as will be seen, the strange dress that he has\nchosen for his creation fits it admirably, and moulds itself at will to\nthe strenuous freedom of the combative athlete, the scorn of a man of\nfine feelings and bright intelligence, the meditative mood of the\nstudent, or the softer movements of a lover. His instrument is now a\nclarion call to battle, now a lover\u2019s lute, now a dirge. It has the\nstrength and simplicity of the Gregorian chant, which in a few notes and\nchanges expresses the heights of inspiration and exultation, the depths\nof dread, the saddest sorrow of the human heart.\n\nThe volume is a collection of odes, written at various and long\nintervals apparently, and in a style of metre resembling somewhat that\nof the minor poems of Milton. It has often the regular irregularity of\nthe Greek chorus, with much of the latter\u2019s elasticity, brightness,\nflexibility, and crystalline texture. In all this it is novel\u2014markedly\nand successfully so. It is more novel, however, in subject-matter. It is\nrefreshing to come across a man, a poet especially, who can drop out of\nthe commonplace, and do it without affectation. So accustomed have we\ngrown, however, to the commonplace that we follow him at first with\ndifficulty. His \u201cEros\u201d is indeed an unknown god to the run of readers.\nHe is no Cupid rosy-red, with flowery bow and fire-tipped dart to smite\nand melt the hearts of sweet young lovers. He does not slumber in summer\nmeads, or rove listlessly by laughing streamlets, or roguishly haunt the\nbosky dells, or float adown the slanting sunbeam to flame on the unwary\nand capture their hearts and kindle them into passion while they\nlanguish in the soft arms of Mother Nature. His God is not this pagan\ndeity. He is remote, obscure, harsh-seeming. The poet\u2019s song is no\npleasing love-tune. It is martial, high, far away, up on crags remote\nand to be reached only by thorny paths with bleeding feet and straining\neyes, and hearts that faint many times on the way. True love is banished\nfrom the earth, the poet seems to think; and in place of him, high,\npure, serene, with his head lifted up and bathed in the clear light and\nrefulgence of heaven, and his feet only touching the earth, men have set\na toy, a plaything, a fair bestiality.\n\n\u201cWhat rumored heavens are these,\u201d he asks,\n\n    \u201cWhich not a poet sings,\n    O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze\n    Of sudden wings\n    Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space\n    To fan my very face,\n    And gone as fleet,\n    _Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat_,\n    With ne\u2019er a light plume dropp\u2019d, nor any trace\n    To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    O, Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss,\n    What portent and what Delphic word,\n    Such as in form of snake forebodes the bird,\n    Is this?\n    In me life\u2019s even flood\n    What eddies thus?\n    What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood\n    Like a perturbed moon of Uranus\n    Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid;\n    And whence\n    This rapture of the sense\n    Which, by thy whisper bid,\n    Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental sign\n    A bond I know not of nor dimly can divine;\n    This subject loyalty which longs\n    For chains and thongs\n    Woven of gossamer and adamant,\n    To bind me to my unguess\u2019d want,\n    And so to lie,\n    Between those quivering plumes that thro\u2019 fine ether pant,\n    For hopeless, sweet eternity?\u201d\n\nThe hard questions here put the poet answers, to some degree at least,\nin other odes. In the \u201cLegem Tuam Dilexi\u201d (p. 43) he sings:\n\n    \u201cThe 'Infinite.\u2019 Word horrible! at feud\n    With life, and the braced mood\n    Of power and joy and love;\n    Forbidden, by wise heathen ev\u2019n, to be\n    Spoken of Deity,\n    Whose Name, on popular altars, was '_The Unknown_,\u2019\n    Because, or ere It was reveal\u2019d as One\n    Confined in Three,\n    The people fear\u2019d that it might prove\n    Infinity,\n    _The blazon which the devils desired to gain_;\n    And God, for their confusion, laugh\u2019d consent;\n    Yet did so far relent,\n    That they might seek relief, and not in vain,\n    _In dashing of themselves against the shores of pain_.\u201d\n\nWas there ever a truer picture painted by man of the curse of lost souls\nand the hopeless relief they find \u201cin dashing of themselves against the\nshores of pain\u201d\u2014that relief that the demented seek in beating their\nweary brains out or letting out the stream of the tired and useless life\ninto the dark ocean of infinity, severing with maddened and sacrilegious\nhand the little knot that separates Time from Eternity? And what\nstronger picture of the prevalence of evil and the inherent tendency in\nthe fallen world to rebel than this:\n\n    \u201cNor bides alone in hell\n    The bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel.\n    But for compulsion of strong grace,\n    The pebble in the road\n    Would straight explode,\n    _And fill the ghastly boundlessness of space_.\n    The furious power,\n    To soft growth twice constrain\u2019d in leaf and flower,\n    Protests, and longs to flash its faint self far\n    Beyond the dimmest star.\n    The same\n    Seditious flame,\n    Beat backward with reduplicated might,\n    Struggles alive within its stricter term,\n    And is the worm.\u201d\n\nAnd here follows the response to the search after the \u201cUnknown Eros\u201d:\n\n    And the just Man does on himself affirm\n    God\u2019s limits, and is conscious of delight,\n    Freedom and right,\n    And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour,\n    By day and night,\n    Buildeth new bulwarks \u2019gainst the Infinite.\n    _For, ah, who can express\n    How full of bonds and simpleness\n    Is God,\n    How narrow is He_,\n    And how the wide waste field of possibility\n    Is only trod\n    Straight to His homestead in the human heart,\n    And all His art\n    Is as the babe\u2019s, that wins his mother to repeat\n    Her little song so sweet!\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n                                    Man,\n    Darling of God. Whose thoughts but live and move\n    Round him; Who woos his will\n    To wedlock with His own, and does distil\n    To that drop\u2019s span\n    _The attar of all rose-fields of all love_!\n    Therefore the soul select assumes the stress\n    Of bonds unbid, which God\u2019s own style express\n    Better than well,\n    And aye hath borne,\n    To the Clown\u2019s scorn,\n    The fetters of the three-fold golden chain....\u201d\n\nWhat \u201cthe three-fold golden chain\u201d is that binds \u201cthe soul select\u201d to\nGod no Catholic needs to be told. Free and loyal self-sacrifice, in a\nworld where self-sacrifice, whether we like it or not, is necessary and\nmust be endured, brings us nearest and makes us likest to Him, the true\nEros who \u201cemptied himself for us.\u201d These lines will help us to read the\nriddle of the \u201cUnknown Eros,\u201d \u201csome note\u201d of whose \u201crenown and high\nbehest\u201d the poet thinks might thus \u201cin enigma be express\u2019d\u201d:\n\n    \u201cThere lies the crown\n    Which all thy longing cures.\n    Refuse it, Mortal, _that it may be yours_!\n    It is a spirit though it seems red gold;\n    And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.\n    Refuse it, though refusing be despair;\n    And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.\u201d\n\nThis thought again is more fully wrought out in the conclusion of the\nsame ode, \u201cLegem Tuam Dilexi\u201d:\n\n                          \u201c... For to have naught\n    Is to have all things without care or thought!\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    And lastly bartering life\u2019s dear bliss for pain;\n    But evermore in vain;\n    For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!)\n    Is Love\u2019s obedience\n    Against the genial laws of natural sense,\n    Whose wide self-dissipating wave,\n    Prison\u2019d in artful dikes,\n    Trembling returns and strikes\n    Thence to its source again,\n    In backward billows fleet,\n    Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet;\n    Thrilling each vein,\n    Exploring every chasm and cove\n    Of the full heart with floods of honeyed love,\n    And every principal street\n    And obscure alley and lane\n    Of the intricate brain\n    With brimming rivers of light and breezes sweet\n    Of the primordial heat;\n    Till, unto view of me and thee,\n    Lost the intense life be,\n    Or ludicrously display\u2019d, by force\n    Of distance, as a soaring eagle, or a horse\n    On far-off hillside shown,\n    May seem a gust-driv\u2019n rag or a dead stone.\u201d\n\nTo those who read these lines carefully it will not be necessary to say\nthat the author is a Catholic. His name, though modestly withheld from\nthe present volume, is not unknown. It is many years ago since Coventry\nPatmore sang his sweet love-songs, _The Betrothal_ and _The Espousals_.\n\nThey were received favorably enough by the critics\u2014far more favorably,\nindeed, than have been many higher and greater poems on their first\nappearance: Keats\u2019 _Endymion_, for instance. Then a strange silence\nstruck the poet, and he was dumb.\n\nIf the present volume is the growth of all these silent years, Mr.\nPatmore has not suffered by his solitude. Between his earlier work and\nthe present there is no comparison. Indeed, it takes a very careful\nreading of the first to detect therein the germ of the strong growth and\nmost beautiful flower that compel admiration to-day. Those were nothing\nmore than the story, told with all the fond minuteness of a gentle,\nardent, intelligent, and chivalrous young lover, of his first true love;\nof the flowery paths and pleasant ways that led up to it; of the\ngracious nothings that make that time so sweet and ever memorable to the\nlovers; the lone communings, the tremulous doubts, the bitter-sweet\nemotions, the sun and shade, the laughing April showers that weave\nLove\u2019s many-colored web and make a brief paradise for the new Adam and\nEve, with no serpent lurking in the grass\u2014all this is told delightfully\nand with delight. The verse is sweet and pleasant and flowing as the\nsubject; but it is a song to while away a drowsy hour, not to cause us\nto halt and listen in the busy march and fierce strife of life. We\nglance over them with lazy pleasure as we watch the gambols of children\nin the sun.\n\nThese later poems are of a far different and more solemn nature. The\npoet has lived much, felt much, suffered much, joyed much, thought and\nmeditated much in this long interval. He has been lifted to the heights\nof heaven; he has been dashed back to the gates of hell. He has been\ntossed on the waves of Doubt and felt the brotherhood of Despair. He has\nlost her who first taught him to sing; whose gentle glances thrilled the\ntender chords of his nature and moved them to utter sweet music. Here is\nher picture:\n\n    \u201cBut there danced she, who from the leaven\n      Of ill preserved my heart and wit\n    All unawares, for she was heaven,\n      Others at best but fit for it.\n    I mark\u2019d her step, with peace elate,\n      Her brow more beautiful than morn,\n    Her sometime air of girlish state\n      Which sweetly waived its right to scorn;\n    The giddy crowd, she grave the while,\n      Although, as \u2019twere beyond her will,\n    About her mouth the baby smile\n      That she was born with linger\u2019d still.\n    Her ball-dress seemed a breathing mist,\n      From the fair form exhaled and shed,\n    Raised in the dance with arm and wrist\n      All warmth and light, unbraceleted.\n    Her motion, feeling \u2019twas beloved,\n      The pensive soul of tune express\u2019d,\n    And, oh, what perfume, as she moved,\n      Came from the flowers in her breast!\u201d[118]\n\nFootnote 118:\n\n  \u201cThe Angel in the House,\u201d _The Espousals_, p. 61.\n\nHere is she ten years later:\n\n    \u201cHer sons pursue the butterflies,\n      Her baby daughter mocks the doves\n    With throbbing coo: in his fond eyes\n      She\u2019s Venus with her little Loves;\n    Her step\u2019s an honor to the earth,\n      Her form\u2019s the native-land of grace,\n    And, lo, his coming lights with mirth\n      Beauty\u2019s metropolis, her face!\n    Of such a lady proud\u2019s the lord,\n      And that her happy bosom knows;\n    She takes his arm without a word,\n      In lanes of laurel and of rose.\u201d[119]\n\nFootnote 119:\n\n  _The Espousals_, p. 73.\n\nAnd here at last is her \u201cDeparture,\u201d as told in the latest volume:\n\n    \u201cIt was not like your great and gracious ways!\n    Do you, that have naught other to lament,\n    Never, my Love, repent\n    Of how, that July afternoon,\n    You went,\n    With sudden, unintelligible phrase,\n    And frighten\u2019d eye,\n    Upon your journey of so many days,\n    Without a single kiss or a good-by?\n    I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;\n    And so we sate, within the sun\u2019s low rays,\n    You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,\n    Your harrowing praise.\n    Well, it was well, my Wife,\n    To hear you such things speak,\n    And see your love\n\n    Make of your eyes a growing gloom of life,\n    As a warm south wind sombres a March grove.\n    And it was like your great and gracious ways\n    To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,\n    Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash\n    To let the laughter flash,\n    Whilst I drew near,\n    Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.\n    But all at once to leave me at the last,\n    More at the wonder than the loss aghast,\n    With huddled, unintelligible phrase,\n    And frighten\u2019d eye,\n    And go your journey of all days\n    With not one kiss or a good-by,\n    And the only loveless look the look with which you pass\u2019d,\n    \u2019Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.\u201d[120]\n\nFootnote 120:\n\n  _The Unknown Eros_, pp. 63-65.\n\nIt goes without saying that such a loss must tell with incalculable\nforce on a man of intense sensibility. Trials of this kind best prove a\nman. Some they crush; others they humiliate only to exalt. If we may\njudge by the silent testimony of the book before us, his great loss made\nthis man greater. He felt, if not for the first time, more keenly than\never before, how uncertain and passing is all merely human happiness.\nThe known Eros that had charmed his life suddenly passed away \u201cwith\nsudden, unintelligible phrase,\u201d and in the darkness that fell upon his\nsoul his humbled eyes were opened to the unknown Eros who was near him\nall the while.\n\nBut, beyond and beside this, between the publication of his earlier\npoems and the latest his conversion to the Catholic faith took place. So\nwe judge, at least, from internal evidence in the books. Here was a new\nand most powerful agent introduced to act upon his nature. Moreover, the\nworld had moved in the interval. Many and mighty changes had taken place\nin the world, and they did not pass unfelt or unobserved by the silent\npoet. But before we come to these we will give one more response to his\nquestioning of the oracle before whom of all he burns his incense. In\nthe \u201cDelici\u00e6 Sapienti\u00e6 de Amore\u201d he sings joyously:\n\n    \u201cLove, light for me\n    Thy ruddiest blazing torch,\n    That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch\n    Of the glad Palace of Virginity,\n    May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see....\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Bring, Love, anear,\n    And bid be not afraid\n    Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid,\n    And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;\n    For I will sing of naught\n    Less sweet to hear\n    Than seems\n    A music in their half-remember\u2019d dreams.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    ... The heavens themselves eternal are with fire\n    Of unapproach\u2019d desire,\n    By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest,\n    In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess\u2019d.\n    O, spousals high;\n    O, doctrine blest,\n    Unutterable in even the happiest sigh;\n    This know ye all\n    Who can recall\n    With what a welling of indignant tears\n    Love\u2019s simpleness first hears\n    The meaning of his mortal covenant,\n    And from what pride comes down\n    To wear the crown\n    Of which \u2019twas very heaven to feel the want.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Therefore gaze bold,\n    That so in you be joyful hope increas\u2019d,\n    Thorough the Palace portals, and behold\n    The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast.\n    O, hear\n    Them singing clear\n    'Cor meum et caro mea\u2019 round the 'I am,\u2019\n    The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb\n    Whom they for ever follow there that kept,\n    Or, losing, never slept\n    Till they reconquer\u2019d had in mortal fight\n    The standard white.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Gaze and be not afraid,\n    Young Lover true and love-foreboding Maid.\n    The full noon of deific vision bright\n    Abashes nor abates\n    No spark minute of Nature\u2019s keen delight.\n    \u2019Tis there your Hymen waits!\n    There where in courts afar all unconfused they crowd,\n    As fumes the starlight soft\n    In gulfs of cloud,\n    And each to the other, well-content,\n    Sighs oft,\n    '\u2019Twas this we meant!'\n    Gaze without blame,\n    Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame.\n    There of pure Virgins none\n    Is fairer seen,\n    Save One,\n    Than Mary Magdalene.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Love makes the life to be\n    A fount perpetual of virginity;\n    For, lo, the Elect\n    Of generous Love, how named soe\u2019er, _affect\n    Nothing but God,\n    Or mediate or direct_,\n    Nothing but God,\n    The Husband of the Heavens:\n    And who Him love, in potence great or small,\n    Are, one and all,\n    Heirs of the Palace glad\n    And only clad\n    With the bridal robes of ardor virginal.\u201d\n\nThe Love that our poet has been seeking, has found, and here hymns in\nstrains that at times are truly little short of seraphic, will now be\nknown to the reader; and we leave this high, ethereal Court of Love that\nis human indeed, yet more than human, to glance at other and more\nordinary, though still lofty, subjects which the poet has touched.\n\nIn a sense it is really refreshing to find that he is not always in the\nskies; that he is very human and made of flesh and blood like ourselves.\nIndeed, so human is he that he openly confesses, in a poem of matchless\nbeauty and delicacy, to having found a substitute for his dead wife.\nOrdinary men, who are not poets, yet who nevertheless have hearts, will\ngive a rough reading to the exquisite ode, \u201cTired Memory\u201d (p. 93),\nwherein the poet, lamenting his wife, and confessing truthfully, albeit\nsadly, that\n\n                    \u201cIn our mortal air\n    None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,\u201d\n\nand seeking round \u201cfor some extreme of unconceived, interior sacrifice,\nwhereof the smoke might rise to God,\u201d cries in agony:\n\n    \u201cMy Lord, if thy strange will be this,\n    That I should crucify my heart,\n    Because my love has also been my pride,\n    I do submit, if I saw how, to bliss,\n    Wherein She has no part.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I was heard,\u201d he adds, let us hope untruthfully; for the\n\u201ccrucifixion of his heart\u201d took the shape apparently of a second wife,\nthus:\n\n    \u201cMy heart was dead,\n    Dead of devotion and tired memory,\n    When a strange grace of thee\n    _In a fair stranger_, as I take it, bred\n    To her some tender heed,\n    Most innocent\n    Of purpose therewith blent,\n    And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet such\n    That the pale reflex of an alien love,\n    So vaguely, sadly shown,\n    Did her heart touch\n    Above\n    All that, till then, had woo\u2019d her for its own.\n    And so the fear, which is love\u2019s chilly dawn,\n    Flush\u2019d faintly upon lids that droop\u2019d like thine,\n    And made me weak,\n    By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn,\n    And Nature\u2019s long-suspended breath of flame,\n    Persuading soft, and whispering Duty\u2019s name,\n    Awhile to smile and speak\n    With this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine...\u201d\n\nBut this is not so much the humanity to which we referred. We think that\nthree characteristics will strike the readers of these odes: 1, the high\nspiritual nature of many; 2, the deep pathos and human love of others;\n3, the lofty scorn and fierce sarcasm displayed, mistakenly sometimes,\nin certain of the odes.\n\nThe poet is an Englishman of Englishmen, and, only for his Catholic\nfaith, it seems to us that he would be one among the prophets of\ndespair, whose name is legion and whose day is the present.\n\n    \u201cO, season strange for song!\u201d\n\nhe cries in the Proem;\n\n    \u201cIs\u2019t England\u2019s parting soul that nerves my tongue\n    As other kingdoms, nearing their eclipse,\n    Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strong\n    The voice that was their voice in earlier days?\n    Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry,\n    The note which those that seem too weak to sigh\n    Will sometimes utter just before they die?\u201d\n\nTo speak frankly, we do not think it is. We do not think England\u2019s soul\nis parting yet. We think there is much good left in this world for\nEngland to do; at the very least there is much atonement to be made for\nthe many and great evils and national crimes\u2014among others that greatest\nof all, apostasy\u2014for which that soul has to answer. She can do much, she\nhas done something, toward making this atonement; and the time of grace\nwas never nearer to her than at present. Nevertheless, it is impossible\nto deny the intense pathos and exquisite beauty of the following sad\nlines:\n\n    \u201cLo, weary of the greatness of her ways,\n    There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard,\n    Her ancient beauty marr\u2019d,\n    And, in her cold and aimless roving sight,\n    _Horror of light_....\u201d\n\nIn the sixth ode, entitled \u201cPeace,\u201d he returns to this theme:\n\n    \u201cO England, how hast thou forgot,\n    In dullard care for undisturbed increase\n    Of gold, which profits not,\n    The gain which once thou knew\u2019st was for thy peace!\n    Honor is peace, the peace which does accord\n    Alone with God\u2019s glad word:\n    'My peace I send you, and I send a sword.\u2019\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Beneath the heroic sun\n    Is there then none\n    Whose sinewy wings by choice do fly\n    In the fine mountain-air of public obloquy,\n    To tell the sleepy mongers of false ease\n    That war\u2019s the ordained way of all alive,\n    And therein with good-will to dare and thrive\n    Is profit and heart\u2019s peace?\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Remnant of Honor, brooding in the dark\n    Over your bitter cark,\n    Staring, as Rispah stared, astonied seven days,\n    Upon the corpses of so many sons,\n    Who loved her once,\n    Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways,\n    Who could have dreamt\n    That times should come like these!\u201d\n\nWe do not altogether go with Mr. Patmore in this invective, however much\nwe may admire its form. England has certainly acted meanly in many\nimportant European questions of late years. She will probably so act in\nmany more in the future, if she finds it advisable or profitable. And it\nis a poor excuse to ask what other European nation has not acted or\nwould not act, had it the chance, equally meanly with England. We may be\nvery wrathful about the matter; we may have some very hard things to say\nagainst England for not drawing the sword in certain cases; yet between\nthe nation that is too ready to fight and the nation that guards\nseverely what are strictly its own primary interests without fighting,\nwe certainly prefer the latter. The bloody road is a sad road to glory,\nand its end is never seen. While, then, we may for the moment side with\nthe passionate poet who sits down in his studio and hurls his wrath in\nwords of flame against the ministry for not leading the country into war\nand reviving ancient glories, as they are called, on second thoughts,\nwhile still, perhaps, thoroughly disgusted with the ministry and the\nmeanness of their ways, we become gradually reconciled to the situation,\nand thank Heaven, though of course not the ministers, that we can sleep\nquietly in our beds. It may be an ignoble sense\u2014doubtless it is; yet if\nit prevailed a little more generally throughout the world just now, the\nworld would not, in the long run, be the sufferer from it.\n\nThere is another peace against which Mr. Patmore declaims in no measured\nterms in \u201cThe Standards.\u201d This was written soon after the launching of\nMr. Gladstone\u2019s first pamphlet, not so much against \u201cthe English\nCatholics,\u201d as the author states in a note\u2014he would do well to remember\nthat the world is a little larger than England\u2014but against _Catholics_:\nagainst the Catholic Church and its chief.\n\n                  \u201c... That last,\n    Blown from our Zion of the Seven Hills,\n    Was no uncertain blast!\n    Listen: the warning all the champaign fills,\n    And minatory murmurs, answering, mar\n    The Night, both near and far,\n    Perplexing many a drowsy citadel\n    Beneath whose ill-watch\u2019d walls the Powers of Hell,\n    With armed jar\n    And angry threat, surcease\n    Their long-kept compact of contemptuous peace!\n    Lo, yonder, where our little English band,\n    With peace in heart and wrath in hand,\n    Have dimly ta\u2019en their stand,\n    Sweetly the light\n    Shines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,\n    Whence, o\u2019er the dawning Land,\n    Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate\n    \u2019Gainst the black flag of Hate.\u201d\n\nThis call is most spirited and trenchant and bold. We can only find\nspace for the strong end:\n\n    \u201cThe sanction of the world\u2019s undying hate\n    Means more than flaunted flags in windy air.\n    Be ye of gathering fate\n    Now gladly ware.\n    Now from the matrix, by God\u2019s grinding wrought,\n    The brilliant shall be brought;\n    The white stone mystic set between the eyes\n    Of them that get the prize,\n    Yea, part and parcel of that mighty Stone\n    Which shall be thrown\n    Into the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.\u201d\n\n\u201c1867\u201d is a poem strongly written and of marked character, but with\nwhich we cannot agree. It was called out apparently by the passage of\nthe bill extending the suffrage by the conservative ministry under the\nleadership of Mr. Disraeli. It is\u2014so we read it, and we see no\npossibility of reading it otherwise\u2014a direct and bitter attack on a\nrational extension of the popular liberties, which we take to be\nradically wrong in conception:\n\n    \u201c_In the year of the great crime_,\n    When the false English Nobles _and their Jew_,\n    By God demented, slew\n    The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong,\n    One said, Take up thy Song,\n    That breathes the mild and almost mythic time\n    Of England\u2019s prime!\n    But I, Ah, me,\n    The freedom of the few\n    That, in our free Land, were indeed the free,\n    Can song renew?\u201d\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nLet us here say that if a man cannot attack Mr. Disraeli, or the Earl of\nBeaconsfield, on higher and fairer ground than on that of his being \u201ca\nJew,\u201d he may as well let that statesman alone. A man who adopts this\nvery small, very cheap, and very common mode of attack is not worthy the\nhearing of sensible men. Addressing the \u201coutlawed Best\u201d\u2014by the bye, the\npoet is very arbitrary and perplexing in his use of capitals\u2014England\u2019s\nnobles, presumably, Mr. Patmore says:\n\n    \u201cKnow, \u2019twas the force of function high,\n    In corporate exercise, and public awe\n    Of Nature\u2019s, Heaven\u2019s, and England\u2019s Law,\n    That Best, though mix\u2019d with Bad, should reign,\n    Which kept you in your sky!\u201d\n\nDoes he mean that the \u201cBest\u201d are restricted to the English nobility? If\nhe does mean this, he is quite wrong; if he does not mean it, then the\nlines immediately following are meaningless:\n\n    \u201cBut, when the sordid Trader caught\n    The loose-held sceptre from your hands distraught,\n    And soon, to the Mechanic vain,\n    Sold the proud toy for naught,\n    Your charm was broke, your task was sped,\n    Your beauty, with your honor, dead.\u201d\n\nAnd so the ode goes on to hope that\n\n    \u201cPrayer perchance may win\n    A term to God\u2019s indignant mood\n    And the orgies of the multitude,\n    Which now begin....\u201d\n\nWe cannot help thinking, if God\u2019s name must be introduced in the matter,\nthat he is not especially indignant with Mr. Disraeli and the English\nnobles and people at the extension of the suffrage, and that for this\nreason to stigmatize 1867 as \u201cthe year of the great Crime\u201d is nonsense.\nAs for \u201cthe sordid Trader,\u201d there has always been a considerable\nadmixture of the \u201cTrader\u201d in the composition of the English government,\nnoble or ignoble. The first Napoleon\u2019s estimate of the English as \u201ca\nnation of shopkeepers\u201d was not an ill-judged one; and never was that\ngovernment, at least since Reformation times, so pure and its members so\nhonest as to-day, when \u201cthe sordid Trader\u201d has a large hand in the\nadministration. We do all honor to the spirit of chivalry; we do not\nobject to class distinctions in countries where such distinctions are\nhistoric and hereditary; but we recognize manhood wherever we find it,\nand set it above all accidents of time or clime or artificial\nrestrictions. At the end of the ode, however, the poet rises above his\nsmaller self to a strain that is noble and true:\n\n    'And now, because the dark comes on apace\n    When none can work for fear,\n    And Liberty in every Land lies slain,\n    _And the two Tyrannies unchallenged reign_,\n    And heavy prophecies, suspended long\n    At supplication of the righteous few\n    And so discredited, to fulfilment throng,\n    Restrain\u2019d no more by faithful prayer or tear,\n    And the dread baptism of blood seems near\n    That brings to the humbled Earth the Time of Grace,\n    Hush\u2019d be all song,\n    And let Christ\u2019s own look through\n    The darkness, suddenly increased,\n    To the gray secret lingering in the East.\u201d\n\nWe could linger with delight over many passages in these odes, and dwell\nwith pleasure on the peculiar depth, conciseness, and expressiveness of\nthe phrases used, the mere words often which the poet chooses. His power\nof condensation and deep philosophic comprehension and observation\nconstantly strikes one. The concealed art of the whole is marvellous.\nBut this, we have no doubt, will, from the copious extracts we have\ngiven, strike the reader as it has struck us. And we hasten on to quote\na few more passages and take leave of the book.\n\nWe have called attention to the poet\u2019s scorn. It is very bitter, and is\nat its best when it attacks not so much persons or matters which are at\nleast open to question as when it deals with obvious shams and\npretentious littleness. What could be better than this placid treatment\nof the modern scientific school which can see nothing more than its\ntelescope and its instruments disclose to it?\n\n    \u201cNot greatly moved with awe am I\n    To learn that we may spy\n    Five thousand firmaments beyond our own.\n    The best that\u2019s known\n    Of the heavenly bodies _does them credit small_.\n    View\u2019d close, the Moon\u2019s fair ball\n    Is of ill objects worst.\n    _A corpse in Night\u2019s highway_, naked, fire-scarr\u2019d, accurst;\n    And now they tell\n    That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst\n    Too horribly for hell.\n    So, judging from these two,\n    As we must do,\n    The Universe, outside our living Earth,\n    Was all conceiv\u2019d in the Creator\u2019s mirth,\n    Forecasting at the time Man\u2019s spirit deep,\n    _To make dirt cheap_.\n    Put by the Telescope!\n    Better without it man may see,\n    _Stretch\u2019d awful in the hush\u2019d midnight,\n    The ghost of his eternity_.\n    Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye\n    The things which near us lie,\n    Till Science rapturously hails,\n    In the minutest water-drop,\n    _A torment of innumerable tails_.\n    These at least do live.\n    But rather give\n    A mind not much to pry\n    Beyond our royal-fair estate\n    Betwixt these deserts blank of small and great.\n    Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are,\n    Pressing to catch our gaze,\n    And out of obvious ways\n    Ne\u2019er wandering far.\u201d\n\nAt other times his strong humanity seems to die in him, the struggle of\nlife seems small and profitless, and the many ends that move us weak and\npurposeless as children\u2019s plans. \u201cHere, in this little Bay,\u201d he says:\n\n    \u201cFull of tumultuous life and great repose,\n    Where, twice a day,\n    The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,\n    Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,\n    I sit me down.\n    For want of me the world\u2019s course will not fail;\n    When all its work is done, _the lie shall rot_;\n    The truth is great, and shall prevail,\n    _When none cares whether it prevail or not_.\u201d\n\nOf course we need not remind the poet that it is just the duty of honest\nmen to see that the truth prevails and the lie rots, for his poems are a\nvery p\u00e6an of Truth and its high offices; but in this as in others of the\nodes he gives complete expression to the weariness that at times creeps\nover all who are struggling for the right. It is like the song of the\ntired mariners in Tennyson\u2019s _Lotos-Eaters_.\n\nAgain he sings:\n\n    \u201cJoin, then, if thee it please, the bitter jest\n    Of mankind\u2019s progress; all its spectral race\n    Mere impotence of rest,\n    _The heaving vain of life which cannot cease from self_,\n    Crest altering still to gulf\n    And gulf to crest\n    In endless chase\n    That leaves the tossing water anchor\u2019d in its place!\n    Ah, well does he who does but stand aside,\n    Sans hope or fear,\n    And marks the crest and gulf in station sink and rear,\n    And prophesies \u2019gainst trust in such a tide:\n    For he sometimes is prophet, heavenly taught,\n    Whose message is that he sees only naught!\n    Nathless, discern\u2019d may be,\n    _By listeners at the doors of destiny,\n    The fly-wheel swift and still\n    Of God\u2019s incessant will_,\n    Mighty to keep in bound, tho\u2019 powerless to quell,\n    _The amorous and vehement drift of man\u2019s herd to hell_.\u201d\n\nWe can quote no further at any length, though we find something to\nattract us in every ode; and the more we read the odes the more we find\nin them, the more we admire them, and the clearer they become. Though\nindependent of each other, a secret string of purpose, of aim and\naspiration, of a yearning after something that the poet has not yet\nquite caught or cannot as yet fully express, becomes apparent. To this\nis due much of the obscurity and dimness that at first offend the eye.\nCloser study, however, reveals a throbbing passion, a high ideal, gleams\nof light from heaven, the flashes of a bright intelligence warmed by a\npure heart and looking from and through all things earthly heavenwards.\nWe have seen no man of late who can lash the follies and lay bare the\nfalsehoods of the time so thoroughly. A man of intense and rooted\nconvictions, he may make mistakes sometimes, but at least he makes them\nnobly. He is very human, as we have already said. Indeed, there are\ntouches here and there in some of the odes that are strongly sensuous,\nand the two last poems, \u201cThe Rosy Bosom\u2019d Hours\u201d and \u201cThe After-Glow,\u201d\nwere better omitted from the volume. Their littleness offends and breaks\nwith a discordant jar on the high and serene atmosphere through which we\nhave been passing. It is almost like what the introduction of one of\nOffenbach\u2019s airs would be into a solemn Mass. From the poet whose\n\u201cProem\u201d is pitched in so high a key as this:\n\n    \u201cTherefore no 'plaint be mine\n    Of listeners none,\n    No hope of render\u2019d use or proud reward,\n    In hasty times and hard;\n    But chants as of a lonely thrush\u2019s throat\n    At latest eve,\n    That does in each calm note\n    Both joy and grieve;\n    Notes few and strong and fine,\n    Gilt with sweet day\u2019s decline,\n    And sad with promise of a different sun,\u201d\n\nwe certainly expected no such stuff as the following, addressed to his\nbride:\n\n    \u201cAt Dawlish, 'mid the pools of brine,\n      You stept from rock to rock,\n    One hand quick tightening upon mine,\n      One holding up your frock.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n    I thought, indeed, by magic chance,\n      A third [day] from Heaven to win,\n    But as, at dusk, we reach\u2019d Penzance,\n      _A drizzling rain set in_.\u201d\n\nThere is so much that is high and noble and full of great promise in\nthis new writer\u2014for such he really is\u2014and we have been so honest in our\nadmiration of it, that we feel all the more at liberty to point out some\nof the blemishes that mar a work of rare excellence and strange beauty.\nHere and there throughout the volume are lines and couplets that linger\nlovingly in the memory; as, for instance:\n\n    \u201cPierce, then, with thought\u2019s steel probe the trodden ground\n    Till passion\u2019s buried floods be found....\u201d\n\nAnd again:\n\n    \u201cTill inmost absolution start\n    _The welling in the grateful eyes,\n    The heaving in the heart_.\u201d\n\nWhat could be more tenderly and naturally expressive than those two last\nlines? Or than this:\n\n    \u201c_Winnow with sighs_, and wash away\n    With tears the dust and stain of clay.\u201d\n\nOften have we heard aspirations of the following kind, but never sweeter\nthan this:\n\n    \u201cYe Clouds that on your endless journey go,\n    Ye Winds that westward flow,\n    Thou heaving Sea\n    That heav\u2019st \u2019twixt her and me,\n    Tell her I come....\u201d\n\nThe poet yokes all Nature to the wings of his fancy, and makes it the\nloving slave of his Love.\n\nHow simple, yet how subtly told, is this great truth:\n\n    \u201cWho does not know\n    That good and ill\n    Are done in secret still,\n    And that which shows is verily but show!\u201d\n\nAnd this deep reflection contains a volume:\n\n    \u201cHow high of heart is one, and one how sweet of mood:\n    _But not all height is holiness,\n    Nor every sweetness good_.\u201d\n\nHere is a proverb, only too often verified:\n\n    \u201cOne fool, with lusty lungs,\n    Does what a hundred wise, who hate and hold their tongues,\n    Shall ne\u2019er undo.\u201d\n\nIn \u201cVictory in Defeat\u201d he says\u2014how truly!\u2014\n\n    \u201cLife is not life at all without delight,\n    Nor has it any might;\n    _And better than the insentient heart and brain\n    Is sharpest pain_;\n    And better for the moment seems it to rebel,\n    If the great Master, from his lifted seat,\n    Ne\u2019er whispers to the wearied servant, 'Well!\u2019\u201d\n\nWe hope to hear again and soon from Mr. Patmore. If he can avoid a\ncertain obscurity that will repel many who would be sincere and honest\nadmirers of so noble a writer, it will be better for himself and those\nwhom he addresses. Even as his work now stands we are happy to say of\nit, in closing our review, what a true poet whose name often adorns\nthese pages has said: \u201cMany parts of the book seem to me both to ascend\nhigher and descend deeper than almost anything we have had for a long\ntime.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                           NEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\n    PRIESTHOOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By E. Mellor, D.D. New\n    York: A. S. Barnes & Co.\n\nThe author in the preface of the book before us says that his lectures\nwere prepared at the request of the Committee of the Congregational\nUnion of England and Wales, and though not considered as exhausting the\nsubject, yet they furnish a contribution toward the settlement of the\nquestion of the priesthood and its claims; which settlement in the\nauthor\u2019s aim means toward doing away altogether with the priesthood and\nits claims. After a careful perusal of the volume, we must confess that\nwe think the contribution exceedingly small, and not calculated to\nsettle anything at all in the reverend gentleman\u2019s sense. For the\ndoctor\u2019s lectures are a rehash of all the old objections brought forward\nagainst the priesthood, from the time of the Reformation downwards; and\nwhich have been time and again triumphantly refuted by our\ncontroversialists; but of which refutation the author takes no heed, as\nif such men as Bellarmine, Petau, Suarez, Thomassin, and a host of\nothers down to our day had never existed. If the author had wished to\nbring towards the settlement of the subject a _real_ contribution, the\nproper course for him to pursue would have been to state the objections,\nto bring forward the answer to each one of them given by our\ncontroversialists, to show the futility and untenableness of their\nanswer, and to conclude that the objections yet hold good against the\nsubject. His having, therefore, of a set purpose, or most innocently,\nignored those answers leaves the question just where it was, and no one\nthe wiser or better by the author\u2019s lectures.\n\nIt is not possible for us in the brief space of a passing notice to\nattempt a refutation of all the objections he rehashes so carefully. It\nwill suffice to remark that all his objections, even if nothing at all\ncould be said against them, would prove nothing _positive_ against the\npriesthood. For they may be classified under two heads. The first are\nthose of purely negative character, which, as they prove nothing in\nfavor of the priesthood, neither do they prove anything against it.\nUnder this head we put the old objection, drawn from the Epistle of St.\nPaul to the Hebrews, which exalts the priesthood of Christ above the\nJewish priesthood, and which says _at least_ nothing against the\nChristian priesthood, which is identical with that of Christ.\n\nThe other class of objections is when our author examines the positive\nproofs brought in favor of the Christian priesthood. These proofs, so\nclear, so satisfactory, so weighty, the author dismisses very summarily\nby throwing doubt on the meaning of the words, after the fashion of the\nProtestant method. One example will suffice to prove our assertion.\nExamining the text, \u201cReceive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall\nforgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they\nare retained,\u201d he disposes of it as follows: \u201cIt is not needful to enter\ninto a consideration of the meaning of the words [as if the question was\nnot just about the _meaning_ of the words; or as if our Lord was\nspeaking merely for a joke] which set forth the high powers of the\napostles; whether the sins they were to remit or retain were spiritual\nsins [are there any corporal sins?], or ecclesiastical ones, or both.\nThe question before us is, be the function here referred to what it may,\nto whom was it accorded and by whom was it meant to be exercised? Almost\nevery word in the passage has been a battle-field.\u201d We would remark on\nthis passage that there is no reason for waiving the question, be the\nfunction here referred to what it may, when our Lord says expressly it\n_is_ to remit or to retain sins; that it is evident from the text, if\nwords or language mean anything any more, that this function was to be\nexercised by those to whom our Lord spoke, and by those whom they\npreceded, as the apostles were essentially first and representative men;\nbut it is useless. We only wish to call the attention of our readers to\nthe fact that, if a text clear and palpable in itself, proving a truth\nor a dogma, can be disposed of in this manner, no Christian truth can\nstand any longer, and we may as well have done with all Christian\nrevelation. For suppose we want to bring a contribution towards the\nsettlement of the question of the Divinity of Christ, all we have to do\nis to throw doubts on the meaning of the words of those texts which\nassert it, and the contribution is made, and so on to the end of the\nchapter.\n\nWe think we have made our statement good, that our author has proved\nnothing in his book against the Christian priesthood, as all his\nobjections are of a negative character.\n\nBut we will exceed him in liberality, and grant for a moment that those\ntexts by which we assert the nature and prerogatives of the priesthood\nprove nothing in its favor, as his negative objections prove nothing\nagainst it. What then? Has he gained anything by our concession, or has\nhe made any step forward towards the settlement of the question? Not at\nall. There will always be the fact of the existence of the priesthood,\nin the full exercise of all its claims, staring him in the face. How to\naccount for that fact? Our author sees the difficulty, and admits that\nto account for it by urging an ambitious conspiracy on the part of the\npresbyters or bishops is absurd, that such a conspiracy could not have\nsucceeded in establishing itself (page 74), and endeavors to account for\nit by a bias of humanity towards the priesthood identical with a bias\ntowards selfishness and sins. And he goes on developing the thought by\nsaying that the priesthood was called into being by ill-defined terrors\nof the future, by a fear of God not yet cast out by love, by the\nirksomeness of the duties of self-discipline, by the intolerable\noppressiveness of the sense of personal responsibility seeking relief by\nits transference to others.\n\nWhether all these reasons can produce a bias towards the priesthood in\nhumanity identical with the bias it has unfortunately towards\nselfishness and sin, we will leave to the author to assert. We think\nthat all those reasons, when well understood and stated properly,\ndispose humanity towards the priesthood\u2014in fact, create an instinct for\nit\u2014and that that instinct is a legitimate, noble, generous craving of\nthe human heart; and to say that they create a bias identical with a\nbias to sin is to show the most supine ignorance of human nature, of the\nhistory of mankind, and the true philosophy of history. But let that\npass; do all these reasons account for the existence and claims of the\npriesthood? According to the author himself _they do not_. For he says\nhimself all this contributed to prepare the way for a transformation of\nthat religion which knows no earthly mediator (page 75).\n\nWell, Dr. Mellor, you have accounted for the preparation of the way, but\nnot for the fact of the existence of the priesthood. When and how did it\ncome into existence? Who were the first who hatched it? Where was it\nestablished first? Who were the first Christians they imposed it upon?\nHow did they succeed in persuading them to accept it? Was there any\nopposition on the part of the Christians who first heard of such a\nthing? Must not the imposition on any Christian people of a priesthood\nwell organized into a compact body, strong and valiant, and exceedingly\nsensitive about its rights and claims, have been brought about by a\nconspiracy of somebody or other? And have you not said\u2014page 74\u2014that to\naccount for the existence of the priesthood by a conspiracy is absurd?\n\nWe wish to advert to another theory before closing these remarks. He is\nnot satisfied to have proved _more suo_ that the priesthood has no place\nin the New Testament; he strives to prove that it was congenial with the\nwhole spirit and nature of it, and the proof, he alleges, is drawn from\nthe words to the Samaritan woman: God is a spirit, and in spirit and\ntruth he must be adored; that is, by having recourse to an invisible\nchurch, is the sense he attaches to those words. Of course, if the\nchurch is not a visible body, the mountain placed on the top of\nmountains, we must necessarily do away with the priesthood and\nsacraments, etc., for they can have no scope in an invisible, abstract\nthing. But in that case why not abolish Christ the Emmanuel, the\nGod-man?\n\nWe could easily enough prove the congeniality of the priesthood with\nChristianity by showing to the reverend doctor that all the works of God\nare _permanent_. That the Incarnation is permanent in the church, and\nthat Christ the High-Priest is permanent in the Catholic priesthood, and\ndischarges all the functions necessary to bring all men to salvation in\nall time and space, in it, and through it, and so forth. But we fear the\nreverend gentleman has not philosophy enough to understand us, and we\nforbear. We will not, however, conclude our remarks without thanking the\nreverend lecturer for the polite courtesy which he uses towards the\nCatholic priesthood: first, using the _nom de guerre popish_ whenever he\nhas occasion to make mention of it; and, secondly, for associating it\nwith the priesthood of the English Episcopal Church. In the lecturer\u2019s\nmind, perhaps, it was to do honor to the Catholic priesthood by\nconfounding it with the other. It is a goodly company, no doubt, and we\nought to be highly flattered; but we respectfully decline through excess\nof modesty such unmerited honor, and would rather keep by ourselves, if\nit is all the same to the reverend doctor.\n\n\n    THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY AND\n    COUNTY OF NEW YORK, FOR THE YEAR ENDING DECEMBER 31, 1876.\n\nMuch has been written on the school question within the past few months;\nnot, however, by opponents of the public schools as they exist here, but\nby those who pay for them\u2014the taxpayers. Four million dollars for the\nDepartment of Public Schools alone is a great load. This tax increases\nyearly, and no doubt will soon reach the fifth million. The strange\nenthusiasm that led sects to trample on the religious convictions of\ntheir neighbors also led them to make light of the burden that came with\nthe victory. But five millions is terrifying. Why not six? Will there be\nno end to the increase?\n\nPerhaps the originators of the present school system recognized the\nmoral baseness of severing the instruction which may enable the child to\nact with judgment from the training which teaches him moral\nresponsibility for the judgment as well as for the action springing from\nit. They certainly desired to accomplish indirectly the chief end of\neducation by placing the school machinery in the hands of\nphilanthropists who serve without pay or emolument.\n\nThe result has been a gradual complication of the common-school system,\nso as to include technical education, and even the higher branches of\nlearning. Years ago a Free College was successfully engrafted. Next came\na Normal College for young ladies. In order to render this latter\noffshoot permanent, it was deemed necessary to provide the graduates\nwith positions in the common schools. The first step was to raise the\nstandard of proficiency for a teacher\u2019s certificate; the next, to\ndeclare that the college diploma was sufficient evidence of\nqualification, without a public examination by the city superintendent.\nThe report tells us that \u201cunder the by-law by which the graduates are\nlicensed to teach without a second examination, the city superintendent\nand the president of the college have performed their duties in perfect\nharmony.\u201d\n\nWhen the mode of testing the qualification of applicants who are not\nNormal College graduates is discussed, the report states, \u201ca system of\nrigid examinations in the superintendent\u2019s office precludes the\npossibility of incompetent persons being foisted upon the system through\npolitical or social influence.\u201d\n\nNor is this the only injury to the common schools. The favored graduates\nare not to be allowed to work for the low salaries received by primary\nteachers during the past thirty-five years. An _adjustment_ of salaries\nis demanded. These primary teachers must receive as large a sum as\ngrammar-school teachers. This simply means an increase in the cost of\nthe common-school system.\n\nIf that system, as it now exists here, answer to the purposes for which\nit was intended, it is high time for that fact to appear. Yet the\ngentlemen who have charge of the board, from the president down, seem\nstrangely to disagree on most important matters. Without committing\nourselves to one side or the other in the discussion, we take a few\ninstances. The grammar schools surely form a very important branch of\nthe system. Here is how the president treats of them in the report: \u201cOur\nprimary-school teachers have a lower rate of pay than our grammar-school\nteachers, and the primary schools have been used as training places for\nthe better-paid positions in the grammar schools. The plan for\nuniformity in salaries in these two departments has received serious\nconsideration by a committee of the board, and deserves to be carried\nout. The majority of our pupils receive all the education they have in\nthe primary, _and never enter the grammar schools_. This majority\ndeserves the first consideration. Instruction and discipline are no more\ndifficult in one than in the other, and in neither department is the\nrange of knowledge required to be mastered extensive.\u201d\n\nThe president asserts that the common-school system only succeeds in\nfurnishing primary instruction to a majority of pupils, and he would\nseem to imply that the enormous sum of four million dollars should be\nspent on the primary schools, reserving, of course, a sufficient sum for\nthe Normal College.\n\nLest his opinions as to the range of knowledge required in a teacher\nshould dishearten those who are toiling through Normal College, he\ninserts a few lines for their benefit: \u201cAn erroneous idea seems to\nprevail that a primary teacher can dispense with the higher studies. The\ntruth is that this class of teachers more than any other class needs\ntrained faculties and sound judgment, and these are only obtained by the\ndiscipline of hard and close study. Normal study and normal practice, to\nbe effective, must be based on the broad foundation of a liberal\neducation.\u201d\n\nCompulsory education the city superintendent pronounces a complete\nfailure, while those who are paid to enforce it consider it successful.\nIn the discussion some interesting facts are brought to light. The city\nsuperintendent states: \u201cMany parents, finding that our schools are\nunable to govern their wilful and unruly children, send them to the\nparochial schools. In connection with this, it is proper to call the\nattention of the board to the fact that, while the average attendance of\npupils in the schools immediately under its care has, during the past\nyear, increased less than two and a half per cent., in the corporate\nschools it has increased more than five per cent. It is also of interest\nto observe that, at the close of 1875, the number of pupils enrolled in\nthe Catholic parochial schools was 30,732, while in 1867 it was only\n16,342, showing an increase, in less than ten years, of nearly 90 per\ncent.; while the increase in the attendance of the pupils in the public\nschools has, during the same time, been only about 13 per cent. The\nincrease in attendance at the corporate schools, during the same period,\nhas been more than 57 per cent.... The question, therefore, very\nproperly suggests itself, why should a system for compelling pupils to\nattend the schools be sustained at great expense to the city while there\nis no effective means of controlling and educating those children after\nthey have been brought into the schools?\u201d\n\nThese are but a few of the spots uncovered in this interesting report.\nNever was the want of harmony in the system more manifest. The iniquity\nof taxing a people for what it cannot use, and turning over the amount\ncollected to the keeping of gentlemen who care more for pet schemes than\nfor the real object for which the tax was levied, becomes more and more\napparent. Higher education, technical education, and compulsory\neducation are battling vigorously for larger shares of the funds; and\nthe battle seems likely to end when the funds are made large enough to\nsatisfy all demands. In the meantime the common-school system is slowly\ndying out. The primary schools are becoming departments for the\nemployment of normal school graduates, and the grammar schools feeders\nfor the colleges.\n\n\n    A QUESTION OF HONOR: A NOVEL. By Christian Reid, author of _A\n    Daughter of Bohemia_, _Valerie Aylmer_, _Morton House_, etc. New\n    York: D. Appleton & Co. 1876.\n\nA well-written novel, thoroughly American in its tone, its incidents,\nand its characters, and yet availing itself of none of the peculiar\n\u201cisms\u201d which form the chief stock in trade of our native\nnovelists\u2014shunning alike the \u201cwoman question\u201d and the shallow\nmetaphysics of \u201cfree thought,\u201d depending for no share of its interest\nupon suggested immorality or social license, and vivacious in its\ndialogues without any reliance upon the slang which generally does duty\nin place of wit\u2014was something for which some sad experience in recent\nfiction had forbidden us to hope. That Christian Reid is already well\nknown to the novel-reading public is evident from the title-page of _A\nQuestion of Honor_, but that is the only one of her stories which we\nhave read. We find in it everything to praise and nothing to condemn. It\nis thoroughly well written, to begin with, its descriptions of scenery\nbeing particularly artistic and well done. The author attempts nothing\nambitious in the way of character-drawing, but her men and women live\nand have a true individuality. Their souls are not dissected after the\nmanner with which the New England school of fiction has made us too\nfamiliar for our comfort, but their manner of life and speech and\nthought is indicated with a firm, graceful, and un-provincial touch\nwhich is extremely pleasant. Altogether, the book belongs to the best\nclass of light literature. There is nothing in it to shock taste or to\njar prejudice, and everything in the way of grace of style and purity of\nthought to recommend it. So much being said by way of praise, we may add\nthat the author, who is evidently a Catholic, has drawn a picture of\nsocial life which is, no doubt, true to a reality of a better kind than\nthe ordinary novel of the day aims at, but which is nevertheless\nun-Christian. Her characters are neither underbred nor vicious; with two\nexceptions, they are simply a rather pleasing variety of pagans. We do\nnot quarrel with that, considered as a faithful transcript of reality.\nBut we shall find it a cause for real regret if a writer so graceful and\npossessing so much genuine ability does not some day give us something\nbetter than a mere transcript of lives that might have been lived and\nideals that might have been attained had the Creator never stooped to\nthe level of his creatures in order to show them the one way in which he\nwould lift them to himself.\n\n\n    BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. By the graduating class of St. Joseph\u2019s\n    Academy, Flushing, L. I. (Translated from the French of Mme. Foa.)\n    New York: P. O\u2019Shea. 1877.\n\nTranslation from the French is a literary exercise which cannot be too\nhighly commended to young students. The publication in book-form of such\nstudents\u2019 translations can scarcely be too severely condemned. Young\nladies and young men \u201cgraduate,\u201d as it is called, at an age ranging from\nseventeen to twenty or twenty-one. They are then popularly supposed to\nhave \u201cfinished\u201d their education, whereas not much more has been done\nthan to set them on the right road of learning and appreciating what\nreal education is. Indeed, if so much has been accomplished, both the\npupils and their teachers may be congratulated.\n\nTo set these young persons straightway at book-making is a grave\nmistake\u2014how grave may be gathered from the following specimens of\ntranslation which half a glance at the volume before us reveals.\n\nThe cover informs us that these are \u201cGems of Biography.\u201d The first gem\nis entitled \u201cMichael Angelo Buonarotti.\u201d The opening page introduces us\nto \u201can old domestic\u201d and \u201ca young _man_ of fifteen or sixteen\u201d \u201cat the\n_door_ of the Castle of Caprese.\u201d In page 2 the \u201cyoung man\u201d of fifteen\nis a \u201cyoung _interlocutor_.\u201d In the same page \u201cto intercept the passage\u201d\nis used in the sense of to block up the passage. In page 3, \u201cto cover\nhis curiosity\u201d is used in the sense of to hide or conceal his curiosity.\nIn page 4 we have this elegant sentence: \u201cI don\u2019t think that either of\nyou does anything wrong in the place you go.\u201d In page 5 the young man of\nfifteen, who was an Italian of four centuries back, indulges in this\npeculiar bit of slang: \u201cOne is not perfect at it _right away_.\u201d A little\nlower on the same page he says of Michael Angelo: \u201cHe is even quicker\nthan I _in piecing_ his man.\u201d \u201c_Mr._ Francis Graciana\u201d and \u201c_Mr._\nMichael Angelo Buonarotti\u201d occur quite frequently. \u201cCanosse\u201d is always\nmade to do duty for Canossa, \u201cPolitien\u201d for Politian or Poliziano, etc.\nSuch phrases as \u201cYou are not _de trop_, Signor Graciana,\u201d constantly\noccur; but we have no patience to examine further.\n\nExpressions such as these\u2014and they characterize the book, with the\nexception of \u201cThe Mulatto of Murillo,\u201d which runs fairly enough\u2014should\nnot have been allowed to pass in a written composition; but to embalm\nthem in a printed volume is simply an act of cruelty. The sketches in\nthemselves are good for nothing and were not worth the trouble of\ntranslating, inasmuch as they have been far better given in English over\nand over again. \u201cFlushing Series\u201d is the threatening legend on the\ncover. If this volume be a specimen of what is to come, we trust\nsincerely that we have seen the last of the \u201cSeries.\u201d Catholic education\nis too serious a subject for trifling.\n\n\n    THE WONDERS OF PRAYER: A remarkable record of well authenticated\n    answers to prayer. By Henry T. Williams. New York: Henry T.\n    Williams, Publisher.\n\nIt is not often that an author is his own publisher. In the present case\nthis may have been a matter of necessity; but it should not have been\nso, for the volume is interesting enough. It is a collection of\nanecdotes, the authenticity of which Mr. Williams personally vouches\nfor, showing that God answers in an immediate and direct manner the\nrequests of those who in faith ask him for temporal blessings. \u201cThey\ndemonstrate,\u201d says the author, \u201cto a wonderful degree the immediate\npractical ways of the Lord with his children in this world; that he is\nfar nearer and more intimate with their plans and pursuits than it is\npossible for them to realize.\u201d We have no disposition to scoff at the\nstories related by Mr. Williams, although the style in which they are\ntold often provokes one to mirth. There is but one true faith in the\nworld, but there are many people who hold more or less of this faith\nwithout knowing it. \u201c_Souffrons toutes les religions, puisque Dieu les\nsouffre_,\u201d said F\u00e9nelon; and our Holy Father, the Pope, has not\nunfrequently expressed his affection as well as his pity for good\nProtestants. No doubt many of the people who are spoken of in this book\nwere very good Protestants. And we are glad to observe in it this\npassage: \u201cThe present is the age of miracles as well as the past. Fully\nas wonderful things have been and are constantly being done this day by\nour unseen Lord as in the days of old when he walked in the sight of his\ndisciples.\u201d\n\n\n    THE LITTLE PEARLS; OR, GEMS OF VIRTUE. Translated by Mrs. Kate E.\n    Hughes. New York: P. O\u2019Shea. 1877.\n\nWill be found very entertaining and instructive reading for our young\nfolks, and we recommend it as suitable for a present at the distribution\nof school prizes. We think, however, that the name of the writer whose\nwork is translated should have appeared on the title-page.\n\n\n    BESIDE THE WESTERN SEA: A Collection of Poems. By Harriet M.\n    Skidmore (\u201cMarie\u201d). New York: P. O\u2019Shea. 1877.\n\nThis gifted lady has done well to collect her scattered poems into a\nvolume. They are chiefly of a devotional character, and, though unequal,\nnone of them are without merit, some of a very marked kind. She has the\ngift of song, and she sings easily and gracefully on almost any subject.\nThe following, though one of the shortest and least ambitious of the\ncollection, strikes us as a very sweet poem, and affords a fair idea of\nthe author\u2019s powers. Its title is \u201cThe Mist\u201d:\n\n    \u201cI watched the folding of a soft white wing\n      Above the city\u2019s heart;\n    I saw the mist its silent shadows fling\n      O\u2019er thronged and busy mart.\n    Softly it glided through the Golden Gate\n      And up the shining bay,\n    Calmly it lingered on the hills, to wait\n      The dying of the day.\n    Like the white ashes of the sunset fire,\n      It lay within the West,\n    Then onward crept above the lofty spire,\n      In nimbus-wreaths to rest.\n    It spread anon\u2014its fleecy clouds unrolled,\n      And floated gently down;\n    And thus I saw that silent wing enfold\n      The Babel-throated town.\n    A spell was laid on restless life and din,\n      That bade its tumult cease;\n    A veil was flung o\u2019er squalor, woe, and sin,\n      Of purity and peace.\n    And dreaming hearts, so hallowed by the mist,\n      So freed from grosser leaven,\n    In the soft chime of vesper bells could list\n      Sweet, echoed tones of heaven;\n    Could see, enraptured, when the starlight came,\n      With lustre soft and pale,\n    A sacred city crowned with 'ring of flame,\u2019\n      Beneath her misty veil.\u201d\n\n\n    ROMAN LEGENDS: A Collection of the Fables and Folk-lore of Rome. By\n    R. H. Busk, author of _Sagas from the Far East_, etc. Boston: Estes\n    & Lauriat. 1877.\n\nThese are very graceful and interesting legends. They furnish glimpses\nthat could not otherwise be well obtained of the peculiar constitution,\nhabits of mind and thought, of the common people in and about Rome. For\nthe most part they are such as have not hitherto found their way into\nliterature, being taken as they fell from the lips of narrators to whom\nthey had been household words, handed down from one generation to\nanother. The task of eliciting them seems to have been no easy one, but\nits results are pleasant enough to earn honest gratitude for the years\nof labor which have been spent in gaining them. The tales themselves\nrange under four categories, concerning which the author notes that the\nRomans are rigidly exact in adhering to, never by any chance giving a\nfairy-tale if asked for a legend, or a fairy-tale if inquired of\nconcerning ghosts. They comprise legends; ghost-stories and local and\nfamily traditions; fairy tales and _ciarpe_, or gossip. The book is\nparticularly rich in stories of St. Philip Neri.\n\n\n    PHILIP NOLAN\u2019S FRIENDS: A story of the change of Western Empire. By\n    Edward E. Hale. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.\n\nThis volume traces the course of a journey into the heart of the great\nSouth-west at the beginning of the present century. This tract was still\nthe border-land of the Aztec kings. Throughout its vast extent Spanish\nheroes had wasted their lives in _ignis-fatuus_ searches. Rich\ndiscoveries of gold did not reward their diligence, and they resigned so\ninhospitable a region to a new order of pioneers. Even to this day the\nnames of places bear token that the zeal of the Spanish missionaries was\nin no way inferior to that of the sons of Loyola along the St. Lawrence.\nSuch was their indomitable perseverance that twenty-seven missions had\nbeen established in this region previous to 1626, and a century later\nthe missionary spirit carried the Gospel among the Apaches, Moquis, and\nNavajoes.\n\nThe heroine\u2019s escort through this _terra incognita_ to Americans is\nample, the weather delightful, and we do not care to question the\nadequacy of the motive for the expedition. Nor does it matter that we\nare led to believe that Philip Nolan possesses a sterling character,\nthough what he says or does, or what apparent influence he has over the\ncourse of events, would hardly justify this conclusion.\n\nThe novel is readable, but not by any means artistic. The author lacks\nthe power to create a character that can think and act like a human\nbeing. He wishes us to believe his heroine possesses beauty,\nsensibility, and vivacity; but he lacks the subtle power to invent\nactions and conversations which impress individuality, and we gather our\nnotions of the lady more from his suggestions than from the movement of\nthe story. This seems to be the author\u2019s weakness: his figures act and\nhe suggests the motives and impulses.\n\nHis male characters miss no opportunity to abuse the missionaries. They\nregard the \u201cblack-gowns\u201d as the cause of Indian rascality and Spanish\ntreachery. Ill-luck is always traced to them, and the torrents of abuse\npoured on the servants of God lend the only touches of nature that may\nbe found in the author\u2019s passive figures. Of course these outbursts of\nhatred reveal the true character of the adventurers. They are border\nruffians.\n\nThe book is partly historical. It treats of a transition period. The\nallegiance of the inhabitants had suffered a violent dissolution. A\nborder element existed, mainly recruited from the United States. This\nelement was of service in manufacturing public opinion, and, in this\nway, might have hastened the transfer of the Louisiana tract to its\nnatural owner, the United States. We are inclined to the opinion that\nSouthern interests would have brought about the transfer without the\nassistance of European complications or scenes of border treachery.\n\n\n    REPLY TO THE HON. R. W. THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, ADDRESSED\n    TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., of the Society of\n    Jesus. New York: P. O\u2019Shea. 1877.\n\nIn this pamphlet of eighty-six pages Father Weninger has undertaken the\nalmost unnecessary task of replying to Mr. Thompson\u2019s book, _The Papacy\nand the Civil Power_. If there is anything in that book to refute, it\nrefutes itself. Mr. Thompson, however, over and above the rashness of\nattempting such a book at all, was rash enough to quote Father Weninger.\nThe natural result is the present pamphlet. The pamphlet is addressed to\n\u201cthe American people.\u201d If the American people take it up, they will be\nrewarded by some lively reading. The reverend author says at the\nconclusion: \u201cWe have handled our adversary throughout the whole\ndiscourse without gloves.\u201d No reader of the pamphlet will be inclined to\ndispute that statement.\n\n\n    THE PEARL AMONG THE VIRTUES; OR, WORDS OF ADVICE TO CHRISTIAN YOUTH.\n    By P. A. De Doss, S.J. Translated from the original German by a\n    Catholic priest. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1877.\n\nThis work, written by one of the Jesuit Fathers banished from Germany,\nis an excellent treatise on the angelic virtue, which he considers from\nalmost every point of view in a solid, instructive, and highly\ninteresting manner. No more useful book could be placed in the hands of\nthe youth of either sex.\n\n\n    GOD THE TEACHER OF MANKIND: A PLAIN, COMPREHENSIVE EXPLANATION OF\n    CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. By Michael M\u00fcller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati,\n    and St. Louis: Benziger Brothers. 1877.\n\nWe have received advance sheets of this new and most interesting work by\nthe indefatigable Redemptorist father to whom Catholics in this country\nare so much indebted for works that are really useful as well as\npopular. The book is too important in itself and on too important a\nsubject to be dismissed with a hasty notice. We shall return to it\nlater.\n\n\n    EDMONDO: A Sketch of Roman Manners and Customs. By Rev. Fr. Antonio\n    Bresciani, S.J., author of _The Jew of Verona_, etc., etc.\n    Translated from the Italian. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1877.\n\nThis is a powerfully-written story that cannot but excite the liveliest\ninterest on account of its faithful and beautiful description of Roman\nscenery and vivid delineation of Roman life and customs.\n\nThe translation is well rendered, but we do not approve of the omission\nof two chapters from the writings of such an author as the learned\nBresciani. Such men do not write anything that can be cast aside without\nloss to their readers and admirers.\n\n\n    DORA. By Julia Kavanagh.\n\n    BESSIE:\n\n    SILVIA. By the same author. D. & J. Sadlier & Co.\n\nWe have not read any one of these three stories, and can only\nacknowledge their receipt. From others that we have read by the same\nauthor we think it safe to recommend these to persons who are fond of\nnovels. Julia Kavanagh is, to our thinking, one of the purest, most\ngraceful, and most interesting story-writers of the day.\n\n\n    THE CATHOLIC KEEPSAKE. A gift-book for all seasons. Baltimore: John\n    Murphy & Co. 1877.\n\nThe best encomium we can bestow on this collection is to say that it is\nworthy of its name. The numerous sketches and stories are short,\nentertaining, and very agreeably written, even though a little ancient.\n\n\n    BESSY; OR, THE FATAL CONSEQUENCE OF TELLING LIES. By the author of\n    _The Rat-Pond; or, The Effects of Disobedience_. Baltimore: Kelly,\n    Piet & Co. 1877.\n\nA plain, simple story for children, and, as the title designates, with a\nmoral attached.\n\n\n    THE STORY OF FELICE. By Esmeralda Boyle. London: Tr\u00fcbner & Co. 1873.\n\n    SONGS OF THE LAND AND SEA. By Esmeralda Boyle. New York: E. J. Hale\n    & Son. 1875.\n\nIn these poems Miss Boyle displays much true poetic feeling and a gift\nof melodious utterance.\n\n\n\n\n                          THE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n                  VOL. XXV., No. 150.\u2014SEPTEMBER, 1877.\n\n\n                         AMONG THE TRANSLATORS.\n                           VIRGIL AND HORACE.\n\n\nThe number of versified translations of Greek and Latin poets which the\nEnglish presses continually put forth must be a never-ending surprise to\nthe practical American mind\u2014if, that is to say, the practical mind ever\nthinks of so manifestly useless and absurd a thing at all. Authors are\nsupposed to write and publishers to print for the purpose of making\nmoney; that either should work to any other end is a proposition which\nto the practical mind is simply bewildering. Yet one would think there\ncan be but little money in laboriously turning into English a quantity\nof school-books which no one reads except at school, and whose only\nvalue is in their being in a foreign tongue. Original poetry is bad\nenough; the verdict of the practical mind on that point is pretty apt to\nbe one with the view taken by Heine\u2019s rich uncle, to whom the poet, at\nthe height of his fame, was but a _Dummkopf_ (may not the uncle, alas!\nhave been right?); but poetry at second hand, the \u201cold clo\u2019\u201d of the\nMuses, Apollo\u2019s second table, the cold victual of Parnassus, a\ndisaerated Helicon\u2014the practical mind can only gasp at the notion\n(which, by the way, strikes it in quite another shape than the poetical\none we have chosen to give it, but just as effectively) and seek to\nrenew its faith in human nature over the credit column of its ledger.\n\nAnother class of minds, too, not quite so practical\u2014a class that has\nbeen at college, we will say, that knows Virgil and Horace by name, or\neven by certain quotations (_arma virumque_, _pallida mors pulsat_,\n_atra cura_, etc.), and can read Greek letters at sight, but on the\nwhole thinks Huxley a greater force in the world to-day than Homer\u2014the\ncultured class, in short, about which some of our newspapers make so\nmuch to-do\u2014can understand why the great classic poets should be turned\ninto English verse (for the benefit of those who have not been at\ncollege), but not at all why such versions should be multiplied. If you\nwant Virgil in an English dress, there\u2019s your Dryden; or Homer, there\u2019s\nPope\u2014say our person of culture is from an extreme northern latitude,\ngeographically or mentally, he will perhaps put Chapman here, and\npooh-pooh Pope with a reference to Bentley. Do you desire Horace in the\nvulgar, there\u2019s good old Francis\u2014pray, what better do you ask? What\nbetter, indeed, can you expect to get? Just look at your _Cyclop\u00e6dia\nSeptentrionalis_ and see what it tells you! So what is the use or the\nmeaning, what is the reason of being, of your Theodore Martins and your\nConingtons, your Morrises and Cranches? What is there to be had of them\nall but vanity and vexation of spirit, and time and money mislaid?\n\nSomewhat in that way, we take it, a good many folks, even of the\nbook-buying, nay, of the book-reading, sort, must feel over every fresh\nannouncement of a translation of one or other of the favorite classic\npoets. And as the supply of such things is in the long run, by a\nbeneficent law of nature, tempered to the demand, and the mind of the\nbook-buying many reacts upon, and often rules, the ardor of the\nbook-making few\u2014\u201cbook\u201d in Lamb\u2019s sense, be it understood\u2014it is not\nsurprising that the list of American translators should be of the\nscantiest. Mr. Cranch\u2019s bold venture of last year\u2014a blank-verse\nrendering of the _\u00c6neid_\u2014had few precursors or precedents. There is\nMumford\u2019s blank-verse Homer, which Professor Felton praised, and\nProfessor Arnold, strange to say, seems not to have seen; and Mr.\nBryant\u2019s blank-verse Homer, which everybody praised and a smaller number\nread. Then, some years since, a Philadelphian gentleman put forth still\nanother version of the _Iliad_ in what he said was English verse,\nalthough the precise metre of such lines as\n\n    \u201cFor Agamemnon insulted Chryses\u201d;\n    \u201cBut Agamemnon was much displeased\u201d;\n    \u201cWounded is Diomed, Tydeus\u2019 son,\n    Ulysses, also, and Agamemnon.\u201d\n\nunless it be hexameter\u2014everything you cannot scan in English verse is\nhexameter, just as everything you cannot parse in Greek is second\naorist\u2014we have been unable to determine. We have heard, also, of a\nversion of Horace by a professor in some Southern university, but this\nwe have not seen. Are there any others? Mr. E. C. Stedman ten years ago\nprinted specimens of a projected translation of Theocritus, in English\nhexameters, of considerable merit; but his reception does not seem to\nhave encouraged him to go on. And that is all, a little Spartan band of\nfour or five to oppose to the great host of British translators from\nPhaer to Morris. The practical mind may feel reassured of its country.\n\nIt is true that these English versions are often reprinted here; but it\nis only the chiefs of the army\u2014those who shine pre-eminent among their\nfellows,\n\n      \u201csicut inter ignes\n    Luna minores,\u201d\n\nor who are already known to fame for triumphs in other fields. Prof.\nConington made something of a critical furor by the bold breaking away\nfrom rule and precedent in his choice of a metre, though Dr. Maginn, in\nhis Homeric ballads, had given him the hint. In like manner our\nbooksellers have reprinted and our book-buyers bought Mr. Morris\u2019\n_\u00c6neid_ (we beg his pardon\u2014_\u00c6neids_), not because it was a new\ntranslation of Virgil, but because it was a new work of the latest\npopular poet; just as they printed and bought Mr. Bryant\u2019s Homer because\nit was the latest work of our oldest living poet, as they printed and\nbought Lord Derby\u2019s _Iliad_ because it was the work of a nobleman, and\nnot only that, but of a leading European statesman, and therefore, in\nboth aspects, a very surprising and desirable thing for our people, who\nhave never been used to connect that sort of accomplishment with the\nidea they had formed of a nobleman, still less with their notion of a\nstatesman. But we did not reprint or buy Mr. Worsley\u2019s, or Prof.\nNewman\u2019s, or Prof. Blackie\u2019s, or Mr. Wright\u2019s Homer; and even if we\nprinted, it is to be feared we did not extensively buy, Mr. Cranch\u2019s\n_\u00c6neid_, although in the way of buying English _\u00c6neids_ we might have\ndone worse. Why? Not, certainly, because any of the versions named\nlacked merit, but because they appealed to us on their merits simply,\nwithout any outside helps to popularity, and we would none of them. The\nfact is, we do not care in the least for Homer or Virgil, and we care a\ngreat deal for Morris and Bryant\u2014that is to say, while they are topics\nof talk; and it is one of the social duties, which persons of culture\nwould die almost sooner than fail in, to have something, or even\nnothing, to say about the ordained subjects of fashionable gossip.\n\nBut in England it is otherwise. There is in that country a large class\nalways to be counted on to buy any translation of a favorite classic\nwhich has successfully run the gauntlet of the reviews. This class is\nmade up of diverse elements. First, the translators themselves, who in\nEngland form no inconsiderable percentage of the literary public; for\nevery other graduate of either university who has not been a\nstroke-oar\u2014that is honor enough to win or give\u2014seems to feel within him\na sacred void unfilled, a mysterious yearning unsatisfied, a clamorous\nduty unperformed, until he has translated some classic author in whole\nor in part. Every translator, of course, buys the publications of every\nother translator to chuckle over his failures or\u2014let us do them\njustice\u2014to applaud heartily and generously the happy dexterity which\nconquers a difficult passage. Then, too, even scholars who have Homer\nand Horace at their fingers\u2019 ends, who think in Latin and dream in\nGreek, who dare to take liberties with the digamma and speak\ndisrespectfully of the second aorist\u2014even they to whom the best\ntranslation of a classic is as corked claret? or skim-milk\u2014may still buy\nProf. Conington\u2019s _\u00c6neid_ or Lord Lytton\u2019s Horace for a better reason\nthan the pleasure of finding fault with it. They know, none better,\nthat, as the former puts it, a translation by a competent hand is itself\nan \u201cembodied criticism\u201d and commentary; and even scholars, after twenty\ncenturies or so of criticism and commentary, and even of mutual\nvituperation, have not yet quite made up their minds as to the meaning,\nor at least the shades of meaning, straight through of any poet of\nantiquity. This is not to say that we have not here, too, scholars who\nmight buy a translation for the same reason; but in neither country,\nperhaps, are there so many as to be much of a stand-by in themselves.\n\nBut the mainstay of the English translator is that sort of fashionable\nsentiment in favor of classical learning necessarily fostered in a\ncountry where the university is a working element and influence in\npolitical, social, and literary life. This sentiment is not so powerful\nor wide-spread as it once was; as it was, let us say, when a couplet\nmade Mr. Addison a secretary of state, or a burlesque made Mr. Montague\na minister and Mr. Prior an ambassador\u2014an improvement still on the age\nwhen Sir Christopher Hatton danced himself into the chancellorship. But\nit is still powerful; and the university is still such a force in\nEnglish life as it never has been, as it probably never will be, here.\nThe Oxford and Cambridge debating clubs used to be regularly looked to,\nand are still, perhaps, now and again beaten up, by experienced huntsmen\nfor embryo statesmen, much as the metropolitan manager will scour the\nprovincial stage for an undiscovered star. University men edit the\nleading organs of public opinion; university men fill the desks in\nDowning Street and the Parliamentary benches in Westminster Hall;\nuniversity men yawn day after day in the club-windows of Pall Mall, and\nnight after night in the dancing and supper rooms of Belgravia\u2014no, not\nthe supper-rooms; that is, perhaps, the one spot of the fashionable\nworld where young England forgets to yawn. Like enough, the learning of\nmany of these sages is no deeper than the lore of our own pundits from\nYale and Harvard; and not a few of them, no doubt, would be far more at\nhome criticising the boat-race in the Fifth \u00c6neid (the contestants in\nwhich they would probably characterize, in their delightful idiom, as\n\u201cduffers\u201d) than construing the Latin it is told in. Such is the proud\nresult of modern university education in a free and enlightened\nAnglo-Saxon community. Nevertheless, though the university may not\nactually give learning, it creates a sentiment in favor of learning; it\ndevelops almost unconsciously a taste for it. One may say that it is\nnext to impossible for any man to go through college without taking in\nsome sense of classical culture\u2014through the pores, as it were\u2014which\nshall ever after give him a feeling of companionship, a kind of\nFreemasonry, with authors he could never read. To have lived among\nbooks, in an atmosphere of books, is itself in some sort an education.\n\nNow, with this feeling for learning diffused throughout a great nation,\nshowing itself in its chief organs of public opinion, in its selection\nof public officers, and even to some extent in its popular elections,\nand centring above all in a great city, the headquarters of all the\nsocial, political, and literary activity of the nation\u2014its book-making,\nbook-branding, book-buying centre\u2014we come to see why translations from\nthe classics should have more vogue across the water than with us. If a\ncabinet minister choose to beguile his leisure by turning Aristophanes\ninto English, it is but fit that society, before having him in to\ndinner, should know something about it, if only to avoid such a slip as\nis told of Catalani. The _prima donna_ was seated, as a great\ncompliment, next to Goethe at a state dinner, but not knowing the divine\nWolfgang\u2014or, indeed, much of anything but some operatic scores\u2014gave her\nmind to the potage rather than to the poet. A friend nudged her: \u201cWhy do\nyou not talk to M. Goethe?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know him, and he\u2019s stupid.\u201d \u201cWhat!\nnot know M. Goethe, the celebrated author of the _Sorrows of Werther_?\u201d\n\u201cThe _Sorrows of Werther_! Ah! M. Goethe,\u201d cried the _diva_ with\n_empressement_, turning to the great man, \u201chow can I ever thank you\nenough for your charming _Sorrows of Werther_! I never laughed so much\nat anything in my life.\u201d She had seen a parody of that immortal work in\na farce at Paris. Here, when our cabinet minister lets loose his\nintellectual surplus on exposures of Popery, society runs no great risk.\nEverybody can talk a little Popery\u2014an easier subject, on the whole, to\ntalk or write about than Aristophanes; and one knows pretty well what\nour cabinet minister\u2019s book is about without the fatigue of failing to\nread it.\n\nOf the feeling we have mentioned the taste for quotation in\nParliamentary debate is a good test. An apt illustration from Horace or\nVirgil had at one time almost the force of an argument. \u201cPitt,\u201d says the\nlate Lord Lytton, in the excellent preface to his unrhymed version of\nHorace\u2019s _Odes_, \u201cis said never to have more carried away the applause\nof the House of Commons than when, likening England\u2014then engaged in a\nwar tasking all her resources\u2014to that image of Rome which Horace has\nplaced in the mouth of Hannibal, he exclaimed:\n\n    \u201c'Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus\n    Nigr\u00e6 feraci frondis in Algido,\n    Per damna, per c\u0153des, ab ipso\n      Ducit opes animumque ferro.\u2019\u201d[121]\n\nFootnote 121:\n\n      \u201cEven as the ilex, lopped by axes rude\n      Where, rich with dusky boughs, soars Algidus,\n      Through loss, through wounds receives\n      New gain, new life\u2014yea, from the very steel.\u201d\n\n      \u2014Horat. _Carm._ iv. 4, Lord Lytton\u2019s Trans.\n\nPitt, indeed, is famous for such felicities. In his speech on resigning\nthe chancellorship in 1782, after claiming \u201cto have used his best\nendeavors to fulfil with integrity every official engagement,\u201d he\ncontinued: \u201cAnd with this consolation, the loss of power, sir, and the\nloss of fortune, though I affect not to despise, I trust I shall soon be\nable to forget.\u201d\n\n    \u201cLaudo manentem: si celeres quatit\n    Pennas, resigno qu\u00e6 dedit ...\n                    ... probamque\n    Pauperiem sine dote qu\u00e6ro.\u201d[122]\n\nFootnote 122:\n\n      \u201cConstant I praise her, but resign\n      With equal mind her gifts.\n      When, swift deserting me and mine,\n      Her ready wing she lifts,\n      And, _wrapped up in my virtue_, wait\n      Fair Poverty\u2019s undower\u2019d estate.\u201d\n\n      \u2014Horat. _Carm._ iii. 29.\n\n  The original of the line italicized Pitt modestly omitted.\n\nSir Robert Walpole had worse luck in attempting a like feat on his\nretirement, made not so gracefully in the shadow of a threatened\nimpeachment.\n\n    \u201cNil conscire sibi, nulli pallescere culp\u00e6,\u201d[123]\n\nFootnote 123:\n\n      \u201cConscious of no wrong done, no crime to pale at remembered.\u201d\n\n      \u2014Horat. _Ep._ 1. i.\n\nhe quoted, and was at once taken up by his rival, Pulteney, who offered\nto bet him a guinea that the line read _Nulla pallescere culpa_. Walpole\nlost, and, tossing the coin to Pulteney, the latter, before pocketing\nit, held it up to the House with the grim remark: \u201cIt is the first money\nI have received from the treasury for many years, and it shall be the\nlast.\u201d\n\nIt may well be that there is less of this sort of thing nowadays, when\nParliamentary illustrations, among the younger members at least, seem to\nbe drawn more extensively from natural history than from ancient poetry.\nYet it is but a few years since Mr. Gladstone, on going out of office,\ncreated a sensation in his turn by his application of Virgil\u2019s fine\nline,\n\n    \u201cExoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.\u201d[124]\n\nFootnote 124:\n\n      \u201cRise from our ashes thou unknown, the predestined avenger.\u201d\n\nWe cannot very well imagine a leading Congressman summoning Horace to\nenforce his argument, say, on the vital necessity to the nation of\nrepealing the Seventh Commandment until such time as his constituents at\nPodunk can get enough of their neighbors\u2019 currency to make resumption\nand patriotism convertible terms. Not only would he be doubtful of being\nunderstood, but he would be awed by that practical-minded public opinion\nat home which severely discourages in its chosen representatives such\nfrivolities as unknown tongues. He would see behind the Speaker\u2019s desk\nthe grim phantom of the honest Granger transfixing him with a spectral\nfinger, and asking him in hollow tones if he was sent to Congress to\ntalk gibberish or to get that little appropriation; he would see the\nstill more appalling phantom of the local editor grimly sharpening his\nquill and squaring himself for another of those savagely sarcastic\narticles about our erudite Congressman, who spends his time\u2014the time we\npay for, etc.\u2014muddling his brains\u2014the few brains, etc.\u2014over obsolete\nrubbish in the Congressional Library, while he neglects his\nconstituents\u2019 interests and allows that little bill, etc., etc. He sees\nall this, and, instead of Horace, he quotes Josh Billings, and everybody\nis satisfied.\n\nNow, this is not meant to the dispraise of either the Congressman or his\nconstituents, but only to show that here political is divided from\nliterary life in a way quite unknown in England. The scholar in politics\nis a fond illusion of youthful enthusiasm. Our politicians do not write;\nour literary folks do not go to Congress. A stray editor, to be sure,\nnow and then gets in, tumbling over, as it were, from the Reporters\u2019\nGallery, or a flourish is made of sending Mr. Motley or Prof. Lowell\nminister to some foreign court; but these are spasmodic exceptions, and\nusually result in a way to confirm the rule. We have no counterparts to\nDisraeli, or Gladstone, or Mr. Lowe, or Sir George Cornewall Lewis, or\nthe Duke of Argyle. Perhaps, however, a new era is dawning with the\npresent Secretary of the Navy, who spells his literature with a \u201cP.\u201d\n\nWe have said enough\u2014the reader may think more than enough\u2014to show why\ntranslations from the classics should flourish better in England than\nhere, and also, by implication at least, why of all classic authors,\nwith the one exception of Homer, Horace and Virgil should most have\ntaken the translators\u2019 attention. From one or other of these are all the\nParliamentary quotations we have given; and it is indeed, we believe,\nconsidered what our English friends call \u201cbad form\u201d to quote in debate\nany other Latin or Greek. The cause of this popularity it is easy to\nsee. Horace and Virgil, in the usual college curriculum, are put into\nthe student\u2019s hands just as he has got over his initial struggles with\nthe language, and his mind is a little freed to feel some of the\nbeauties as well as the difficulties of the author\u2014to know that the rose\nhas fragrance as well as thorns. Homer, on the contrary, from his\ncomparative ease, comes much earlier in the Greek course, and becomes so\nmuch the more distasteful to the learner as Greek is harder than Latin;\nits very letters are aliens to his eyes, its alphabet is a place of\nbriers and brambles. It is hard to get over these early dislikes. St.\nAugustine confesses a hatred for Homer thus implanted in his school-days\nwhich he could never overcome, while he declares Virgil to be the\ngreatest and most glorious of poets\u2014a censure echoed by Voltaire, who\npronounced the _\u00c6neid, le plus beau monument qui nous reste de toute\nl\u2019antiquit\u00e9_, and asserts that if Homer produced Virgil, it was his\nfinest work.\n\nBoth in Virgil and Horace there is much to captivate a youthful mind and\neverything to keep the affections won. The story of the _\u00c6neid_ is not\nonly full of life and color and motion, with plenty of fighting, which\nall boys love of course, but, despite its later-discovered want of a\nreasonable hero or heroine, its episodes\u2014the Trojan horse and the sharp\nstreet-fight in fallen Ilium, the mysterious journey through the shades\nunder a spectral moon, the races in the Fifth Book, the midnight scout\nof Nisus and Euryalus, the plucky young Iulus fleshing his maiden shafts\nat the siege in Book Ninth, the gallant onset and tragic fate of the\nyoung champions Lausus and Pallas\u2014all are apt to take the boyish\nimagination; and in older years the haunting melody of the verse, the\npensive grace that suffuses the telling of the story, renew and rivet\nthe early charm.\n\nHorace, too, is full of matter that even boyhood can taste and manhood\nnever tires of. The lovely bits of rural landscape scattered like so\nmany cabinet pictures through the odes\u2014the sweltering cattle standing\nknee-deep under the oak-boughs in the pool of Bandusia, the bickering,\npine-arched rivulet by whose side Dellius takes his nooning; the sunny\nslopes of Lucretilis dotted with sheep; the romantic beauty of the Happy\nIsles\u2014do we not all recall the delight we felt when these enchanting\nlittle sketches first smiled on us from the weary drudgery of Tacitus\nand Thucydides like vistas of fresh meadow and woodland and cascade\ncaught by the wayfarer from the hot and dusty highway? We did not so\nwell relish then, in that out-door time of life, the warm little\ninteriors that contrast and set off these: the glowing fire-side piled\nhigh with logs, made merry with old Falernian, and laugh and joke and\nfriendly talk, while the rain beats upon the roof and the snow whirls\nabout Soracte, and, drawing closer to the cheery blaze, we hug ourselves\nin the \u201ctumultuous privacy of storm\u201d; the jolly dinner-parties, where we\nhelp to quiz Quinctius for his gravity or chaff that harebrain Telephus\nout of his affectation of wisdom; the more sober feasts with M\u00e6cenas or\nVirgil at the little Sabine Farm\u2014but these, too, we soon get to know,\nand linger over them with fond familiarity. Then, too, we win to the\nsecret of that genial though pagan philosophy which comes home to the\n\u201cbusiness and bosoms\u201d of all of us, and whose precepts are so pithily\nexpressed we cannot forget them if we would: that there is a time when\nfolly is the truest wisdom; that he alone is happy who is content with\nlittle; that a wise man takes care of the present and lets the future\ntake care of itself, because, as Cowley puts it,\n\n    \u201cWhen to future years thou extend\u2019st thy cares,\n    Thou dealest in other men\u2019s affairs\u201d;\n\nthat we must pluck the blossom of to-day, or we may never have a chance\nat the morrow\u2019s.\n\n    \u201cGather ye rosebuds while ye may,\n      Old Time is still a-flying,\u201d\n\nsays Herrick, a later Horace. As we grow older and graver his\nsympathetic companionship keeps pace with us still, and in his deeper\ntones there are hints which even Christian civilization need not disdain\nto add to its scheme of a lofty and noble life.\n\nSo it is that England for three centuries back\u2014indeed, ever since she\nbegan to have a literature to house them in\u2014has been trying to\nnaturalize and domesticate these Roman poets. In this, however, Virgil\nhad nearly a century the start of Horace, owing, no doubt, to the nature\nof his great work, which appealed to the romantic impulses of that early\ntime. Indeed, long before either the _\u00c6neid_ or the _Iliad_ was\ngenerally known in Europe, the stories of both had been made over into\nthe form of romances: the former by Guillaume de Roy in French, the\nlatter by Guido de Colonna in Spanish. De Roy\u2019s _Livre d\u2019Eneidos_,\ntranslated into English and printed by Caxton, \u201cno more resembles\nVirgil,\u201d cries the good Bishop of Dunkeld wrathfully, \u201cthan the devil\ndoes St. Austin.\u201d It was probably to clear the fair fame of his beloved\npoet that the bishop brought out his own quaint and spirited Scotch\nversion in 1513. The first complete English translation came out in\n1558; but in the previous year appeared the Second and Fourth Books,\ndone into blank verse by the Earl of Surrey, notable as the first-known\nblank verse in the language, unless we are to take as such the unrhymed,\nalliterative metre used by Longland in _The Vision of Piers Ploughman_.\nIt is thought to have been Surrey\u2019s design, had he lived, to translate\nthe remaining books. Had he done so, he would have added an ornament to\nour literature.\n\nAs it is, the distinction of giving the first full translation of the\n_\u00c6neid_ to the language rests with a Welshman\u2014Dr. Thomas Phaer. He\nhimself, however, did only the first nine books and part of the Tenth;\nwhen dying, the work was taken in hand and finished, with the Thirteenth\nor supplementary book of Maffeo Veggio, by another physician, Dr. Thomas\nTwynne. English doctors then and afterwards seem to have had a\npropension towards the Muse. Dr. Borde, Dr. Thomas Campion (\u201cSweet\nMaster Campion\u201d), and Dr. Thomas Lodge\u2014they seem to have had a\npropensity to be named Thomas also\u2014were only the first of a long line of\ntuneful leeches, ending with our own Drs. Holmes and Joyce. Is there any\noccult connection between physic and Parnassus, between rhyme and\nrhubarb, between poetry and pills? and is Castaly a medicinal spring?\nPhaer\u2019s version, which is printed in black-letter, is in rhymed\nfourteen-syllable verse, or \u201clong Alexandrines\u201d\u2014a metre which Chapman\nafterwards took for his Homer, and to which Mr. Morris, the latest\ntranslator of the _\u00c6neid_, has reverted.\n\nThe long Alexandrine has perhaps as much right as any to be called the\nEnglish national metre in the sense in which we call the Saturnian verse\nthe national metre of the Latins. Chaucer took his heroic couplet from\nthe Italian or French, and Surrey, no doubt, had from the same source,\nor perhaps the Spanish, the hint for his blank verse. A curious parallel\nmight be drawn between Surrey and Ennius, who, like him, introduced a\nnew or \u201cstrange metre\u2014the Greek hexameter\u2014and, like him, by doing so\nrevolutionized the versification of his country. Another point in common\nis that each has been reproached for his action. Ascham impliedly finds\nfault with Surrey because he did not choose hexameters or unrhymed\nAlexandrines instead of his unrhymed verse of ten or eleven syllables;\nand certain of those dreadful German scholars, who know everything and a\nfew things besides, assure us that Ennius dealt a fatal blow to Latin\npoetry when he foisted on it a metre unsuited to its genius. One can\nhardly help speculating on the result had Virgil had to content himself\nwith the _horridus numerus Saturnius_ as the vehicle of his tenderness\nand elegance, or if Hamlet had had to soliloquize in the metre of\nSternhold and Hopkins. Would the rude instrument have cramped the\nplayer, or would the genius of the player have elevated the instrument?\nAs Macaulay points out, the old nursery line,\n\n    \u201cThe queen is in her parlor eating bread and honey,\u201d\n\nis a perfect Saturnian verse on Terence\u2019s model:\n\n    \u201cD\u0103b\u016bnt m\u0103l\u016bm M\u0115t\u0113ll\u012b N\u00e6v\u012d\u014d p\u014f\u0113t\u00e6.\u201d\n\nHow would Mr. Gladstone\u2019s menace,\n\n    \u201cExoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,\u201d\n\nhave sounded in that shape? Should we recognize, do you think, those\n\n                            \u201cDaffodils\n    That come before the swallow dares, and take\n    The winds of March with beauty,\u201d\n\ndone up in long Alexandrines or in such hexameters as those of Master\nAbraham Fraunce, which moved Ben Jonson to dub him a fool:\n\n    \u201cNow had fiery Phlegon his dayes revolution ended,\n    And his snoring snout with salt waves all to be-washed,\u201d\n\nor even in Sidney\u2019s or Spenser\u2019s, which were, in truth, little better?\nNo doubt Virgil and Shakspere, being great poets, would have subdued\nwhat they worked in to their own artistic uses. Yet all the same let us\nbe thankful to the humbler artisans who furnished to their hands pipes\nfit for them to play on, and to make such music as the world shall never\ntire of hearing. It should be added that the likeness between the\nEnglish and the Latin reformer does not extend to the degree of\nrefinement attained by each. In this respect Surrey is much the more\nadvanced. Ennius never got over the barbarism of excessive alliteration\nwhich seems to mark the early metrical efforts of all peoples.\n\n    \u201cSicut si quando vincleis venatica velox\u201d;\n    \u201cSicut fortis equus spatio qui forte supremo\u201d;\n    \u201cQuai neque Dardaneis campeis potuere perire\n    Nec cum capta capei, nec cum combusta cremari.\u201d\n\nThe last passage Virgil copied, as he did many others, and it is\ninstructive to see how his more polished taste tones down his\npredecessor\u2019s jingle:\n\n    \u00b8           \u201cNum Sig\u00e6is occumbere campis,\n    Num capti potuere capi? num incensa cremavit\n    Troja viros?\u201d[125]\n\nFootnote 125:\n\n      \u201cWas there no dead man\u2019s place for you on that Sigeian plain?\n      Had ye no might to wend as slaves? Gave Troy so poor a flame\n      To burn her men...?\u201d\n\n  \u2014_\u00c6neid_, vii. 294 seq., Morris\u2019 Trans. p. 175.\n\nSurrey\u2019s blank verse has the quaintness of his age, but not its defects\nof taste. Martial, writing about two centuries after Ennius, sneers at\nhim, much as Ennius had sneered at his predecessor, N\u00e6vius\u2014he who\nlamented that Latin poetry was to die with him!\n\n    \u201cEnnius est lectus, salvo tibi Roma Marone.\u201d[126]\n\nFootnote 126:\n\n  \u201cAnd Rome reads Ennius while Virgil lives!\u201d\n\nPope, writing nearly the same length of time after Surrey, has only\npraise for him: \u201cSurrey, the Grenville of a former age\u201c\u2014at least, Pope\nmeant it for praise.\u201d\n\nTo return to Phaer. It may be of interest to the reader to contrast the\nmanner of the earliest and latest English translators of the _\u00c6neid_.\nVenus\u2019 admonition to \u00c6neas (ii. 607) is thus given by the Welsh doctor:\n\n    \u201cThen to thy parent\u2019s hest take heede, dread not, my mind obey:\n    In yonder place where stones from stones and bildings huge to sway\n    Thou seest, and mixt with dust and smoke thicke stremes of reekings\n       rise,\n    Himselfe the god Neptune that side doth furne in wonders wise:\n    With forke three tinde the wall vproots, foundations allto shakes;\n    And qvite from vnder soile the towne, with ground-works all uprakes.\n    On yonder side with Furies most, dame Juno fiercely stands,\n    The gates she keeps, and from the ships the Greekes, her friendly\n       bands,\n    In armour girt she calles.\n    Lo! there againe where Pallas sits, on fortes and castle-towres,\n    With Gorgon\u2019s eyes, in lightning cloudes enclosed, grim she lowres,\n    The father-god himself to Greekes their mightes and courage steres,\n    Himselfe against the Troyan blood both gods and armour reres.\n    Betake thee to thy flight, my sonne, thy labours\u2019 ende procure,\n    I will thee never faile, but thee to resting-place assure.\n    She said, and through the darke night shade herselfe she drew from\n       sight;\n    Appeare the grisly faces then, Troyes en\u2019mies vgly dight.\u201d\n\nMr. Morris gives it thus:\n\n    \u201cAnd look to it no more afeard to be\n    Of what I bid, nor evermore thy mother\u2019s word disown.\n    There where thou seest the great walls cleft and stone turn off from\n       stone,\n    And seest the waves of smoke go by with mingled dust-cloud rolled,\n    There Neptune shakes the walls and stirs the foundings from their\n       hold\n    With mighty trident, tumbling down the city from its base.\n    There by the Sc\u00e6an gates again hath bitter Juno place\n    The first of all, and wild and mad, herself begirt with steel,\n    Calls up her fellows from the ships.\n    Look back! Tritonian Pallas broods o\u2019er topmost burg on high,\n    All flashing bright with Gorgon grim from out her stormy sky;\n    The very Father hearteneth on, and stays with happy might\n    The Danaans, crying on the gods against the Dardan fight.\n    Snatch flight, O son, whiles yet thou mayst, and let thy toil be\n       o\u2019er;\n    I by thy side will bring thee safe unto thy father\u2019s door.\n\n    \u201cShe spake, and hid herself away where thickest darkness poured.\n    Then dreadful images show forth, great godheads are abroad,\n    The very haters of our Troy.\u201d\n\nThe half-lines respond to the imperfect verses in Virgil, which, in the\nfashion of the Chinese tailor, both Mr. Morris and his forerunner\nconscientiously copy. Phaer has other oddities, such as \u201cSybly\u201d for\nSibylla, \u201clymbo\u201d for Hades, \u201cDei Phobus\u201d for Deiphobus, and \u201cDuke\n\u00c6neas\u201d; while every book is wound up with a _Deo Gratias_ by way of\ncolophon. Let us hope it was not too fervently echoed by his readers.\nIndeed, Phaer\u2019s version is better than its fame.\n\n\u201cAfter the associated labors of Phaer and Twynne,\u201d says Warton in his\n_History of English Poetry_, \u201cit is hard to say what could induce\nRichard Stanihurst, a native of Dublin, to translate the first four\nbooks of the _\u00c6neid_ into English hexameters.\u201d The remark shows less\nthan the wonted perspicuity of the historian of English poetry. What\ninduces any translation, except the belief (the fond belief!) that the\nwork it aims to do has not yet been done? Master Stanihurst, like many\nother learned men then and since, was firmly persuaded that the\nhexameter was your only measure for a translation of Virgil. But there\nare hexameters and hexameters, and Master Stanihurst\u2019s were unluckily of\nthe other sort. A poet who proclaims his intention to \u201cchaunt manhood\nand Garboiles,\u201d and gives us\n\n    \u201cWith tentive list\u2019ning each wight was settled in hark\u2019ning\u201d\n\nfor\n\n    \u201cConticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant,\u201d\n\nor\n\n    \u201cYou bid me, \u00f4 princesse, to scarifie a festered old sore\u201d\n\nas an equivalent for\n\n    \u201cInfandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem,\u201d\n\nmust be content with \u201caudience fit though few.\u201d Sir Philip Sidney and\nGabriel Harvey and a few other choice spirits, all bitten with the same\nflea, patted poor Stanihurst on the back and told him that what Nash\ncalled \u201chis [and their] foul, lumbring, boisterous, wallowing measures\u201d\nhad \u201cenriched and polished their native tongue.\u201d But the rest of the\nworld laughed with Nash, and may still for that matter; for Stanihurst\u2019s\nversion is full of conceits even droller than Phaer\u2019s. \u201cBedlamite\u201d for\n_furiat\u00e2 mente_, \u201cDandiprat hop-thumb\u201d for _parvulus_, Jupiter \u201cbussing\nhis pretty, prating parrot\u201d\u2014_i.e._, Venus\u2014and Priam girding on his sword\nMorglay, are some of them. The last shows how the glamour of the Gothic\nromances, in which Virgil figured sometimes as a magician\u2014the _Sortes\nVirgilian\u00e6_ long outlived their origin\u2014still hung about even the\nlearned, of whom Stanihurst was indisputably one\u2014 \u201ceruditissimus ille\nnobilis\u201d Camden calls him. It may be interesting to add that he was a\nCatholic, a friend of Campion the martyr, and died in exile because of\nit.\n\nStanihurst seems to have played the part of horrible example to all\nafter-translators; for although Surrey\u2019s metre has been repeatedly used,\nand Phaer\u2019s of late by Mr. Morris, and we might add by Prof. Conington\n(for his octosyllabic verse is but a variation of the Alexandrine, which\nskipped capriciously from twelve syllables to sixteen[127]), the\nhexameter has never again, so far as we know, been applied to rendering\nthe _\u00c6neid_. Yet the measure which in English goes by that name seems\nfar better adapted, _pace_ Mr. Arnold, to the pensive grace of Virgil\nthan to the grave majesty of Homer. It may be true, as scholars contend,\nthat it by no means reproduces the effect of the Greek or Roman\nhexameter, and it may be equally true, as other scholars tell us, that\nwe have no conception of what was the effect of the Greek or Roman\nhexameter on the Greek or Roman ear\u2014though the second objection might,\nin malicious hands, prove an embarrassment for the first. Yet as we read\nHomer and Virgil there is no doubt that hexameters can be\u2014indeed, that\nsuch have been\u2014constructed which do go far to reproduce the effect of\nHomer and Virgil, according to the modern reading, upon the modern ear.\nGrant that this is an entirely wrong effect; that either Homer or\nVirgil, hearing his verses read in modern fashion, would be sure to clap\nhands to ear, and cry out in an agony with Martial:\n\nFootnote 127:\n\n  See Warton, _Hist. E. P._ sec. 1.\n\n    \u201cQuem recitas, meus est, O Fidentine, libellus;\n    Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus\u201d;[128]\n\nFootnote 128:\n\n      \u201cMy piece you\u2019ve been spouting! I ne\u2019er should have known:\n      Next time, if you love me, do say it\u2019s your own.\u201d\n\n                              \u2014Mart. _Epigr._ i. 39.\n\nit is yet the only effect we are ever likely to get until the day of\njudgment; and what are you going to do about it? Of course it is\nhopeless to try to imitate Homer\u2019s sonorous harmonies\u2014the \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u1f70 \u03c4\u1f70 \u1f49\u03bc\u03ae\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd\n\u1f14\u03c0\u03b7, as Maximus Tyrius calls them, the lovely Homeric words\u2014the\n\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03c6\u03bb\u03bf\u03af\u03c2 \u03b2\u03bf\u03b9\u03bf \u03b8\u03b1\u03bb\u03ac\u03c3\u03c3\u03b7\u03c2 and \u1f00\u03c1\u03b3\u03c5\u03c1\u03ad\u03bf\u03b9\u03bf \u03b2\u03b9\u03bf\u1fd6\u03bf. It is not in ours or any\nother tongue but Homer\u2019s own to do it. But Mr. Arnold has shown that we\ncan imitate afar off his rhythm and metrical effect, and why should we\nnot do that? If anybody can give us hexameters that please the English\near and make it fancy, without being conscious of too much elongation,\nthat it is listening to the faintest echo of Homer\u2019s mighty lyre or\nVirgil\u2019s silver string, why, let us have them, prithee, and a _fico_ for\nthe grammarians.\n\nIn this desultory review of Virgilian translators we mean to confine\nourselves to the _\u00c6neid_; but we may say in passing that the _Eclogues_\nwere, about 1587, put into unrhymed Alexandrines by Abraham Fleming, who\nthus nearly anticipated the metre Prof. Newman, after much\nexperimenting, hit on as the proper one to render Homer, and which, as\nProf. Marsh says, has the disadvantage (or the merit?) to American ears\nof suggesting our own epic strain of _Yankee Doodle_. Fleming, however,\nas will be seen from the following quotation, taken from the beginning\nof his Fourth Eclogue, only dropped into our national music\noccasionally:\n\n    \u201cO Muses of Sicilian ile, let\u2019s greater matters singe!\n    Shrubs, groves, and bushes lowe delight and please not every man.\n    If we do singe of woods, the woods be worthy of a consul.\u201d\n\nWhile Virgil was thus engrossing the attention of Elizabethan scholars\nHorace lay comparatively neglected, although it was an era of\ntranslation, as transitional periods in the literature of a country are\napt to be. Nearly all the Latin poets then extant were done into English\nbefore the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the Greek series\nbegan sonorously with Chapman\u2019s Homer soon after. Even that most perfect\nof all actual or possible poets, as her courtiers called her\u2014Queen\nElizabeth\u2014tried her hand at it in a translation of part of the _Hercules\n\u0152teus_ of Seneca. But no complete version of Horace seems to have\nappeared prior to Creech\u2019s towards the end of the seventeenth century.\nIn 1567, however, Thomas Drant published _Horace, his Arte of Poetrie,\nPistles, and Satyres Englished_. In his preface is one quaint remark, to\nthe truth of which all Horatians will bear witness: \u201cNeyther any man\nwhich can judge can judge it one and the like laboure to translate\nHorace and to make and translate a love booke, a shril tragedie, or a\nsmooth and platleuyled poesye. Thys I can truly say, of myne owne\nexperyence, that I can sooner translate twelve verses out of the Greeke\nHomer than sixe out of Horace.\u201d\n\nThe first version of the _Odes_ was that of Sir Thomas Hawkins, about\n1630. This, though it seems to have been popular enough to go through\nseveral editions, was far from complete, the lighter odes being omitted\nas being \u201ctoo wanton and loose.\u201d Our own edition, which is the fourth,\ndated 1638, contains about two-thirds of the odes and epodes. Here and\nthere we find a tolerably good verse:\n\n    \u201cWhat man, what hero [Clio] wilt thou raise\n    With shrillest pipe or Lyra\u2019s softer lays?\n      What god whose name in sportive straine\n      Echo will chaunt thee back againe?\u201d[129]\n\nFootnote 129:\n\n  _Carm._ i. 12.\n\nThis will compare not too disadvantageously with the latest version\u2014Lord\nLytton\u2019s\u2014which, indeed, is not especially good:\n\n    \u201cWhat man, what hero, or what god select\u2019st thou,\n    Theme for sweet lyre or fife sonorous, Clio,\n    Whose honored name shall that gay sprite-voice, Echo,\n          Hymn back rebounding?\u201d\n\nAs a rule, however, Sir Thomas is stiff\u2014a fault common to almost all\ntranslations of the easiest of lyrists up to a much later period. Yet in\nthis century there were many versions of single odes, epistles, and\nsatires, some of which have scarcely ever been surpassed. Such, for\ninstance, were Ben Jonson\u2019s rendering of Ode IV. 1, _Ad Venerem_, and\nMilton\u2019s of I. 5, _Ad Pyrrhum_, severally included by Mr. Theodore\nMartin and Lord Lytton in their respective versions as beyond their\nskill to better; Dryden\u2019s fine paraphrase of III. 29, _To M\u00e6cenas_,\nwhich Mr. Martin, non sordidus auctor, pronounces finer than the\noriginal; and, on a lower plane, however, Roscommon\u2019s version of the\n_Art of Poetry_. Of these, Milton\u2019s has been said to touch the\nhigh-water mark of translation, and is indeed very elegant and close.\n\nBen Jonson\u2019s set translations are often injured by a rigid strictness\nwhich Horace might have warned him against:\n\n    \u201cNec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus Interpres,\u201d[130]\n\nFootnote 130:\n\n      \u201cNor word for word translate with painful care.\u201d\n            \u2014Horat. _De Arte Poet._, Francis\u2019 Trans.\n\nand which evoked Dryden\u2019s protest against \u201cthe jaw-breaking translations\nof Ben Jonson.\u201d Yet even in fetters he danced better than most; and some\nof his translations, notably the one mentioned above and one of Martial,\n_Liber, amicorum dulcissima cura tuorum_, it would be hard to pick flaws\nin.\n\nIn Jonson\u2019s day, however, there was no mean between word-for-word\nrendering and the loosest paraphrase, until Denham laid down something\nlike the true rule in his verses to Fanshawe on the latter\u2019s translation\nof Guarini:\n\n    \u201cThat servile path thou nobly dost decline\n    Of tracing word for word and line for line....\n    A new and nobler way thou dost pursue\n    To make translations, and translators too.\n    They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,\n    True to his sense, but truer to his fame.\u201d\n\nCowley, who translated largely from Horace, runs to the opposite extreme\nfrom Jonson: his versions are as much too free as Jonson\u2019s are too\nclose. Yet some of his single lines are unmatched for felicity and\nforce:\n\n    \u201cHence ye profane, I hate ye all,\n    Both the great vulgar and the small\u201d\n\n(a phrase which has passed into a proverb) for _Odi profanum vulgus et\narceo_; \u201cThe poor rich man\u2019s emphatically poor\u201d for _Magnas inter opes\ninops_; \u201cFrom his toucht mouth the wanton torment slips\u201d for _Fugientia\ncaptat Flumina_; and, best of all, perhaps, \u201cHe loves of homely\nlittleness the ease\u201d for Martial\u2019s _Sordidaque in parvis otia rebus\namet_\u2014which shows how a deft translator can, without leaving his\noriginal, breathe into it, so to speak, a beauty it scarcely had\u2014such\nlines as these make us regret either that Cowley did not translate more\nor that he was unable to transfer to his own poetry more of the same\nsimple elegance of thought and word.\n\nAll of Cowley\u2019s contemporaries were not so happy, however, as he in\ntheir attempts to better Horace, though many tried it. One of them, Sir\nEdward Sherburne, claps a periwig on Mt. Soracte:[131]\n\nFootnote 131:\n\n  Horat. _Carm._ i. 9. One of the best versions of this ode is that of\n  Allan Ramsay, in the Scotch dialect.\n\n    \u201cSeest thou not how Soracte\u2019s head\n    (For all his height) stands covered\n    With a white periwig of snow,\n    While the laboring woods below\n    Are hardly able to sustain\n    The weight of winter\u2019s feathered rain?\u201d\n\nHe had evidently been reading and, with Dryden, admiring Sylvester\u2019s _Du\nBartas_:\n\n    \u201cAnd when the winter\u2019s keener breath began\n    To crystallize the Baltic Ocean,\n    To glaze the lake, to bridle up the floods,\n    And periwig with snow the bald-pate woods.\u201d\n\nThe conceited style then in vogue was not well fitted to do justice to\nHorace\u2019s _simplex munditiis_, although he was now universally read and\nesteemed\u2014\u201cThe next best poet in the world to Virgil,\u201d Cowley calls\nhim\u2014and has left the mark of his genial influence on all the writers of\nthe time. One finds the Horatian sentiment running like a golden thread\nthrough the minor poetry of James and Charles I., at times informing\nwhole poems with a pithiness of phrase and a dignity which Horace might\ncall his own. Such are Marvell\u2019s ode on _The Return of Cromwell_, such\nShirley\u2019s \u201cThe glories of our blood and state\u201d and \u201cVictorious men of\nearth, no more\u201d\u2014all three among the finest productions of their kind in\nthe language.\n\nAfter the Restoration the business of translation was resumed with\nvigor. Dryden in his Virgil, and, somewhat later, Pope in his Homer, set\na fresh model which was followed by all their successors until Cowper\u2019s\nMiltonic _Iliad_ came to break the spell and pave the way to the modern\nstyle, which aims to combine freedom with fidelity, ease of manner with\ncorrectness of meaning, and so far as possible to reproduce the author\nhimself, form as well as matter. Creech\u2019s Horace was hardly a success,\nbeing stiff and ungainly without being particularly close, and, while\nshowing in its metre some sense of the poet\u2019s rhythmical grace, scarcely\nattempted to render the characteristic delicacy of his wording\u2014that\n_curiosa felicitas_ we all have heard of. In this\u2014and indeed in\nevery\u2014respect the version of Dr. Francis, which came out about half a\ncentury later, was greatly superior as a whole to any previous one, and\ntook with Horatians a position the best of its successors has found it\nhard to shake. Indeed, with such of the poet\u2019s lovers as date from the\ngolden age of Consul Plancus, Francis is still the paramount favorite,\nand you will talk to them in vain of the merits of Robinson or Lytton,\nof Conington\u2019s fluent ease or Martin\u2019s sprightly grace. Francis is in\nthe main faithful, generally pleasing, and always respectable at least,\nbut, like most of his rivals, he lacks a certain lightness of touch, an\nairy gayety of treatment in the minor odes which no one, we think, has\nhit off so well as Mr. Theodore Martin. They are, as that accomplished\nwriter says, in many instances what would be called now _vers de\nsoci\u00e9t\u00e9_, and their chief value rests in the poet\u2019s inimitable charm of\nmanner. Unless some notion of this can be given, the translator\u2019s labor\nis lost, and he offers his readers but a withered posy from which color\nand perfume alike are fled.\n\n\n\n\n                             ALBA\u2019S DREAM.\n BY THE AUTHOR OF \u201cARE YOU MY WIFE?\u201d \u201cA SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,\u201d\n                                  ETC.\n                               PART III.\n\n\nGondriac had seen many strange things come to pass of late years:\nstupendous things, as when M. le Marquis climbed up the cliff like a\ncommon man to condole with old Caboff; wonderful things, as when M. le\nMarquis was rescued by old Caboff in the storm; tragic things, as when\nhe went forth and died in the place of young Caboff; but nothing so\nuntoward as this had ever happened at Gondriac before: M. le Marquis was\ngoing to marry Alba. The wonder was both lessened and heightened by the\nromantic story concerning Alba\u2019s birth, which was spread through the\nvillage simultaneously with the announcement. The fatherless girl, who\nhad owned no name but Alba, was the daughter of a nobleman, who had been\naffianced by his family to a great heiress, but who fell in love with a\npenniless orphan and married her secretly; a few months after his\nmarriage he was ordered off to Egypt with Bonaparte and was killed in\nhis first engagement. The young wife lived to give birth to her child,\nand then died, leaving it to the care of an old friend of her mother, a\nchildless widow, whom the Revolution had ruined, and who now gained her\nbread by needlework. Virginie accepted the charge, and adopted as her\nown the little one, whose sole provision was a pittance which the father\nhad been able to secure to his wife as a dower. Her heart, hungering for\nsome one on whom to lavish its great capacity for loving, bestowed upon\nthe baby more than a mother\u2019s tenderness; she loved it with a love that\nseemed to gather up into one passion all the loves that a woman\u2019s heart\ncan hold. She left the shelter of her native place, where all had known\nher from her childhood, and where, in spite of her poverty, she held her\nhead high, and went to live at Gondriac, where no old familiar face\nwould smile upon her, but where her secret would be secure, and none\nwould know that she was not Alba\u2019s mother. This was the story she told\nHermann when he asked her for Alba\u2019s hand.\n\n\u201cI thought to let the secret die with me,\u201d she said, \u201cand that the child\nmight have loved me to the end as her own mother; but now she must hear\nthe truth. To me she will always be my child, my very own\u2014as truly mine\nas if I had given her birth.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet her know nothing until she is my wife, and then I will break it to\nher,\u201d replied the young lord; \u201cand I doubt but she will love you more\ndearly still when she learns the truth.\u201d\n\nAlba was very happy\u2014so happy at times that it was more than she could\nbear; she would often heave great sighs for very bliss as she sat upon\nthe rocks, her hand clasped in Hermann\u2019s.\n\n\u201cWhy do you sigh, my Alba?\u201d he asked her once reproachfully. \u201cAre you\nafraid I shall not make you happy?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am afraid of being too happy; I am so happy now that I could die of\nit. And by and by, when I am your wife, and you will never leave me, and\nthat all I used to long for when I believed in fairies shall be mine\u2014I\nfeel as if the joy of it must kill me. Hermann, we will try to be very\ngood together, will we not? We will do our best to make everybody good\nand happy. There shall be no poor people here, and when they are sick we\nwill have a good doctor to come and take care of them, and I will go and\nnurse them myself. I hope they will all love me. Do you think they will?\nSometimes I am frightened lest they shouldn\u2019t care for me any more when\nI am a great lady, living in a castle.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou foolish child! They will care ten times more for you then,\u201d said\nHermann, \u201cbecause you will be able to do so much for them.\u201d Then,\nlooking at her with a smile at once tender and suspicious, \u201cWhat a\ngreedy little thing it is for love!\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t care for me as\nI do for you, Alba, or else my love would be enough for you; I don\u2019t\nlong for anybody\u2019s love but yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not so much that as that I long to make them happy,\u201d explained\nAlba; \u201cand how can I do that until I can make them love me?\u201d\n\nThey quarrelled over this philosophy of hers, and then made plans for\nthe future.\n\n\u201cYou will take me to see all the beautiful places you have told me of,\nwill you not?\u201d said Alba.\n\n\u201cI will take you round the world, if you like it\u2014that is, if you don\u2019t\nget tired of it before we are half way.\u201d\n\n\u201cTired! with you? I should never be tired\u2014never, never, never.\u201d She\nrepeated the word in a low voice, as if speaking to herself, while\nlooking dreamily out over the sea, where a ship, with her white sails\nset, was drifting away into the sunset.\n\n\u201cWhere shall we go to first?\u201d said Hermann.\n\n\u201cTo Egypt, I think; or perhaps to Italy\u2014I am dying to see the city with\nthe streets of water, and Spain, where the palaces grow, and Moorish\ntemples; but let us go first of all to Germany and see the countries\nwhere you won the battles. I should like that best. O Hermann, Hermann!\nhow happy we shall be.\u201d And then, as if her heart were overfull of joy,\nshe began to sing. Hermann liked this better. Those silent, rapturous\nmoods sometimes frightened him, as if they were a demand for something\nthat he could not give. M. de Gondriac was as much in love as a man\ncould be, and so far he would have no difficulty in making his wife\u2019s\nhappiness his chief concern; but he was quite aware that this was not to\nbe achieved by the usual commonplace means. Something more than ordinary\nlove, let it be ever so tender and chivalrous, was needed to satisfy the\ncravings of a heart like Alba\u2019s. She worshipped him as the noblest of\nmen; and it was no easy thing to realize this ideal. Would he be able to\nachieve it, to live up to her exalted standard through the coming years,\nwhen the glamour of young love\u2019s idealizing mists should have cleared\naway, and his wife would be at leisure to observe him with her clear,\nintelligent eyes?\n\nBut a cloud was gathering over these sunny days of courtship. M. de\nGondriac was summoned to Paris by the chief of the War Office. The call,\nof course, brooked no delay. His arm, though nearly healed, still\nincapacitated him from joining his regiment; but he must go in person\nand certify to this. Though they might admit him unfit for active\nservice, he might be retained in attendance on the emperor; Bonaparte\nliked to have high-sounding names upon his personal staff. But Hermann\nwould not alarm Alba by suggesting this possibility. They parted in\nsweet sorrow, looking forward to meeting soon again.\n\nAlas! is it a decree of fate that the course of true love never shall\nrun smooth? Are poets prophets, or do the loves of all humanity conspire\nto make their voice an oracle? The days went by, and Alba waited; but\nHermann neither came nor wrote, and they could get no tidings of him.\nHad he been ordered to the frontier, in spite of his disabled arm, and\nkilled or taken prisoner? Doubts crowded upon Alba\u2019s heart until they\nalmost stopped its pulses. But Virginie feared even worse than this,\nand, if her fears were true, there was no comfort in store. M. de\nGondriac had felt strong enough to brave the emperor\u2019s displeasure at a\ndistance; but how when he stood face to face with it, with the power of\nthat magnetic will, with the ridicule of his equals, with the\nblandishments of refined court ladies? Was his love of the metal to\nchallenge these antagonistic forces and prevail?\n\nSpring passed, and summer, and now it was harvest-time; the reapers\nwaded through the yellow fields, the sickle was singing in the corn, the\ngrapes hung heavy on the vine. But no news came from Hermann. Alba pined\nand drooped, and at last fell ill. The doctor came from X\u2014\u2014 and saw her,\nand said that it would be nothing; it was weakness and oppression on the\nheart; she wanted care and nourishment. But no care revived her. She\ngrew weaker and weaker, and the low fever came, and there was no\nstrength left to battle with it. But Virginie would not see the danger;\nwhen the neighbors came for news, she would answer, with a smile on her\nwan face: \u201cThank God! no worse. The child is very weak; but last night\nshe slept a little.\u201d Thus twenty days went by, and then there came a\nchange, and on the twenty-first day, as the Vesper bell was tolling, the\n_cur\u00e9_ came, and Alba was anointed as a bride for heaven. The old man\nwept like a child as he blessed her and departed. \u201cGod comfort you, M\u00e8re\nVirginie!\u201d he said, laying his hand heavily on the mother\u2019s head. But\nVirginie was like one in whom the faculty of pain or of despair was\nparalyzed. \u201cShe will not die, M. le Cur\u00e9. God is merciful; his heart is\nkind,\u201d she said. When the sun was going down, Alba spoke: \u201cMother, bring\nme his picture and the pearls he gave me; I should like to wear them\nonce before I go....\u201d They brought the pearls and decked her in them;\nthey smoothed back the moist, dark hair and crowned her with the queenly\ncoronet; they clasped the necklace round her throat and the bracelets on\nher arms, while she lay quite passive, as if unconscious of what they\nwere doing. Never had she looked so beautiful as at this hour in the\ndeepening twilight, with the shadow of death stealing on her and\ntouching her features with a celestial pathos. Virginie could not but\nsee it now. Alba was going from her. But, no! it should not be. No,\nthere was a God in heaven, a merciful, all-powerful God; it should not\nbe. He would save her child even at this extremity. She had not cried to\nhim loud enough before, but now she would cry and he should hear her,\nnow that she knew how dire was her need of him. She knelt down at a\nlittle distance from the bed and began to pray. It was terrible to see\nher; to see how despair and faith wrestled within her. The agony of the\nstrife was visible in her face; it was pale as death, and the big drops\nstood upon her brow, that was contracted as by breathless pain; her eyes\nwere open, fixed in a rigid stare as on some unseen presence; her white\nlips, drawn in, were slightly parted, as if to let the words escape that\nshe could not articulate; her hands were locked together, bloodless from\nthe fierce grip of the fingers. Old Jeanne cowered in the corner as she\nwatched her.\n\nAn hour went by. The tide was coming in; the waves were washing on the\nshore with the old familiar sound. The moon rose and stirred the shadows\non the plain; its light stole through the latticed window and overflowed\nin a silver stream upon the bed, illuminating it like a shrine in the\ndarkened chamber.\n\n\u201cMother!\u201d murmured Alba faintly.\n\n\u201cMy child!\u201d\n\n\u201cKiss me, mother.... I am going....\u201d\n\n\u201cAlba! my child!... O God! O God! have pity on me....\u201d\n\nBut Alba had passed beyond the mother\u2019s voice.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere are cries, we sometimes say, that might wake the dead\u2014cries that\nsound like a disembodied spirit, as if a human soul had broken loose\nwith all its terrors and hopes and concentrated life of love and agony,\nand, escaping in a voice, traversed the void of space and pierced into\nthe life beyond. Those who have heard that cry will remember the silence\nthat followed it\u2014a silence like no other, infinite, death-like, as if\nthe pulse of time stood still, hearkening for the echo on the other\nside.\n\nThe neighbors came and grieved. \u201cHow beautiful she is!\u201d they whispered\nto one another, as they stood by the couch where Alba lay smiling in her\ndeath-sleep and decked in her bridal pearls. \u201cNo wonder our young lord\nloved her. How strange that he should have left her! Has she died of\nlove, I wonder?\u201d Many thought more of Virginie than of Alba. \u201cShe will\ndie of grief,\u201d they said. For Virginie had not shed a tear, not uttered\none wail of lamentation, since that great cry that followed Alba into\nthe dark beyond. She and Jeanne had arrayed her in her bridal\ndress\u2014those splendid robes of silk and lace which her lover in his pride\nhad prepared for her; it was a foolish fancy, but the mother,\nremembering how her lost one had loved these splendors, seemed filled\nwith a vague idea that they might even now give her some pleasure. When\nthis was done she sat with her hands lying loosely locked together on\nher knees, gazing on the dead face, as mute and motionless as if she\nwere dead herself. Yet some said they noticed a strange look like a\ngleam of disbelief in her eyes now and then, as if she thought death but\nmocked her with some kind intent.\n\nThe night and the day passed, and the night again, and to-day at noon\nthe dead bride was to be borne away. Friends crowded in for a last look;\nthen, as the hour drew near, there was a movement without, a sound of\nvoices chanting in the distance, the tramp of feet approaching, and they\nknew it was time for them to go. But Virginie still sat there, pallid,\nimmovable, like a statue set up to stir pity and reverence in the hearts\nof the beholders. Mme. Caboff laid a hand upon her arm and pressed her\ngently to come away. \u201cThe child is not dead, but sleepeth,\u201d she said;\n\u201ctake comfort in that thought.\u201d\n\nThen Virginie rose like one waking from a trance, and that strange gleam\nof disbelief which some had noticed in her eyes was now visible to all.\n\u201cGo ye away, my friends,\u201d she said, \u201cand leave me here awhile with my\nchild and God.\u201d There was no murmur of dissuasion, though many thought\nthat grief had made her mad; the majesty of grief subdued them to\nobedience, and one by one they passed out of the room in silence.\n\nThen Virginie knelt down and lifted up her voice in a last supreme\nappeal to God.\n\n\u201cShe is not dead, but sleepeth! Was that a message from thee, Lord? Thou\nhast whispered it to my heart before. And what if she were dead\u2014are not\ndeath and sleep alike to thee? Canst thou not wake from one as easily as\nfrom the other? She is not dead, but sleepeth! When the Jews laughed\nthee to scorn, thou didst glorify thy Father and raise the dead girl to\nlife again, and all the people blessed thee. Thou didst pity the widow\nand restore her son, though she knew not of thy presence nor believed in\nthee. Wilt thou be less pitiful to me, who believe and cry to thee? Son\nof David, look down upon me, have pity upon me, and awake my child! She\nis not dead, but sleepeth. Canst thou not wake her from this sleep as\nreadily as thou didst raise Lazarus from the grave where he had lain\nfour days? Christ crucified! Redeemer! Saviour! Father! hearken to my\nprayer and have mercy on me! By thy pity for the widow, and for Lazarus\u2019\nsisters, and for thy own Mother at the foot of the cross, and for John\nand Magdalen, and for thy murderers, have pity on me and call back my\nchild! She is not dead, but sleepeth. Father! by the birth of thy dear\nSon, by his thirty-three years\u2019 toil and poverty, by his bloody sweat,\nby his scourging, by the nails that were hammered into his hands and\nfeet, by the lance that cut into his heart, by his death and sleep in\nthe sepulchre, by his victory over the grave, by his resurrection and\nhis reign of glory at thy right hand, hear me and give me back my child!\nShe is not dead, but sleepeth. Lord! I believe in thy name, I believe in\nthy love, I believe in thy mercy and omnipotence. I believe; O God! help\nthou my unbelief. The child is not dead, but sleepeth.\u201d\n\nShe rose from her knees, and, pressing the crucifix with one hand on the\nbreast of the dead, she held the other uplifted with priest-like\nsolemnity. There was a pause of intense and awful silence; the chanting\nwithout had ceased; every ear was strained, every heart stood still,\nlistening to the prayer they dared not say _amen_ to. Then Virginie\u2019s\nvoice arose again, sounding not like hers, but rather like a voice that\ncame from some depth of life within, beyond her, and making the mute\nvoid vibrate to its solemn tones: \u201c_Alba! in the name of the living God,\nawake!_...\u201d\n\nThen silence closed upon her speech, and every pulse was stilled to a\ndeeper hush.... The white lids quivered, the sleeper\u2019s breast heaved\nbeneath the pressure of the cross, sending forth a soft, long sigh, and\nAlba was awake.\n\n\u201cMother!\u201d\n\nAnd now a cry arose from without the cottage which must surely have been\nheard in heaven; for the rocks took it up and bore it out to sea, and\nthe waves rolled it back to the reverberating shore, and deep called\nunto deep, and louder and louder it rose and rang, until it thrilled the\nwelkin, and heaven sent back to earth the shout of jubilee and praise.\n\nBut there was one who did not join in it. When the first ecstasy of her\nthanksgiving was past, and Virginie had clasped the loved one in her\narms, and felt the warm blood returning to the cold lips under her\nkisses, she saw that Alba was like one whose spirit was not there; her\neyes were open in a wide, intense gaze, as if straining to see beyond\ntheir ken, her ears were deaf to the sounds around her, hearkening for a\nvoice that others could not hear.\n\n\u201cMy child, my darling, let us give thanks together!\u201d Virginie said when\nthey were once more alone. But Alba turned her eyes upon her mother with\nthat far-off gaze that seemed to reach beyond the veil. \u201cMother,\u201d she\nsaid, speaking in low, fearful tones\u2014\u201cmother, why did you call me back?\nDid you not know I was with God? I was with God,\u201d she continued in the\nsame hushed tones; \u201cI was in heaven with the angels and all the blessed\nones, so full of happiness that I have no words to speak of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cTell me what you saw, my child. It was a dream; but God sometimes gives\nus visions in a dream.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was no dream, mother. I was dead. My soul had left my body and taken\nflight into eternity. I stood before the throne and saw the vision of\nGod. But of this I cannot speak.\u201d\n\nAlba paused like one whom reverence made dumb, and then continued: \u201cI\nsang. O the joy of victory that thrilled through me as I lifted up my\nvoice, and heard it amongst all the voices of the blessed! That was the\nwonder. Voice upon voice uprose, till all the hosts of heaven were\nsinging, and yet you heard each singer distinct from all the rest; each\nvoice was different, as star differeth from star when all are shining.\nAnd there was room in the vast space for silence. I heard the silence,\ndeep, palpitating, as when we hold our breath to listen, and I heard the\nsongs as they rolled out in full organic numbers from the countless\nchoir. I heard my own voice, clear and sweet and loud like the clarion\nof an archangel; thousands of nightingales singing as one bird in the\nstillness of the summer night were nothing to it! And then the joy of\nrecognition and of love\u2014the very air was warm with love. Every spirit in\nthe angelic host\u2014the saints, the prophets of the old law, the martyrs\nand confessors and virgins\u2014all loved me and knew me with an individual\nknowledge, and I knew them. And\u2014I know not how it was\u2014though all were\nresting in a halcyon peace, none were idle; they were busy at some task\nin which the faculties of mind and soul, new-born and glorified and\nquickened a thousand-fold, were eagerly engaged. I seemed to see that\nthey were governing the world and caring for the souls of men\u2014of those\nchiefly whom they loved on earth. For this I know: that no true bond is\nbroken by death; the loves of time live on into eternity; the sorrows of\nearth are felt and pitied up in heaven, and the blessed clasp us in\ntheir cherishing sympathies closer than they did on earth. For the life\nin heaven is manifold, and, while the blessed citizens toiled, and sang\nas if their very being were dissolving into music, their souls were\ndwelling in the light of the vision of God, feeding on its beauty in\nunbroken contemplation. All was activity, and a fulness of life compared\nto which our life is death, yet all was steeped in peace, in rest\nunutterable. O mother! why did you call me back from it?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was a dream, my child; your soul was in a trance; perhaps it was at\nmy prayer God woke you from it in time. But, Alba, are you not glad to\nbe with me again? It seems to me that even in heaven I should have\nmissed you!\u201d\n\n\u201cI did not feel that I was parted from you; you seemed nearer to me\nthere than when I was on earth. But, mother, I saw standing near the\nmartyrs, yet not of them, a soul arrayed in crimson\u2014that flaming light\nthat I call crimson, not knowing its real name\u2014and she stretched forth\nher arms to greet me with a greater joy than all the rest, and she\ncalled herself my mother?\u201d\n\nVirginie\u2019s heart stood still. Had heaven betrayed her secret? If so, it\nwere vain to try to hide it any longer. She told the truth to Alba. \u201cAnd\nnow,\u201d she said, \u201cyou will love that mother in heaven better than you\nlove me!\u201d There was a look of humble, beseeching misery in her face as\nshe said this that was most pitiful. But Alba did not answer; that\nfar-off gaze was in her eyes again. At last, slowly turning them upon\nVirginie, she said: \u201cNow I can understand why you called me back. If you\nhad been my real mother you would have let me go; your love would have\nbeen brave enough to part with me, to suffer when you knew that I was\nhappy.\u201d\n\nThere was no anger in her voice, no reproach in her look; but the words\nheld the bitterness of death to Virginie, and pierced her heart like\nblades of poisoned steel.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe mystery of the young lord\u2019s silence ceased to occupy the first place\nin local gossip, now that a more exciting theme had been provided, but\nit held its place in Virginie\u2019s mind and was seldom out of her thoughts.\n\n\u201cWould it not be a great joy to you to see him again?\u201d she said to Alba.\n\n\u201cI should be glad of it, mother; but the time is so short it matters\nlittle whether I see him here or not.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou never loved him, Alba.\u201d\n\n\u201cI loved him with my whole soul; I loved him too well. I would have died\nfor love of him.\u201d\n\nShe had died for love of him, the mother thought.\n\n\u201cAnd yet you do not care to see him again?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am satisfied to wait until we meet in heaven.\u201d\n\nThe spark was dead; it was useless trying to blow the cold ashes into a\nflame. Virginie devoured her heart in uncomplaining silence. If Alba\u2019s\nreproach was merited, if her love had been at fault, tainted in its\norigin with egotism and cowardice, then it was meet that she should\nsuffer and expiate the sin.\n\nBut Hermann, meantime, was on his way to Gondriac. He had not been\nkilled or wounded or faithless; he had been confined at Vincennes by\norder of the emperor, in hopes that solitude might help him to see the\nfolly of this intended marriage, and bend his stubborn fancy to the\nreasonable will of his imperial master. The experiment had failed. The\nemperor was dethroned, a captive now himself, and M. de Gondriac was\nfree and speeding on the wings of love to claim the reward of his\nfidelity.\n\nBefore he reached the cottage on the cliff he had learned the story of\nAlba\u2019s\u2014resurrection, was it?\u2014of her having passed in spirit through the\ngates of death, and come back to life so changed men hardly knew her for\nthe same. \u201cIt was a trance,\u201d the _cur\u00e9_ said, when Hermann stopped on\nthe road to take his greeting.\n\n\u201cIt was death, monseigneur,\u201d said the fishermen who gathered round his\nsaddle-bow. \u201cShe died of love, and the mother\u2019s prayer called her back\nto life; but the child left her heart in heaven and pines to be gone\nagain.\u201d\n\nHermann sent his horse on to the castle and made his way up the cliff,\npondering this strange story. She had died of love of him, they said in\ntheir simple superstition, and was pining to die again. Sweet Alba! He\nwould make her life such a paradise of love that she should have no\nreason to regret her glimpse of heaven. As he drew near the low,\nthatched cottage the purr of Virginie\u2019s spinning-wheel came to him with\nthe old familiar welcome. He opened the door and entered unannounced.\n\n\u201cMonseigneur!\u201d She dropped her yarn with a cry.\n\nThe glad surprise subsided, Hermann in a few words explained all, and\nthen heard the details of the wonderful tale Virginie had to tell.\n\n\u201cYou will find her somewhere on the rocks,\u201d she said. \u201cIt may be that\nthe sudden sight of you will startle her dead heart into life and bring\nback a thrill of the old happiness; if not, I pray God to take her to\nhimself, for the sight of the child\u2019s patient misery is killing me.\u201d\n\nBut M. de Gondriac had no such dismal apprehensions as he went out to\nseek his beautiful one. How would she meet him? Would it be with the old\nshy glance of pleasure, giving him her hand to kiss, and forbidding any\ntenderer caress by that air of virgin pride that sat on her so queenly?\nOr would joy break down the barriers and send her bounding into his\narms? He trod the sandy grass with a quick, strong step, but the sound\nof his footfalls fell upon her ear unheeded; she sat motionless, with\nher face set towards the sea till he was at her side.\n\n\u201cAlba!\u201d\n\nThen she looked up, and a pale blush, faint as the heart of a white\nrose, clouded her face.\n\n\u201cHermann!\u201d\n\nHe caught her in his arms and kissed her, and she took his caress as she\nmight have done a brother\u2019s. The placid tenderness of her manner chilled\nhim.\n\n\u201cAlba! my wife! You are glad to see me back again!\u201d he said, still\nholding her close to him and looking into her eyes for some answering\nsigh, some flash of the old coy, shrinking fondness; but they looked\nback into his limpid, calm, passionless as a dove\u2019s. She smiled and\nlifted up her face to kiss him. He bent down to receive it, but that\nproffered kiss was like the iron entering into his soul. The Alba whom\nhe had left was not here; she had gone, he knew not whither, and in her\nplace another being had come\u2014a shadow of the woman who had loved him\nwith all a woman\u2019s tenderness. He sat down beside her and related the\nhistory of his life since they had parted, all he had suffered for her\nsake, and how light he held the suffering now that the reward was his;\nand she listened calmly, and spoke her gratitude with a gentle humility\nthat was very touching. Then they were silent for a while, Alba\napparently not caring to speak, Hermann longing to do so, but not daring\nto say what his mind was full of. At last Alba broke the spell.\n\n\u201cYou know that I was dead,\u201d she said; \u201cI should be in heaven now, if\nmother had not called me back.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy darling! I will make a heaven for you on earth.\u201d\n\n\u201cI once thought that was possible. I thought that heaven could give me\nnothing better than your love; but now I know that all the love of earth\nis but a shadow, a mockery compared to the love of heaven. It is\nnothing, nothing beside it! O Hermann! when we talk of happiness we are\nlike blind fools. We don\u2019t know what happiness means.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlba! you have ceased to love me, or you would not speak so!\u201d\n\n\u201cI love you as well as ever\u2014nay, better than I did before; but, O\nHermann! I should have loved you so infinitely better up in heaven. If\nyou knew what the life of love is there!\u201d\n\nShe clasped her hands, and her dark eyes shone with a supernatural\nlight, as if the brightness of glory, invisible to him, were reflected\nthere.\n\n\u201cYou will tell me about it, darling, but not now,\u201d he said, a terrible\ndread seizing him. \u201cI want you to think of me a little now, and not so\nmuch of heaven. We must fix our wedding-day; it shall be soon, shall it\nnot? There is no need for any delay.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, there is no need,\u201d she repeated. Then, after a pause, she said,\nlooking calmly into his face: \u201cHermann, why should we not wait to wed\none another in heaven?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is no marrying or giving in marriage there,\u201d he replied: but he\nhad grown ashy pale, and the chill of a horrible fear was in his heart,\ndeepening with every word that Alba spoke.\n\n\u201cYou are angry with me,\u201d she said, misunderstanding his pallor and the\nchanged expression of his face. \u201cO Hermann! don\u2019t think that I have\nceased to love you. I love you with all my heart. I have never loved any\none, never could love any one, but you. Say you are not angry with me!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, darling, I am not angry; but I thought we were to be so happy\ntogether, and I see that you are changed. But, Alba, I will not hold you\nto your promise; you shall not marry me unless you wish it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do wish it. I wish to make you happy. I have no other wish on earth\nnow.\u201d\n\nHe kissed her without answering, and they went home.\n\nThe terrible fear which for a moment possessed him was soon dispelled.\nAlba was not mad. Whatever was the mysterious change that had come over\nher, her reason was unimpaired. But all else was changed: the conditions\nof life had become reversed, the spiritual relations between the seen\nand the unseen were in some way disturbed, and things thrown out of\ntheir natural proportion. But the nature of the experience by which this\nchange had been wrought eluded Hermann\u2019s grasp, baffling reason while it\ncompelled belief. Belief in what? Had Alba\u2019s spirit, infringing the laws\nthat rule our mortal state, broken loose from its prison, and been\npermitted to stand before the gates of pearl and taste of those joys\nwhich it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive, and then\nbeen sent back to earth, home-sick as an exiled angel? Was this thing\npossible? Is anything not possible to Him who bids the lilies blow and\nthe stars shine, and who holds the sea in the hollow of his hand?\nHermann de Gondriac did not stop to investigate the mystery. His was one\nof those human souls whose deepest convictions lie dormant in their\ndepths, not only unanalyzed but unrecognized, for want of a voice to\nquestion them. He loved Alba, and he would trust to his love to mend the\nbroken spring and reconcile to the happiness of earth this heart\nenamored by the bliss of heaven.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe wedding-day rose bright and fair; a golden glow was on the flood;\nthe sun shone on the breakers, turning the green to sapphire blue, while\nthe tide flowed in, swelling the anthem of the dawn; the yellow woods\nround Alba\u2019s home glistened like a golden zone, fit symbol of the\nenchanted life awaiting her within their magic ring. No sad Vesper bell\nwas tolling; merrily the silver-footed chimes, like messengers of joy,\ntripped on to meet her on the morning air, as she came forth, once more\narrayed in bridal pearls. A train of little children, clad in white and\npiping canticles, went on before, strewing flowers upon her path.\n\nPale as a lily in her snow-white robes was Alba, her dark eyes glowing\nwith a light that was most beautiful; and when the bridegroom turned to\ngreet her at the altar, her smile, they said, was like the smile of an\nangel.\n\nThe wedding rite began; the ring was passed, the solemn words were\nspoken: \u201c_Until death do part ye...._\u201d Then Alba, with a cry of joy, as\nwhen we greet some vision of delight, fell forward and was caught in\nHermann\u2019s arms.\n\n\u201cFarewell, beloved!... Mother, farewell!...\u201d\n\n\u201cAlba! my wife! O God! can it be possible?...\u201d\n\nBut loud above the lover\u2019s wail and that of all the people Virginie\u2019s\nvoice was heard in tones more of jubilee than lamentation: \u201cThy will be\ndone, O Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord!\u201d\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThat night the moon rose late; the sea-gulls, poised above the purple\nflood, heard the waves wash softly on the noiseless shore; the stars\ncame out and looked into the shining sea below; the rocks gleamed white\nas snow-peaks in the moonlight, and all the land lay listening to the\nsilver silence. From out its depths a voice was calling, though only\nthose who hearkened heard it, and the voice said: \u201cThou shalt see His\nface, ... and night shall be no more, and they shall not need the light\nof the lamp, nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall\nenlighten them, and they shall reign for ever and ever.\u201d\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n\n                                 ITALY.\n     WRITTEN AFTER READING \u201cPOEMS OF PLACES\u2014ITALY,\u201d EDITED BY H. W.\n                              LONGFELLOW.\n\n\n                                   I.\n\n\n    Amid those shining ways of Italy\n      I thought of one who walks with bandaged eyes,\n      Led by some loving guide who, in sweet guise\n    Of eloquent speech, makes blinded vision see\n    The very lines that make tall towers fair,\n      The peaceful saints that guard cathedral door\u2014\n      In death still keeping watch the people o\u2019er\u2014\n    Lifting tired souls to holy heights of prayer.\n    Even frail nest familiar form doth wear\n      Built far above upon the shoulders broad\n      Of sculptured friar, bearing light the load\n    His brother birds give, trustful, in his care.\n    So, poet-led, seemeth scarce need of eyes,\n    Pictured earth\u2019s loveliness in words so wise.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\n\n    The blinded wanderer sees the far-off light\n      Of shadowy Alp, and his the lingering glow\n      That breathes in western skies along the low\n    And gleaming marshes darkening with the night.\n    Not bluer to fond eyes that see most clear\n      Are Naples\u2019 waves than break they in his sight;\n      Nor floats St. Peter\u2019s dome in softer light,\n    Seen from the Pincian, than its image fair\n    Rests in the pilgrim\u2019s heart that in Rome sings\n      Its _Nunc dimittis_, whether it hold dear\n      For Brutus\u2019 sake the city, or revere\n    The holier presence shadowing with strong wings\n    The mighty one, earth\u2019s new Jerusalem,\n    Whose virtue fills her very garment\u2019s hem.\n\n\n                                  III.\n\n\n    He sees the shadows o\u2019er the valley creep\u2014\n      Nay, even knows he, through his guide\u2019s clear speech,\n      Where, at each hour, the ilex shade shall reach.\n    Though blinded, he can feel the sunshine steep\n    The hill he climbs; fair Italy\u2019s soft air\n      Grow yet more soft with pity for poor eyes\n      That only feel the brightness of her skies,\n    Not know the infinite depths that glisten there.\n    And quick his ears catch sound of falling stream,\n      Twitter of leaves in Vallombrosan woods,\n      Bird-carol flung from chestnut solitudes;\n    While soft-voiced waves, like music in a dream,\n    Now tread with rippling touch Sorrento\u2019s shore,\n    Now rise and fall Venetian stairway o\u2019er.\n\n\n                                  IV.\n\n\n    He hears in Roman mouth the Tuscan speech;\n      Hears Naples chant the light of Syracuse,\n      Siena\u2019s tongue, in guileless praise let loose,\n    In its pure utterance ancient glory teach.\n    And tells the poet to the wondering heart\n      Old histories of older Latin days;\n      Of distraught Italy\u2019s sad, stormy ways\n    When feud and treason tore her sons apart,\n    When Dante ate the exile\u2019s bitter bread,\n      When eagles dark swept down upon the land,\n      And lilies white, that should all stain withstand,\n    With deeds unworthy were discolor\u00e8d.\n    While from the Vaudois\u2019 shivering mountain crown\n    The echoes of their bard-sung wars sweep down.\n\n\n                                   V.\n\n\n    Singeth the poet of still nearer days\n      When all the little lands fade one by one,\n      Like wan stars melting 'neath Sardinia\u2019s sun\u2014\n    While, for her crowning, 'mid the strangers\u2019 praise,\n    Hastes Italy unto the Capitol.\n      Life of her sons laid down for her new life,\n      Maidens their soldiers arming for the strife,\n    Weeping the field where love and banner fall.\n    Sings he of carbine and of bayonet\n      That gleam and darken on Perugian hills,\n      Of sorrow that a frightened city fills,\n    And priestly robe with blood defenceless wet.\n    White Roman robe earth\u2019s shadow marketh dark\u2014\n    World-licensed target for the poets\u2019 mark!\n\n\n                                  VI.\n\n\n    The pilgrim hearkens to his guide\u2019s strong words,\n      Basks in their sunshine, thanketh for their dew,\n      Yet wonders, could his eyes behold the blue\n    As well as ears can mark the song of birds,\n    If something still he lacks he might not find\u2014\n      Some perfect key of heavenly harmony\n      That should attune all sad discordancy,\n    In true accord the clashing fragments bind.\n    Soft fall the _Angelus_ bells on listening ear,\n      The _Miserere_, in distress divine,\n      Wails from the heart of city Leonine.\n    Feels he the light that makes his darkness clear,\n    Grasps he the chord of pure and infinite blue\n    His picture lacks to make its color true.\n\n\n                                  VII.\n\n\n    So, poet-led, I trod Italian ways,\n      Seeing the glimmer of pale olive-trees,\n      Drifting, entranced, o\u2019er warm Sicilian seas,\n    Hearkening Siena\u2019s perfect speech of praise,\n    Drinking of Trevi\u2019s fountain, o\u2019er and o\u2019er,\n      Yet craving ever something still more rare,\n      Some gift of grace that Italy must wear\n    To make her so the heart\u2019s-best evermore;\n    Some crown above her hills, than her blue seas\n      More luminous, beyond her painters\u2019 fame,\n      Or passionate poets\u2019 soaring words of flame,\n    More than all proudest earthly destinies.\n    So drowned, amid the peal of Saxon bells,\n    Thought of that life wherein her true soul dwells.\n\n\n                                 VIII.\n\n\n    Seemed it as if the poet built a shrine\u2014\n      Lifting its towers in the radiant air\n      The doves might haunt to make it seem more fair,\n    Lifting its columns that an art divine\n    With watching saints should crown, setting its floor\n      In firm mosaic, where, alas! inwrought\n      Should forms misshapen of ungentle thought\n    Sadden the Roman sunshine wandering o\u2019er,\n    That, creeping onward, still should hope to kiss\n      The gladder sunshine of St. Philip\u2019s feet.\n      Heaped high the altar with all flowers sweet\u2014\n    Rich Italy\u2019s unstinted loveliness\u2014\n    Kindled the lamp before the inmost shrine,\n    Withheld the presence of the Guest Divine!\n\n\n\n\n                   THE SEVEN VALLEYS OF THE LAVEDAN.\n\n\nOn the 4th of July, 1876\u2014the day after the coronation of Notre Dame de\nLourdes, _la plus noble dame qui fut jamais_, to use the expression of\nan old chronicler\u2014we set out for the springs of Cauterets. South of\nLourdes the mountains seem to stand apart to afford a passage to the\nheadlong Gave. Here begins the Lavedan, the old _Pagus Lavitanensis_,\nwhich comprises seven valleys that extend to the very frontier of Spain.\nThis was the ancient country of the Sotiates, who were famous for their\nhorsemanship, as Lavedan has always been for its horses. In the middle\nages it became a vicomt\u00e9, which dated from the early Carlovingians and\nflourished for more than seven centuries. The vicomtes of Lavedan\nfigured in all the great wars of their time, particularly against the\nMoors in Spain, and became so powerful as to defy the Count of Bigorre,\ntheir own liege lord. They displayed great valor, too, against the\nEnglish, who for sixty years held the citadel of Lourdes that commanded\nthe entrance to their valleys, as well as several fastnesses among the\nmountains. We find members of their race among the bishops, abbots, and\nKnights-Templars of the province, as if able in every path of life to\nassert their capacity. The last of the old lords fought with Dunois the\nbrave under the banner of Joan of Arc at Orleans. His only grandchild\nmarried Charles de Bourbon, a favorite of Henry IV.\u2019s. The glory of this\nfamily, however, is mostly confined to the Pyrenees, and might never\nhave come down to modern times had it not been for the faithful\nchroniclers of the Lavedan monasteries. It is, in fact, first mentioned\nin 945 in a cartulary of the abbey of St. Savin, of which it was a\nbenefactor.\n\nHardly had we entered the valley of the Lavedan before we saw, on an\nisolated mount at the left, the dismantled tower of Hieou, one of the\nsignal-towers that, in times of border warfare, used to transmit\nmessages from the Spanish frontier to the heart of France. The shores of\nthe Gave were deliciously fresh, but the mountains on both sides are at\nfirst treeless and uninteresting. Nothing grows on them but the purple\nheather, and patches of odorous shrubs that perfume the valley. Here and\nthere on their sides are great heaps of black slate from the numerous\nquarries. But these mountains have a certain austere charm of their own,\nnot unbefitting sentinels that guard the approaches to the grotto of the\nVirgin. We passed group after group of pilgrims returning from the\nrecent celebration, with red crosses fastened to their breasts, or\nblue-and-white badges of the Immaculate Conception, saying their\nrosaries or singing a hymn. They invariably saluted us politely as we\ndrove past, and two bronzed mountaineers whom we stopped for information\nsped us on our way with the pious wish: \u201cMay God accompany you!\u201d\n\nAfter several leagues the mountains became wooded, and a bend of the\nriver, along which we kept, brought us into the delightful basin of\nArgel\u00e9s, one of the valleys of the Lavedan. This is the Eden of the\nPyrenees. On the mountain slopes grow the walnut and the oak. The roads\nare shaded with long lines of ash-trees. The meadows were covered with\nrich harvests. The thickets were blooming with roses. The houses were\nalmost buried among fruit-trees of all kinds. Every now and then we came\nto a tall cross with the insignia of the Passion, or some wayside niche\nwith its Virgin and fresh flowers before her. We passed the square tower\nof Vidalos on a height, and farther on came to the ancient castle of\nVieuzac, once a military post that kept alive the signal-fires in\ntroubled times. On every hand were quaint-looking villages with pretty\nchapels half-hidden in the folds of the mountains, each with some old\nmonument, or older tradition, to which it fondly clings. From Agos to\nPierrefitte, only about six miles, there are ten charming villages set\nin a framework of mountains no poet could describe. They close around\nthis happy valley, as if to shield it from all outward influences.\nDuring the Huguenot ascendency in the neighboring province of B\u00e9arn it\nis said no taint of the new religion ever found its way into this\nvalley. At the north is Mount Balandra\u00fc, easily ascended, that affords a\nfine view of the country, which is full of wonderful contrasts. The Gave\nwinds swiftly through the most beautiful of valleys; on every hand are\nthe mountains, sometimes like a vast rampart of verdure, sometimes\nswelling up, one after the other, like great waves, with a high peak\noccasionally, jagged as a saw, and in the distance the eternal glaciers\nglittering in the sun and feeding the numerous cascades and torrents\nthat lash the mountain sides.\n\nTo this peaceful valley came St. Orens from his native Spain, in the\nfourth century, before whom, according to the Spanish legend, a\nsupernatural light burned and a mysterious hand pointed the way. And it\nwas yonder umbrageous mountain that, when he sought to escape from the\nfame of his sanctity, opened at his approach and hid him in its bosom.\n\nHere, too, four centuries after, came St. Savin, son of the Count of\nBarcelona, when he forsook the grandeurs of the world for a cell in the\nwilderness. A few years since there were vestiges of his cell at Pouey\nAsp\u00e9, after a thousand years; and tradition points out the fountain that\nsprang up from a blow of his staff when the stream that flowed past his\ncell dried up in the summer. His tomb is still honored in the abbey\nchurch of St. Savin, which is one of the most conspicuous objects in the\nlandscape, with its queer steeple, shaped like an extinguisher.\n\nNo tourist fails to visit St. Savin: the arch\u00e6ologist on account of its\nold Romanesque church of the tenth century; the artist for its\npicturesque site; the pious to honor one of the most popular saints of\nthe seven valleys; and the political economist because, in the middle\nages, this abbey was the nucleus of a little republic of eight villages,\ncalled the Pascal of St. Savin, the inhabitants of which had from time\nimmemorial the right of universal suffrage, and where even the women,\nwithout the advantages of modern progress, were admitted to vote!\n\nThe abbey of St. Savin\u2014that is what remains of it\u2014stands on the side of\na mountain amid dense groves of chestnut-trees. According to the old\ncartularies, it was founded by Charlemagne on the site of the Palatium\n\u00c6milianum erected by the Romans after the conquest to keep the country\nin subjection, but ruined by the Saracens. Roland himself is said to\nhave received hospitality from the monks. Pulci, in his _Rotta di\nRoncisvalle_, relates how he delivered them from the giants Alabastre\nand Passamonte, and their brother Morgante only escaped being cleft in\ntwo by submitting to be baptized in the church. This monastery, renowned\nin legend and song, was burned to the ground by the fierce Normans, and\nit was more than a century before it rose from its ashes. It was\nrestored by Raymond I., Count of Bigorre, about the middle of the tenth\ncentury. He gave the house to the monks of St. Benedict, and bestowed on\nthem the valley of Cauterets, on condition that they would build a\nchurch there in honor of St. Martin, and provide accommodations for\nthose who should frequent the springs. He also made over to them his\nrights to the game in the _pascal_ valleys, as well as certain claims on\nthe produce of the dairy. The abbey became likewise an object of bounty\nto other neighboring lords, who confided in St. Savin when alive, and in\ndeath wished to lie near his hallowed shrine. Cornelia de Barbazan,\ngrandmother of a Vicomtesse de Lavedan, had great devotion to St. Savin,\nand gave the monastery one-half the abbey of Agos. The other half\nbelonged to Arnaud de Tors, a lord who only had two children, and they\nwere deaf mutes. He offered them both to God and St. Savin, and\nsubsequently his wife, himself, and all he possessed. Cornelia\u2019s husband\noutlived her, and on his death-bed asked the monks of St. Savin for the\nmonastic habit, and gave them also all he owned at Agos. The kings of\nNavarre, the vicomtes of B\u00e9arn, and Henry IV. himself proved themselves\nthe zealous patrons of this monastery.\n\nThe abbey of St. Savin became the intellectual as well as moral centre\nof the valleys around. Several of the abbots were noted for their\nsanctity, and most of them were from good families. They figured among\nthe great lords of the province, and when they visited the little states\nof their republic the people came out to meet them with young maidens\nbearing flowers in a basket. They had certain feudal rights over the\neight villages, but bound themselves, on taking possession of their\noffice, to respect the customs and privileges of the inhabitants,\nbelieved to have been handed down from the beginning of time. The people\nwere none of them serfs, but all free citizens who had the right of\ndeciding by majority of votes every question that affected the interests\nof the republic. Each village was a little state by itself, and sent its\nrepresentatives to the general assembly, which was held in the cloister\nof St. Savin. The women themselves, as we have said, had a voice in\npublic affairs. An old record of 1316 says that when the people of\nCauterets came together in the porch of the church to decide whether\nthey should yield to the abbot\u2019s proposition to change the site of the\ntown and baths, they all consented, except one strong-minded woman,\nnamed Gaillardine de Fr\u00e9chou, who stoutly held out against the lord\nabbot. Women seem to have been regarded in these valleys as something\nsacred. In the old statutes of the country, drawn up by the abbot of St.\nSavin and other dignitaries of the province, one of the articles\ndeclared that if a criminal took refuge under a woman\u2019s protection, his\nperson was safe, on condition of his repairing the damage. She gave him\nasylum, as if a temple, or had something of the nature of a divinity!\nThis code also forbade the creditors seizing the oxen and agricultural\nimplements of the laborer. The people elected seven judges to try all\ncriminal cases, but the abbot exercised the higher prerogatives of\njustice. He never stained his hands with blood, however; it was the\nCount of Bigorre alone who could impose the sentence of death. The abbot\nhad special rights, also, which he jealously guarded as a means of\nrevenue. The pastors of the eight villages could say Low Mass for their\nflocks and administer the Holy Communion, but High Mass had to be\nattended at St. Savin, where the children were also brought to be\nbaptized and the dead for burial, unless in exceptional cases. The\nobligation of baptism and burial at St. Savin was not confined to the\nPascal, but extended to the sixty villages of the valleys of Argel\u00e9s and\nAzun. The people had the privilege of hunting in the forests and fishing\nin the streams\u2014and the game and trout are not to be despised in these\ndays\u2014but the abbot had a right to the skins and a shoulder of certain\nanimals, and an annual tribute of fish.\n\nThe monks of St. Savin were noted for their hospitality, and they often\nreceived visits from those who frequented the baths of Cauterets. In the\nsixteenth century they welcomed Catharine of Navarre in spite of her\n_Contes_ and taste for the doctrines of Calvin; and in the seventeenth\nthe poet Bertin, who, in his light, scoffing way, has celebrated \u201cthe\nlong dinner and short Mass of the good abbot of St. Savin,\u201d though he\ndoes not seem to have attended the latter, brief as it might have been.\n\nMargaret of Navarre had been staying at Cauterets, where she is said to\nhave composed the _Heptam\u00e9ron_. She set out thence for Tarbes, but the\nbridges had all been carried away by rains, which she says were \u201cso\nmarvellous and great that it seemed as if God had forgotten his promise\nto Noe not to destroy the earth again by water.\u201d The preface to her work\nsays: \u201cAfter riding all day she and her suite towards evening espied a\nbelfry, where, as well as they could, but not without great trouble and\ndifficulty, they succeeded in arriving, and were kindly received by the\nabbot and monks of the abbey, called St. Savin. The abbot, who was of an\nexcellent family, lodged them very honorably, and, as he conducted them\nto their rooms, made inquiries as to the dangers they had undergone.\nAfter listening to their account he told them they were not alone in\ntheir misfortunes, for there were two young ladies in another apartment\nwho had escaped great danger. These poor ladies, at half a league from\nPierrefitte, had met a bear descending from the mountain, from which\nthey fled at such speed that their horses fell dead on arriving at their\nplace of refuge.\u201d\n\nWhen the princess left St. Savin the abbot furnished her party with \u201cthe\nbest horses in Lavedan, thick B\u00e9arn cloaks, substantial provisions, and\nexcellent guides across the mountains, which they were obliged to\ntraverse partly on foot, in spite of the horses, and, after great sweat\nand labor, arrived at Notre Dame de Sarrance.\u201d\n\nThe sceptical poet Bertin, too, thought his visit worthy of recording:\n\u201cWe chose that day to pay our brief devotions at the Abbey of St. Savin;\nthat is to say, to dine there at the expense of St. Benedict. The\nsteeple of the Abbey comes in sight between Pierrefitte and Argel\u00e9s. The\nroad ascends amid the trees, a little rough, but cool, impenetrable to\nthe rays of the sun, and watered by an infinite number of living streams\nthat come down from the mountains. It may be well to say that some of us\nwere in a carriage and others on horseback, but the greater part were\nperched, well or ill, as the case might be, on donkeys. Our arrival was\ntriumphant. The ladies were received by the prior to the sound of the\norgan, the only instrument he could strike up, thanks to the talent of\nhis cook. He likewise presented them a bouquet of flowers and made them\na compliment.... The house is well built, spacious, and in the finest\nposition in the world. From the upper terrace of the garden the eye\nwanders over the magnificent plain of Argel\u00e9s, which bears comparison,\nto say the least, with the famous valley of Campan. The day was spent\nvery agreeably, but almost wholly at table. We returned a little late in\nthe evening, without any other accident but the loss of one of our\ndonkeys, which took it into its head to die on the way, under the\npretext that he had been overworked in the morning and could go no\nfarther. We celebrated in couplets, half sad, half merry, to which every\none contributed:\n\n    \u201c'Le tr\u00e9pas de la veielle \u00e2nesse,\n    Qu\u2019on magn\u00e9tisa, mais en vain\n    (Trop sotte \u00e9tait la sotte esp\u00e8ce);\n    Le long d\u00eener, la courte messe,\n    La ch\u00e8re fine, et le bon vin,\n    L\u2019enjo\u00fbment et la politesse\n    Du bon prieur de St. Savin.\u2019\u201d\n\nNone of the local traditions or documents contain anything to the\ndisparagement of the monks of St. Savin, and their memory is still dear\nto the inhabitants of the valley. Madame de Motteville, lady of honor to\nAnne of Austria, when she came to the Pyrenees on the occasion of Louis\nXIV.\u2019s marriage, visited St. Savin, and thus speaks of it: \u201cThere is an\nabbey here of great importance and renown. It is well built and the\nmonks lead an exemplary life.\u201d\n\nThe abbatial church escaped at the Revolution, and the tomb of St. Savin\nwas respected. But it became the property of the government, and it was\nnot till 1874 that it was purchased by the Bishop of Tarbes. The greater\npart of the abbey has disappeared. The old chapter-hall, however, is\nstill standing. It is of the twelfth century, and has six low arches\nsupported by two central pillars, cylindrical in form. This hall opened\ninto the cloister, which has been totally destroyed. The fine Romanesque\nchurch is in good preservation. Around the deep embrasures of the\nentrance are symbolic animals of evil import somewhat coarsely\nsculptured, such as the scaly dragon of adverse influence, a bear\ndevouring a sinless child, and the screech-owl, symbol of Jews,\ntraitors, and the foul fiend:\n\n    \u201cEn cest oisel sunt figur\u00e9\n    Li felon Jeve maleur\u201d\n\n\u2014by this bird is figured the felon Jew malign. And, in fact, the Jews\nclosed their eyes, like the owl, to the light, not to recognize the\nMessias.\n\nWe descended by several steps into the church, into which the sun was\nstreaming from the rose window at the west. The tomb of St. Savin is at\nthe apsis, beneath a gilded canopy of rich design. It is of schist,\nabout six feet long and three broad, and rests on double columns of\nmarble, which have carved capitals. It was long used as an altar,\naccording to the custom of the early church. Above is an ancient statue\nof the Virgin, said to have been brought from the East by the Crusaders,\nand in another part of the church is a revered crucifix of great\nantiquity. One of the most interesting ornaments is a painting in\neighteen compartments that presents a complete epitome of St. Savin\u2019s\nlife, and is curious for its details of costume and architecture. Here\nwe are told how St. Savin was sent by his mother, the Countess of\nBarcelona, to complete his education at the brilliant court of her\nbrother, the Count of Poitiers, who received him with great favor and\nentrusted his son to his care. St. Savin, for whom, young as he was,\nlife had no illusions, inspired his cousin to lead a simple,\nunostentatious life in the midst of worldly luxuries, and the latter,\nnot satisfied with this taste of self-renunciation, soon betook himself\nto the convent of Ligug\u00e9, near Poitiers. His mother, in despair, threw\nherself at St. Savin\u2019s feet, crying: \u201cGive me back my child! It is you\nwho have robbed me of him. You have a mother; think of her grief should\nyou abandon her for ever.\u201d Alas! this was the very thing the saint was\nthinking of, but he could not resist a higher will. He soon followed his\ncousin\u2019s example, and they took the monastic habit together. St. Savin\u2019s\nheart, however, yearned for a more profound solitude, and a celestial\ninspiration directed his steps toward the Pyrenees. Coming to the valley\nof the Gave, he followed its windings till he reached a spot\novershadowed by three lofty mountains that were covered with snow nearly\nall the year round\u2014cold, stern, wrapped in gray mists, and infested with\nwild beasts. Here he looked down on the lonely valley once inhabited by\nhis countryman, the great St. Orens, and resolved to build his cell in a\nplace so favorable to meditation and prayer, and give himself up to a\nlife of austerity. He trod the rough mountain paths with bare feet\u2014he\nwho had been brought up in the court of princes. His only garment lasted\nhim thirteen years. He dug a grave seven feet long and five deep, and\nthere he slept, or lay buried in divine contemplation. Chromasse, a\nneighboring lord, angry to see a stranger on his lands, sent a servant\nto drive him away, but the latter only rendered St. Savin incapable of\nobeying by the blows he inflicted on him. Both master and servant were\npunished for their cruelty. The former was struck blind, and the latter\nbecame possessed by the devil. The moral condition of the servant\nparticularly excited the compassion of the saint, who obtained his\ndeliverance by the power of prayer.\n\nAn old legend says that when St. Savin wished to have a light in his\ncell he used to hold a torch to his breast, and in that furnace of\ndivine love it was at once lighted. This torch used to burn all night\nlong without being consumed, and only grew pale when the morning light\ncame to surprise the saint lost in prayer.\n\nSt. Savin, in his last illness, was attended by Sylvian and Flavian, two\nmonks from the neighboring abbey. When he felt his end was drawing near\nhe requested to see Abbot Forminius, who, detained by important\nbusiness, sent word that he would come on the following day. The dying\nhermit replied that the morrow would be too late, for then a higher\noccupation would engross him. As soon as his condition became known a\ngreat number of priests and monks hastened to his cell. He received the\nBody of the Lord, and, with his arms stretched towards heaven and a face\nradiant with joy, he fell asleep in the midst of a prayer which he\nfinished in heaven.\n\nAll the people of the neighboring valleys followed St. Savin\u2019s body to\nthe grave. The repentant Chromasse himself joined the procession, and,\npressing close to the bier, he touched with trembling hands the body of\nthe saint, and his eyes, so long closed to the light, instantly\nrecovered their sight.\n\nSuch is the legend of St. Savin, who became of so much repute in these\nmountains that it is not surprising his name should be given to the\nabbey where he was buried.\n\nFrom a terrace before the church is a superb view of the vale of\nArgel\u00e9s, around which rises mountain above mountain; the lowest rich\nwith vegetation, the upper peaks bare and covered with eternal frosts.\nNot far off are the remains of the old feudal castle of Baucens,\nformerly inhabited by the Vicomtes de Lavedan, lords of the Seven\nValleys. Madame de Motteville, who stopped here, compares it in her\n_M\u00e9moires_ to the palace of the fairy Urgande.\n\nJust below St. Savin is the village of Adast with the ch\u00e2teau de\nMiramon, the heiress of which married Despourrins, the bucolic poet of\nthe Pyrenees, who composed here, in the idiom of the valley, pastoral\nsongs full of grace and feeling, which have made his name popular in the\nmountains, where they are still sung by the herdsmen. B\u00e9arn and Bigorre\ncontend for the honor of being his birthplace, as the Greek cities of\nold for that of Homer. Here Boieldieu, struck by the beauty of the\ncountry and its poetic associations, wished to found an academy of\nartists. His plan was, as he wrote his friend Berton in 1832, \u201cto buy an\nold ch\u00e2teau in the beautiful valley of Argel\u00e9s, as finely situated as\nthat of the poet Despourrins. The sight of so glorious a landscape would\nrouse the torpid imagination, and perhaps awaken in the exhausted brain\nfresh inspirations that might rival the vagaries of certain artists of\nthe new school. The sky of the Pyrenees ought to be as propitious as\nthat of Italy. The Pic du Midi is not a volcano, but it is covered with\nflowers. And Marbor\u00e9, the Br\u00e8che de Roland, and the Cirque de Gavarnie,\nwith its cascade that falls down twelve hundred feet, are monuments\ncapable of electrifying the imagination as well as St. Peter\u2019s, the\nColiseum, and the Pantheon at Rome.\u201d\n\nOn a promontory near Miramon is the votive chapel of _Pi\u00e9tad_, with its\nRomanesque lucarnes and low arches, that dates from the ninth century.\nIt was saved at the Revolution by the mountaineers, among whom, as in\nSpain, Our Lady of Sorrow (or of Piti\u00e9, as she is called here) is\nespecially popular. There is, too, the chapel of Soulon, with its\ncrenellated tower, and near by the hermitage of St. Aoulari, with its\nRoman apsis\u2014a rural oratory, once supported by the offerings of pilgrims\nand a field that yielded three sacks of wheat, but where services are\nnow held only on certain festivals of the Virgin.\n\nOn the other side of the Vale of Argel\u00e9s stood the hermitage of St.\nOrens between two cliffs, where, in the tenth century, the Countess\nFaquilie of Bigorre built a monastery, that this great saint might come\nto her aid on the dread day of judgment; but only a few picturesque\nruins now remain on the edge of a frightful abyss. An old charter\nenumerates the gifts of the countess for the support of this abbey,\ncalled St. Orens of Lavedan: fields, vineyards, books, vestments, and\nsacred vessels. Nay, more: twenty cows with their calves, six horses,\ncattle, sheep, swine, and a donkey. The neighboring lords verified the\nboundaries of the land she gave, and swore thereto by six saints popular\nin the mountains: St. Saturnin, St. Paul, St. Andrew, St. Martin, and\nSt. Orens.\n\nSt. Orens rivals St. Savin in popularity in southwestern France, where\nmany churches and convents still bear his name. Nor is his fame confined\nto this region. St. Hugo consecrated a chapel to his memory in the\nmagnificent church of Cluny. In Spain there is a church bearing his name\nat Huesca, which claims to be his native place. In it is the tomb of St.\nPatience, his mother. And we remember seeing a marble statue of St.\nOrens beside the shrine of St. Isidro in one of the finest churches of\nMadrid. The Spanish say St. Orens was the brother of the great St.\nLawrence, so honored by the church universal; but the traditions of\nFrance only speak of him as the son of the Duke of Urgel, who crossed\nthe Pyrenees to bury himself in the solitude of the mountains. Here he\nfound a cave in a melancholy valley\u2014the Val Caprasie\u2014where the only\nnoise to break the everlasting silence was the torrent that escaped from\nLake Isaby. No place could have been better suited to the poetic soul of\nSt. Orens; for a poet he was. His hymns and other writings are still\nadmired in our day, and his Latin poem, entitled _Commonitorium_, has\nrecently been translated into French. Fortunatus mentions it:\n\n    \u201cPaucaque perstrinxit florente Orientius ore.\u201d\n\nThis is a treatise of Christian morality in elegiac measure. It is\npleasant to read it in the place where it was written and among people\nwhose ancestors probably first read it. We quote one passage, worthy of\nbeing written over the doors of the hospitable monasteries that bear his\nname, in one of which we have so often found shelter: \u201cFail not to\nreceive under thy hospitable roof the traveller overtaken by darkness.\nWhen thou art naked, thou desirest a garment to cover thee; thirsty, a\ncup to refresh thee. Let similar wants, therefore, excite thy\ncompassion. Share thy mantle, thy loaf with the unfortunate.\u201d\n\nIt is said that this saint, so benevolent to others, exercised such\nseverity towards himself as to gird his body with an iron chain and\nrecite the Psalter daily standing in the icy waters of Lake Isaby. He\nmay be cited as an early example of the benefit of hydropathy, for he\nlived to a good old age in spite, or in consequence, of the rigors of\npenance. He erected a flour-mill on the borders of the lake for the use\nof the people around, which tradition says lasted most miraculously\nseven centuries without ever needing the slightest repair. The remains\nof it are still pointed out with respect by the herdsmen of the valley.\nAnd the stone on which the saint used to kneel in his cave has been\ncarefully preserved; for nothing can exceed the tenacity with which\nthese mountaineers cling to their ancient traditions and memorials. It\nis worn by the knees of generation after generation who have knelt to\npray where St. Orens prayed fourteen hundred years ago.\n\nSt. Orens became noted throughout the province for his sanctity and\neminent abilities, and the inhabitants of Auch, after three days of\nfasting and prayer, chose him as their bishop. The messengers they\ndespatched to the mountains found him cultivating the earth. \u201cDeign, O\nLord!\u201d cried he, planting his spade in the ground, \u201cdeign, I beseech of\nthee, to manifest thy will in an unmistakable manner.\u201d And in an instant\nthe handle became a bush, which put forth branches and was covered with\nfoliage. The saint no longer hesitated, but departed with the\nmessengers. When he entered the city of Auch all the sick are said to\nhave been instantly healed. He found his diocese partly under the\ninfluence of paganism, and showed his zeal in demolishing the altars of\nthe false gods. He saved it also from the ravages of the Vandals at the\nbeginning of the fifth century, and was deputed by the king of the\nVisigoths to avert the danger that threatened Toulouse, on which the\nRomans were marching. He is believed to have saved that city by his\nprayers, and his statue was afterwards placed over one of its gates out\nof gratitude. A portion of his relics is likewise borne through the\nstreets in the magnificent annual processions for which Toulouse is\nfamous.\n\nSt. Orens is said to have regretted the solitude of this peaceful\nmountain valley, and once, when overwhelmed with the responsibility of\nhis office, he secretly escaped and fled to his cave. His people,\nhowever, went in pursuit of him and succeeded in bringing him back. But\nthe time of release came. On his death-bed he had a wondrous vision of\nChrist surrounded by a multitude of angels, and while in mystic converse\nwith them his soul took flight for heaven. He was buried in the church\nof St. Jean de l\u2019Aub\u00e9pine at Auch, and his tomb became famous for\nmiracles, particularly in cases of epilepsy and diabolical possession.\n\nA Benedictine monastery was built here in the tenth century and called\nSt. Orens\u2019 Priory. Its third prior, Bernard de S\u00e9dirac, afterwards\nArchbishop of Toledo, had the remains of St. Orens exhumed and placed in\na coffer covered with silver bas-reliefs relating to the saint\u2019s life.\nThis _ch\u00e2sse_ was suspended on the wall of a chapel behind the high\naltar, and could only be reached by means of a ladder. Notwithstanding,\nit was robbed of its silver covering some time after by two soldiers,\none of whom exclaimed in the true modern spirit: \u201cWhat! workest thou\nmiracles at this late hour?\u201d But he speedily expiated his sacrilege. He\nwas seized inwardly with a terrible fire that soon consumed him. After\nthis the pavement beneath was covered with bristling iron spikes to\nprevent another profanation. But the relics of St. Orens, that had\nescaped the Moor and the Norman, and were even spared by the iconoclasts\nof the sixteenth century, were less fortunate at the Revolution, when\nthe church of which they were the glory, with its tombs of the early\nbishops, and the mausoleum of Sancho Mitarra, the scourge of the Moors,\nfrom whom sprang the great family of the Armagnacs, so celebrated for\ntheir power and their misfortunes, was mostly destroyed, together with a\npart of St. Orens\u2019 Priory.\n\nThe last prior of this monastery was a member of the illustrious house\nof Montesquieu, one of the most ancient in the province. His brother, a\nwriter of some merit, when the family name and arms were claimed by the\nsires of Boulb\u00e8ne, instituted a lawsuit against them, and wrote a work\nto prove his descent from Clovis, which led the Count de Maurepas to\nexclaim with affected alarm after M. de Montesquieu had gained his suit:\n\u201cNow, we really hope you are not going to claim the throne of France!\u201d\nAnd among the epigrams that rained on him when he was made a member of\nthe French Academy was the following:\n\n    \u201cMontesquiou-Fezensac est de l\u2019Acad\u00e9mie.\n    Quel ouvrage a-t-il fait? Sa Gen\u00e9alogie!\u201d\n\nThe prior was one of the deputies of the Etats-G\u00e9n\u00e9raux, and made\nhimself conspicuous for his mild, persuasive eloquence. One day\nMirabeau, perceiving the effect of his discourse, cried out:\n_M\u00e9fiez-vous de ce petit serpent: il vous s\u00e9duira_! After being in exile\ntwice he was, at the Restoration, made a duke and peer of France.\n\nHow dear St. Orens\u2019 memory still is in the diocese he once governed we\nwell know who have spent several years of our life there. How joyous is\nthe 1st of May, on which his festival falls! His relics are exposed at\nthe priory, a procession, with lights and music, gathers around the\nplace where his shrine once stood, and at night bonfires are lit on the\nother side of the Gers and the people dance in the open air.\n\nBut to return to the pastoral valleys of the Lavedan. Out of Argel\u00e9s you\npass into the valley of Azun, one of the least known, but one of the\nmost picturesque in the Pyrenees. It is high up among the mountains and\ndivided by the deep and turbulent Gave.[132] The entrance was once\ndefended by the castle of Vieuzac, the ruins of which remain, associated\nwith the memory of the too famous Bar\u00e8re. The valley is inhabited by\npeople of primitive manners with few artificial distinctions. Here every\nyear, at Carnival time, is to be seen the peculiar dance of the country\ncalled the _Ballade_, performed by the young men, who often assemble\nfrom different villages in short vests gaily adorned with ribbons, with\nthe most efficient _balladeur_ at their head, playing on the fife and\ntambourine and waving their flags. The tambourine of the Pyrenees is a\nprimitive instrument of pine wood, as simple as the lyre of Apollo, and\nwith the same number of strings, which the performer beats with a little\nrod. These dancers are escorted to the edge of their villages by young\ngirls, who welcome them at their return and lavish praises on those who\nhave distinguished themselves. They are presented with eggs, ham, and\nbutter in all the villages they pass through, on which they feast the\nfollowing day.\n\nFootnote 132:\n\n  Gave is the general name of these mountain streams.\n\nAmong the curious old usages of this valley, before 1793, was the\ntribute of butter to the shrine of St. Bertrand of Comminges, a popular\nsaint in the Pyrenees, where he labored in the eleventh century. The\npeople of Azun were then almost out of the bounds of civilization, and\nfor what religious instruction they had they were chiefly indebted to\nthe holy hermits of the neighboring mountains. It is said that when St.\nBertrand came to preach among these rough mountaineers, he was treated\nwith so much indignity that the tail of his mule was cut off, for which\nthe land was cursed with sterility for several years. Touched by the\nrepentance and sad condition of the inhabitants, the saint, by his\nprayers, obtained the cessation of their punishment, and they, in their\ngratitude, promised to give him henceforth all the butter made the week\nbefore Whitsuntide. This vow was kept for nearly seven centuries. A\ncanon and two prebends from St. Bertrand\u2019s came every year to the valley\nin acknowledgment of this tribute, bringing with them water that had\nbeen passed through the saint\u2019s pastoral staff while chanting some\norison in his honor. This they gave to the people as a remedy for\ndisease among cattle. These deputies never failed to pass before the\nhouse, which is still standing, where St. Bertrand had been so\ndisrespectfully treated. The master stood in the door and humbly prayed\nthem to enter and partake of the refreshments he had prepared, which\nthey did with emotion, like angels of peace and reconciliation.\n\nAt the farther end of the valley of Azun, not far from the Spanish\nfrontier, rise the dome and square tower of Notre Dame de Pouey-la-Hun,\nthat stands on an isolated peak overlooking the village of Arrens,\nbetween the two roads that lead to Spain and the province of B\u00e9arn. The\npresent edifice is comparatively modern, but its foundation is so remote\nas to be lost in obscurity. You enter by a fine porch supported by four\nmarble pillars, and are at once surprised at the richness of the\ninterior. The walls are brown and gold, and the pillars, carvings,\nstatues, and the very mouldings of the blue arches are all gilded,\nproducing a most brilliant effect. Around the nave are two galleries,\none above the other, for the men, who are generally separated from the\nwomen in the churches of Bigorre; at least, in the villages. The\npavement is the unhewn granite cliff, which is worn quite smooth by the\nfeet of so many generations of worshippers. It descends like an\namphitheatre, enabling every one to see the altar distinctly. Across it\nis a groove, worn by a mountain stream at certain seasons of the year.\nAll the joys and sorrows of the valley are brought to the feet of Notre\nDame de Pouey-la-Hun, and numerous pilgrimages are made here at certain\nseasons of the year.\n\nIn 1793 orders came to destroy this venerated chapel, but when the\nemissaries entered it they were saluted by mysterious voices among the\narches, as if reproaching them for their blasphemies and imprecations,\nand, terrified by the unearthly sounds, they at once made their escape.\nThere was nothing supernatural in this, however. It was a mere stratagem\non the part of the peasants to save their beloved chapel, and they boast\nof it to this day.\n\nDuring the troubles with Spain this chapel was used as a military post,\nand consequently much injured. As soon as it was no longer needed for\nthis purpose the government again decided to demolish it and sell the\nmaterials. The people became excited, and the women assailed with stones\nthe agents sent to examine the building, who fled for their lives. Then\na pious widow, to save it from further profanation, bought it for about\nfifteen thousand francs, which was nearly all she had, and, when she\ndied, bequeathed it to her nephew, a priest, till better days should\narrive. Time and neglect were beginning to leave their traces on the\nchapel when Queen Hortense came to the Pyrenees. She had just lost her\nson, the Prince Royal of Holland, and the wild, melancholy grandeur of\nthese mountain valleys harmonized with her sadness. She was particularly\npleased with the quaint village of Arrens and its picturesque chapel,\nand made a sketch of the landscape herself. The devotion of the people\nto the Virgin of Pouey-la-Hun touched her, and she sympathized in their\nwish it should be reopened for public worship. She went there to offer\nher vows, and founded an anniversary Mass for her son, which was to be\ncelebrated with all possible solemnity, as recorded by the authorities\nof the place. This was shortly before the birth of Louis Napoleon. She\nnever forgot her visit to Pouey-la-Hun. She alludes to it in her\ntravels, and excited the interest of the government in its neglected\ncondition. In 1836 it was made over to the Bishop of Tarbes, who founded\na seminary here under the care of missionaries from Garaison, who have\nrendered it one of the most popular chapels in the Pyrenees.\n\nBut to return to the basin of Argel\u00e9s. The valley of Cauterets begins at\nPierrefitte. A carriage-road has been hewn along the steep mountain side\non the very edge of a precipice, three or four hundred feet deep, at the\nbottom of which rushes a fierce torrent that breaks into foam over the\nsharp rocks that encumber its bed. On each side of this gulf rise steep\ncliffs almost perpendicularly, down which dash here and there miniature\ncascades, all in a foam. A bend in the river enables you to look back\nthrough the gorge over the wild Gave, the waters of which are of the\ncolor of beryl. Nothing could be more delicate than the tint of the\nfoam. Beyond the bold arch of the bridge at Pierrefitte can be seen the\nfair vale of Argel\u00e9s, forming a lovely picture framed by the lofty\npalisades of this wild pass. We left the carriage and wandered on afoot,\ngathering the eglantine and other wild flowers, inhaling the delicious\nmountain air, and drinking the cool waters of its numerous streams. By\nmoonlight the scene is particularly sublime. The gloom of this narrow\ngorge shut in by the lofty mountains, the deep shades of the forests\nthat cover them, and the abyss below, with the ceaseless rush of the mad\nstream, produce a profound impression on the mind. We remember driving\nthrough it on one occasion at midnight. The full moon hung over the\nmountains of Gavarnie, its light streaming down here and there into the\ngorge with mysterious, enchanting effect. Before us was the peak of\nP\u00e9gu\u00e8re, like an enormous pyramid with one tremulous star above, its\nsummit bathed in the soft radiance, while its furrowed sides and\nunfathomable gulfs were veiled with a thousand shadows. As you wind up\nthe C\u00f4te du Lima\u00e7on, the whole Gave is beaten into spray among the huge\nrocks. Here the lateral mountains recede somewhat, and you shortly come\nto the triangular valley of Cauterets, completely shut in among majestic\nmountains. Its springs were well known to the Romans, and some pretend\nthat C\u00e6sar himself visited them. It is more certain that the kings of\nAragon and Navarre did, as well as the ancient lords of Bigorre and\nB\u00e9arn. The little town is more sumptuous now than when under the rule of\nthe abbot of St. Savin. Wooden cabins have been replaced by marble\nedifices, and the artificial appliances of modern times substituted for\nthe primitive observances of St. Orens. But one gives a sigh now and\nthen for the good old simple days when the lord abbot, to prevent all\nimposition on the stranger and the poor, forbade the sale of provisions\nexcept on the public square. The wine, too, which had to be of good\nquality, could only be sold a _liard_ more on a pint than at St. Savin,\nand if false measure was given a fine of ten crowns was imposed on the\nvender, one-half of which went to the poor and the rest to the abbot.\n\nCauterets is a very agreeable residence in the season. Here you meet\nstrangers from all parts of the world, and there is a certain charm in\nthe unrestrained intercourse. At certain hours, of course, every one\ngoes to partake of the waters and to bathe. There are pleasant walks\nalong the banks of the Gave, and fatiguing ones up the steep mountain\nsides. At table you have trout from the river and game from the forests,\nfowl and vegetables from Argel\u00e9s, apples and plums from St. Savin\u2019s,\npeaches from B\u00e9arn, and berries of rare flavor from the mountains.\nBuried in this quiet valley, away from all human agitations, in daily\ncommunication with nature, that puts on here its fairest aspect, the\ninvalid returns to a simple, inartificial life which produces more\neffect than the waters. Rousseau thought no violent agitation whatever,\nno vapors of the mind, could long resist such a place of residence, and\nhe was astonished that the salutary air of the mountains was not\nnumbered among the chief remedies of medical and moral science.\n\nThe valleys of Bar\u00e8ges and Gavarnie also belong to the Lavedan. Another\ngorge near Pierrefitte leads to them, which is even gloomier and more\nsavage than that of Cauterets. A little more than a century ago it was\ninaccessible to carriages, but since, by a miracle of engineering, a\nroad has been constructed along the edge of the precipice, and when it\ncannot find room on one side it springs boldly across the abyss to the\nother by means of a bridge from which you look down a terrific depth at\nthe Gave, that roars and struggles along with scarcely room enough in\nits bed. The road thus crosses and recrosses the river seven times. It\nwas completed in 1746, when a carriage was for the first time seen in\nthe gorge. Anything more wild and melancholy than this defile cannot be\nconceived. The mountains rise perpendicularly up on both sides, with\nnothing growing on them but a few wretched pines twisted by the winds.\nThe height of these grim walls, the depth of the abyss over which you\nhang, the gloom, the silence only broken by the roar of the torrent,\nappall. From time to time you see an isolated house, and at length the\nvillage of Viscos, hanging like an eagle\u2019s nest on the rocks. There are\ntwo ferruginous springs in the gorge, but they cannot be utilized on\naccount of their position.\n\nJust as you are beginning to yield to the horrors of this wild pass, it\nopens, and you soon come to the sweet, fresh valley of Luz, one of the\nmost beautiful in the Pyrenees. It is three thousand feet higher than\nthe Vale of Argel\u00e9s. Here the Gave is a peaceful, well-behaved stream.\nIts shores are planted with long lines of decorous poplars. The meadow\nis dotted with trees and covered with harvests. Lofty mountains keep\nguard around, the lower ones wooded and crowned with the ruins of some\nold castle, the upper covered with glaciers. In the depths of this\nvalley is the town of Luz, with narrow, tortuous streets, and at the\nright, on the side of the mountain, is the fashionable watering-place of\nSt. Sauveur. The church of Luz, built by the Knights-Templars in the\ntwelfth century, looks like a fortress with its battlements and great\nsquare tower. As in many churches of this region, there is a low, narrow\ndoor, now walled up, by which the Cagots\u2014those unhappy pariahs of the\nPyrenees\u2014were once obliged to enter. This proscribed race is known to\nhave existed in the time of the early French monarchy. It is said that\nthey descended from the Goths or some vanquished nation, which made them\nan object of contempt. They were denied citizenship and obliged to live\napart and wear a red badge on their breasts, shaped somewhat like a\nduck\u2019s foot. The church endeavored to triumph over this prejudice by\nreminding the people that all men are brethren. She would not allow the\nCagots, though they were deemed infectious, to be banished from the\nchurches, but gave them a separate place till they should be regarded\nwith more favorable dispositions. They had their own stoup, and it was a\ndefilement to pass through their door. In one church of the diocese of\nTarbes the archdeacon with the other clergy, to do away with this odious\ndistinction, passed through their door at some public procession, and\nthe people were obliged to follow. From that time they passed\nindifferently through either door. The race is nearly extinct now, or\nhas gradually become almost identified with the other inhabitants.\n\nAscending one of the church towers to the battlements, you find broken\nlances, stirrups, and other accoutrements\u2014perhaps left behind by the old\nKnights. There are also four cannons placed here by the Leaguers to\ndefend the edifice against the Huguenots, who always made churches the\nprincipal object of attack.\n\nEast of Luz, on a high mount, are the picturesque ruins of the Castle of\nSainte Marie, which once defended the valley, likewise attributed to the\nTemplars. This was one of the last holds of the English in Bigorre. It\nis also associated with Burke of the \u201cSublime and Beautiful,\u201d who surely\nfound both in this incomparable valley. Was it in France that he found\nreason to prefer \u201cthe furniture of ancient tyranny, even in rags,\u201d to\nthe torrent of liberty that swept it violently away?\n\nSt. Sauveur is built in a curve of the mountain side, and its houses on\nthe cliffs and terraces produce a charming effect. It is only ten\nminutes\u2019 walk from Luz, through a long avenue of Lombardy poplars,\nacross a marble bridge over the Gave, and then up a spiral _rampe_ which\naffords a new and more extensive view at every step. You see the verdant\nmeadow, pretty hamlets on the mountain slopes, foaming cascades, on\nevery hand a landscape varied, brilliant, and imposing.\n\nThe first to discover the virtues of the thermal springs of St. Sauveur\nwas a bishop of Tarbes who took refuge here when his diocese was ravaged\nby the Huguenots of B\u00e9arn in the sixteenth century. Surely he had need\nto drink of their soothing waters! After experiencing their virtues he\nplaced the following inscription over the principal spring: _Vos\nhaurietis aquas de fonte Salvatoris_, whence the name of St. Sauveur.\nBut the place did not become a fashionable resort till the present\ncentury. At the Restoration the French aristocracy, diplomatic\nhighnesses, and military officers flocked hither to enjoy the scenery\nand allay the fever of their uncertain political life by drinking of the\nsulphurous waters.\n\nNot far from Luz, on a verdant hill, are the ruins of a hermitage where\nfrom time immemorial lived a succession of hermits down to the end of\nthe eighteenth century. Beside it was the chapel of St. Pierre, held in\ngreat veneration by the mountaineers, who, on solemn occasions, went\nthere to pray for some special blessing or be delivered from some evil.\nThe statutes of Luz forbade under severe penalty any person over twelve\nyears of age to ring the bells of this chapel without orders. They\nrequired, moreover, a general procession to be made here on St. Mark\u2019s\nday in order to \u201cobtain a blessing on the fruits of the earth, peace\nwith the neighboring valleys, power to resist the devil and all\nwickedness, and strength to perform those works agreeable to God by\nmeans of which is attained the glory of Paradise\u2014Amen.\u201d When the bells\nrang out on the 25th of April, the master and mistress of every house in\nthe valley were to present themselves, as well dressed as possible, in\nthe church of Luz, and thence proceed, reciting a prescribed number of\n_Paters_ and _Aves_, to the hermitage, where the Mass of St. Mark was\nsaid and a portion of the four Gospels read. Those who failed to take\npart in the procession of \u201cMonsieur Saint Marc,\u201d without a legitimate\nexcuse, were obliged to pay a fine of two quarts of wine and half a\npound of wax.\n\nSt. Peter\u2019s chapel was latterly restored by Napoleon III. under the name\nof St. Pierre de Solferino. The last hermit who lived here was a\nCapuchin named Father Ambrose, who consecrated himself to God at the age\nof sixteen and was all his life a model of holiness. When he took\npossession of his cell he exclaimed: \u201cI wish to live here as in a\ntomb\u2014to be counted as nothing\u2014to live unknown, a simple, prayerful,\nabject life, in utter ignorance of all that is passing in the world.\u201d\nHow complete his renunciation of the world was, how profound the peace\nhe found here, may be seen by two works he left behind, which breathe\nthe deep piety of his nature. They are entitled: _Trait\u00e9 de la Paix\nInt\u00e9rieure_ and _Trait\u00e9 de la Voie de l\u2019Ame_. In the latter he says: \u201cIt\nis in the silence of the passions, interior calmness, exemption from\nunruly desires, and the government of one\u2019s self that true happiness\nconsists.\u201d This work acquired great renown. The Queen of France accepted\nthe dedication, and nine or ten editions were published during the\nauthor\u2019s life without disturbing his profound humility or love of\nsolitude. He died here in the odor of sanctity, in 1778, at the advanced\nage of seventy.\n\nOne of the excursions generally made from Luz is to the hermitage of St.\nJustin, the first bishop of Tarbes, who fled from persecution to the\nsummit of this lofty mountain, where he and his companions built three\ncells and gave themselves up to austerities and prayer. They were\nsucceeded by other hermits for ages. The ruins of their cells are still\nto be seen. St. Justin, says the Martyrology, \u201crendered himself glorious\nby the multiplication of his talents.\u201d\n\nAt the foot of the castle of Sainte Marie is the gorge to the valley of\nBar\u00e8ge along the river Bastan, which you follow a few miles, through the\npoplars and willows, till you come to the village at the head of the\nvalley, which is here so narrow as to leave barely room for a single\nstreet. Nothing could be sterner and wilder, and the place would long\nago have been abandoned to the bears and the elements but for the\nreputation of its mineral waters. It is, in fact, nearly abandoned in\nthe winter, when a part of the village is generally carried away by the\navalanches or the inundation of the most insubordinate of streams. It\nwas Madame de Maintenon who came here with the Duc du Maine, that gave a\nreputation to the springs of Bar\u00e8ges. Louis XV. built a military\nhospital here, as the waters are efficacious in the healing of wounds.\n\nThe heiress of Bar\u00e8ges in the middle ages married a knight named\nD\u2019Ossun, but the mountaineers, unable to tolerate the rule of a\nstranger, resolved to slay him. He was warned and took flight. All the\nmountain passes were guarded, but he had, says the legend, a wonderful\nhorse, by means of which he leaped from cliff to cliff, and thus made\nhis escape. This place is still called the Pas d\u2019Ossun. The house of\nOssun was famous for its warriors. Pierre, a member of this family in\nthe sixteenth century, was a great captain and chiefly contributed to\nthe victory at Dreux. Disheartened at one moment, he followed the\nexample of his fellow-soldiers who were flying from the battle-field,\nbut a feeling of honor brought him back and he covered himself with\nglory. He could not, however, forgive himself for a moment of weakness,\nand, in punishment, suffered himself to die of hunger.\n\nThere are numerous hollows among the Pyrenees called _Oules_ (a word in\n_patois_ signifying a large pot or kettle), around which the mountains\nrise almost perpendicularly. These basins are also called _Cirques_. The\nmost famous, as well as most perfect, is that of Gavarnie, surrounded by\nthe mighty walls of Marbor\u00e9 with its towers and embattled summit. The\nemotion that seizes one in this sublime spot is unparalleled. But its\nchaos of terrific aspect, its mountains with their glaciers, the famous\nBr\u00e8che de Roland, and the thread-like cascade that falls down so many\nhundred feet\u2014the source of the Gave that flows past the grotto of\nLourdes\u2014have too often been depicted to need repetition. The scene is to\nbe felt, not described. Here end the seven valleys of the Lavedan on the\nvery boundaries of Spain.\n\n\n\n\n                          JOB AND EGYPT.[133]\n\nFootnote 133:\n\n  V. _Le R\u00e9dempteur et la Vie Future, dans les Civilisations\n  Primitives._ Par M. l\u2019Abb\u00e9 Ancessi. Paris: Leroux.\n\nThere is perhaps no fact more important in the history of the human\nrace, or which, in its striking corroboration of revealed truth, is\nworthy of higher consideration, than the accumulation of proof,\nresulting from the exhumation of past ages by modern research, that\nthere are certain beliefs which are the inalienable inheritance of the\ngreat human family\u2014beliefs which modern scepticism attacks by a process\nof false reasoning incomprehensible to any simple and upright nature.\n\nFor some years past the sacred texts have been put to the proof by tests\nof a character as severe as they were unexpected; and thus, from the\nmoment that the key was obtained for deciphering the inscriptions of a\nfar-remote antiquity, it was not without eager anxiety that the judgment\nwas awaited which science was about to pronounce.\n\nBut on this occasion, as always when interests of this description are\nat stake, the first conclusions were too hastily arrived at, and\nprecipitation led to mistakes.\n\nAfter the vain attacks made on the one hand, and the groundless\nanxieties raised on the other, with regard to the question of the\nzodiacs, it was soon found that greater circumspection as well as more\naccurate criticism must be brought to the examination of evidence before\nit could be quoted in proof or disproof of any theory. Since that time\nthe lapse of a century has witnessed a vast accession of documentary\ntestimony, and it may be affirmed that up to this moment the whole\nconcurs in establishing the veracity and authenticity of the Holy\nScriptures. As the inscriptions of the kings of Assyria bear witness to\nthe fidelity of the Bible narrative, and the Babylonian tradition of the\nCreation, the Fall, the Tree of Life, the Tower of Babel, and the Deluge\nconfirm the grander, more logical, and simpler account given in the Book\nof Genesis, so do the annals and theological teachings of ancient Egypt\ntestify to the truth of those doctrines contained in the inspired\nwritings of which they are the traditional echo\u2014an echo mute for ages,\nand but now reawakened as if to add its protest against the miserable\nscepticism which is one of the signs of a degenerate and decaying world.\n\nM. l\u2019Abb\u00e9 Ancessi, whose work on the sacerdotal vestments of Israel and\nEgypt we have already noticed,[134] has lately published one of more\nextensive interest, the object of which is to establish from the most\nancient documents in existence, outside the Holy Scriptures, that the\ndogmas necessary to the religious and moral life of man were, from the\nvery origin of society, the heritage of our forefathers, and that, more\nthan a thousand years before Moses, well-nigh all our doctrines and all\nour hopes existed in the most remote civilization in the universe; and\nfrom thence to draw the conclusion that these doctrines and principles\nwould not have remained indestructible in the human mind, diversified\nand restless as it is, had they not been a part of itself, the\nfoundation of its nature, and one final reason of its being.\n\nFootnote 134:\n\n  THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Nov., 1876, p. 213.\n\nThe author proceeds to group the Egyptian belief with respect to God, a\nRedeemer, and the life to come around the well-known text in which Job,\noverwhelmed by the reproaches of his friends and the weight of his\nmisfortunes, despairing of consolation in this world, declares his\ncertainty of a life to come, where, after death, he will meet with a\npowerful Avenger, who will put his enemies to shame and make his cause\ntriumph, end his trials, and recompense his virtues by the supreme\nblessedness of the Vision of God.\n\nThe argument of Baldad the Suhite, put briefly, is that _The impious man\nis always unfortunate in this world_, with its counterpart, _Whoever is\nunfortunate is impious_; but, in spite of this most imperturbable of\ntheorists, Job is conscious of his own innocence, and after listening to\na long outpouring of eloquent imagery, amid the desolate splendors of\nwhich there shines no ray of hope or comfort for him, he bursts forth\nlike a tempest:\n\n    \u201cHow long, then, will you afflict my soul, and break me in pieces\n    with your words?... Have pity, have pity upon me, at least you my\n    friends, for the hand of the Lord hath touched me.... Who will grant\n    me that my words may be written? who will grant me that they may be\n    marked down in a book with an iron pen, and in a plate of lead; or\n    be graven with an instrument in the rock? For I know that my\n    Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at last upon the dust. That\n    these bones shall again be covered with their skin; that in my flesh\n    I shall see God. I myself shall behold him; mine eyes shall behold\n    him, and not another.\u201d\n\nThis rapid incursion into the world beyond the tomb, with which the\nSemitic races were never familiar, and which they appeared in thought to\navoid with a singular reserve, contains all the solution of the\nredoubtable problem; but though the question was settled, the arguments\nof the pitiless sages began again with renewed volubility, until the\nvoice of God himself interposed, on behalf of his servant, to silence\nthem.\n\nThe words quoted above contain evident allusions to traditions and\ndogmas which appear to have become obscure or been forgotten among the\nSemitic races. This profession of faith remains isolated, without a\nprecedent which explains it; there is, in fact, nothing analogous to it\nin the most ancient texts of the Pentateuch, in the Songs of Israel, or\nthe promises and teachings of the prophets.\n\nIn the family of Israel, with the Mosaic legislation, the primitive\nworld closes and another begins. The doctrines and hopes freshly\nimplanted by God develop like a plant from its seed, each part being\nnecessary to the other parts; but amidst all the Hebraic literature the\nBook of Job and his profession of faith remain isolated, and on this\naccount the value of both have been disputed by persons interested in\nlessening their importance. From this point of view, therefore, it is of\nmoment to find an analogous doctrine in the outlying records of a remote\nantiquity, and to discover the edifice from which this fragment has been\ndetached.\n\nOn the rolls of linen and papyrus preserved in the tombs of Thebes or of\nSerapeum we find not only the belief mentioned in the Book of Job, but\nthe very expressions there made use of. On these rolls not only is this\nbelief repeated in a multitude of forms, but a community of traditions\nin the two great families of Sem and Cham is also proved.\n\nLong centuries had elapsed since their dispersion; they were separated\nnot only by their intervening deserts, but by their difference of\nlanguage, customs, laws, and worship; and yet, where the Semitic text is\nobscure, we have but to compare it with the writings left by the old\nEgyptians to make clear its meaning.\n\nThe opening words of the quotation above apparently allude to some\ncontemporary usage well known to the patriarch and his friends, but\nstill not in use among themselves: \u201c_Who_ shall grant that my words may\nbe written ... and engraved in the flint-stone?\u201d M. Ancessi asks if we\nhave not here an allusion to the _styles_ or small obelisks which then\nabounded in the temples and tombs of Egypt, and which, if not in use\namong the tribes of the land of Uz, had nevertheless been seen by these\nfamilies of shepherds in their distant wanderings. Besides the great\ninscriptions commemorating the conquests of the Pharaos, there are, in\nor near the Egyptian temples, at the gates of the tombs, or within the\nsepulchral chambers, innumerable smaller monuments placed there by\nprivate individuals, and inscribed with their confession of faith. Of\nthis we shall speak further on.\n\nNumerous passages in the Book of Job seem to indicate that he had\nvisited the land of Egypt,[135] and, among these, allusion is made to\nthe tombs of the \u201ckings and counsellors of the earth,\u201d with whom he\nwould fain \u201cbe at rest,\u201d and \u201cwith princes, who possess abundance of\ngold and fill their dwellings with silver\u201d[136] (alluding to the\nEgyptian custom of heaping precious objects in the tombs for the use of\nthe departed at the resurrection). Like them, Job desired to leave his\ntablet, in which, after the manner of the commemorative obelisks of the\nvalley of the Nile, he would declare the innocence of his life, his\nfaith in a divine Avenger, in the resurrection of the body, and the\nvision of Him who recompenses the just and punishes the wicked.\n\nFootnote 135:\n\n  Job viii. 2. Take, for instance, the description of the papyrus (Job\n  viii. 11); the allusion to the rush-boats which are used on the Nile\n  (ch. ix. 26), and to the hippopotamus, under the name of Behemoth, the\n  Hebrew translation of the Egyptian _pih\u00e9mout_, or river-horse, and\n  which is described as \u201csleeping in the shadow of the lotus, in the\n  covert of the reeds, and in the marshes;... compassed about by the\n  willows of the brook\u201d (Job xl. 16). Again, in ch. xxviii. 1-11, there\n  may be an allusion to the mines worked by the Egyptians on Mt. Sinai,\n  where also are numerous inscriptions left by that people on the rocks.\n\nFootnote 136:\n\n  Job iii. 13-15. In the papyri of Neb-Qed in the Louvre, in a gallery\n  parallel to the great hall where the sarcophagus is placed, we see a\n  coffer, a mirror, a collyrium-case, a pair of sandals, a cane, a vase\n  for unguent, another for ablutions, a third for perfumes. The kings\n  and queens took with them into the tomb also their jewels and richest\n  garments, so sure were they of their resurrection. The ordinary\n  dwellings of the Egyptians were small, built of wood or unbaked\n  bricks, but their tombs, the \u201c_Eternal Abodes_,\u201d were of granite. Not\n  a house, not a palace of ancient Egypt is now standing, but their\n  tombs and sepulchral pyramids will probably last as long as our\n  planet. The Hebrews, after the example of the Egyptians, appear to\n  have had treasure buried with them. Josephus relates that Herod, being\n  in want of money, made a nocturnal descent into the tomb of King\n  David. He found there no money, but \u201c_aurea ornamenta multumque\n  supellectilis pr\u00e6tios\u00e6, qu\u00e6 omnia abstulit_.\u201d\u2014_Ant. Jud._ lib. xiv.\n  cap. vii. p. 724, Ed. Oxford.\n\nThe funereal inscriptions of ancient Egypt are of two kinds: those\nwritten on rolls of papyrus or linen bands, enveloping the body of the\nmummy or enclosed with it inside the sarcophagus; and the incised\nmonuments of stone or granite, erected in the chambers or cut in the\nwalls of the tombs and temples and at the entrance of the pyramids.\n\nAlmost all the texts[137] found upon the mummies are extracts from a\nbook which Champollion called the _Ritual_, but which is now styled the\n_Todtenbuch_, or Book of the Dead; the term \u201critual\u201d being confined to\nthe liturgical manuals relating to the ceremonies of inhumation, etc.,\nsome curious copies of which may be seen in the Louvre.\n\nFootnote 137:\n\n  The faithful in the middle ages were frequently interred with their\n  profession of faith, the _Credo_ and _Confiteor_, or sometimes also\n  the very text from the Book of Job which we are about to consider.\n\nThe _Todtenbuch_ is a collection of hymns, prayers, and theological\ninstructions, divided into one hundred and sixty-five chapters, with\ntheir titles and rubrics. These rubrics, as in the Catholic missals and\nbreviaries, consist of a few words in red ink to guide the celebrant.\nThe titles of the chapters are also in red. The lines are usually\nvertical, and, in the richer copies, the upper margin of the roll is\nadorned, by the side of the title of each chapter, with an illustration\nor vignette representing the subject there treated. Finally, a whole\npage is taken up by a picture of the judgment of souls and the\ningathering of the harvest in the blessed fields of Ker-Neter.\n\nThese texts were to be recited by the soul during its journey, as a\nsafeguard from danger and to purify it at the moment of the solemn\njudgment which should decide its eternal destiny. The manuscript is\nintended to assist the memory of the departed. Under the twelfth dynasty\nthese texts were often engraved on the sarcophagus itself.\n\nThoth, the God of Wisdom, was said to have dictated the _Book of the\nDead_, the greater portion of which Bunsen does not hesitate to relegate\nto prehistoric times.[138]\n\nFootnote 138:\n\n  Bunsen, _Egypt\u2019s Place in Universal History_, vol. v. p. 110.\n\nIn support of this supposition, M. Deveria notices two very ancient\nannotations. The first of these, at the sixty-fourth chapter, states\nthat this portion of the _Book of the Dead_ was found at Hermopolis,\nwritten in blue, on a cube of _Baakes_, under the feet of the god, where\nthe royal son Hardanouef found it in the time of King Menkera when\nmaking the inventory of the temple. The second annotation tells that\nchapter one hundred and thirty was found[139] in the pylone of the great\ntemple in the reign of King Housapti, who was the fifth monarch of the\nfirst dynasty, and Menkera built the third pyramid. Thus, at these\nperiods, certain parts of the _Todtenbuch_ were discovered as\nantiquities, the memory of which had been lost; and certainly we find on\nthe wooden mummy-coffins of the eleventh dynasty long passages from it,\nproving, therefore, its composition to have been long anterior to the\nShepherd Kings, and consequently long before Abraham.\n\nFootnote 139:\n\n  _Catalogues des MSS. Egyptiens_, p. 51.\n\nThe obelisks, or inscriptions in stone, have not, however, the\nimpersonal and theological character of the writing on the rolls. On the\nobelisks the name of the departed is usually inscribed side by side with\nthe names of his family, parents or children, and his titles and\noccupation are there given. At the head of the monument he is\nrepresented making an offering to Osiris, his judge, or his children are\nthere depicted offering libations before the image of their father and\nreciting the liturgical hymns for his soul.\n\nIt is not rare to find the dead himself asking for prayers. The funereal\nobelisk of Neb-oua at Boulag ends thus: \u201cTo the living; to the ancients\nof the earth; to the priests; to the panegyrists; to the divine fathers;\nto all who see this obelisk: make for me your songs, beloved of Osiris,\nthe Eternal King. Say: May the delicious breath of life breathe in the\nface of Neb-oua, the first prophet of Osiris, the acknowledged just\none.\u201d[140]\n\nFootnote 140:\n\n  _Notice des Princip. Monum._ Par M. Mariette.\n\nAgain, on the lid of a sarcophagus in the same museum (No. 978) we find\na \u201cPrayer to be said by every person who draws near to this tomb: May\nGod give thee light,[141] and may its beams shine into thine eyes; may\nhe breathe into thy nostrils the breath which thou must breathe to\nlive.\u201d\n\nFootnote 141:\n\n  As this formula recalls the _Lux perpetua liceat eis_ of the Catholic,\n  so also we find on the tombs of Egypt the _Requiescat in pace_.\n\nThe personal details, which vary upon every obelisk, are accompanied by\nformul\u00e6 taken from the _Book of the Dead_, which recall the faith of the\ndeparted in the resurrection of the body; the rewards and punishments of\na future life; the judgment, presided over by Osiris, his redeemer; and\nthe hope of an eternity of happiness flowing from the beatific vision.\n\nHere we have, in fact, the profession of faith of the patriarch Job, a\nfurther examination of which will show us that the analogy is carried\ninto the minutest details. In regard to it we will first consider\nbriefly the Egyptian doctrine about God and the Redeemer.\n\nAlthough nothing was originally more simple than the theology of Egypt,\nyet nothing could well be more confused and perplexing than it became as\nthe commentaries of the schools and the mythological superfetations of\neach temple developed in the course of time. From its earliest to its\nlatest days Egypt believed in one God, personal, uncreated, almighty,\nthe author and watchful preserver of the universe. How, then, it may be\nasked, can its exuberant polytheism be reconciled with this doctrine? In\ntraversing the galleries filled with long ranks of the Egyptian\ndeities\u2014Thoth with the head of an ibis and the hawk-headed Horus being\nconspicuous among them\u2014we pass along the stony piles of these antique\nand impenetrable monstrosities as if under the influence of a nightmare,\nwhile the words of liberated Israel echo from distant ages in our ears:\n\u201cOs habent et non loquentur; oculos habent et non videbunt; manus habent\net non palpabunt; pedes habent et non ambulabunt; non clamabunt in\ngutture suo.\u201d And we ask what there can be of just and true behind the\nstrange forms of these old-world phantoms.\n\nThe answer is contained in the fact that the Egyptians attributed to God\ndifferent names and forms, according to the aspects and attributes to\nwhich they wished to give prominence, while, under each of these names\nand forms, God, in his inalienable infinity, remained always the same;\nand, as if they had anticipated our perplexities at the sight of these\nbattalions of divinities, they have taken exceeding pains to instruct us\non this point. As the Eternal, God had one name; as Creator, he had\nanother; as Providence or Preserver, another; and as Judge and Redeemer\nof souls, the name of Osiris. In each sanctuary the one God of the whole\ncountry, living in a Triad which, without division of substance,\nexpressed the phases of his threefold existence, was worshipped under a\nparticular form and name. He had a special worship, rites, chants, and\nceremonial, unknown in the neighboring temples; but the hymns and\ninscriptions constantly dwell on the fact that each temple and each\nritual was in honor of the only God, to whom belong all temples, and to\nwhom all prayers are addressed.[142]\n\nFootnote 142:\n\n  An historical fact which exercised considerable influence on the\n  religion of Egypt, and which helps to explain the multiplicity of the\n  names given to the Deity, was that the whole of Egypt which Menes\n  united under his sceptre was divided into _nomes_, each having its\n  capital city; and each of these regions had its principal god,\n  designated by a special name, but under these different names the same\n  doctrine always remains of a divine unity. Thus by the side of the\n  political there was also a kind of divine feudality. Tum reigned at\n  Heliopolis, Osiris at Theni and later at Abydos, Ammon was over\n  Thebes, and over Memphis Phtah. Each of these gods, identical in\n  substance with the gods of the other nomes, easily allowed this\n  fundamental identity. Ammon of Thebes gave hospitality in his temple\n  to Min or Khem of Coptos, to Tum of Heliopolis, and to Phtah of\n  Memphis, who on their part received Ammon with equal readiness into\n  their own sanctuaries.\n\n[Illustration: _The One who alone is: there is of him no second._]\n\nThe Egyptians knew that the Deity is an unfathomable mystery and can\nhave no name. \u201cHis name,\u201d say the texts, \u201cis mysterious as his being.\u201d\nConsidered from this point of view, he is called _The Hidden One_\u2014Ammon,\nwhose image is enveloped in an impenetrable veil. In his uncreated\nessence God is invisible, but he has revealed himself in his acts,\nexpressive of his wisdom, power, and goodness, and each of these\nattributes presents an accessible side, by which the mind can take hold\nof the incomprehensible, see the invisible, and name the nameless One.\nHaving in himself all powers and every form of greatness, his names and\nforms are without number, and the texts, as in the Hymn to Ammon,\nexpressly designate him as _The Many-Named_\u2014the _Multitude by the\nNames_.[143]\n\nFootnote 143:\n\n  \u201cThe habit of reuniting in one worship the different forms of the\n  Divinity continually led to their fusion into one personality. Sevek,\n  of Fayom, associated with Ra, became Sevek-Ra; Phtah was fused with\n  Sokari under the name of Phtah-Sokari, and Osiris, being afterwards\n  joined to these, made Phtah-Sokar-Osiris. All the divine types were\n  reciprocally interpenetrated and absorbed into the supreme deity. The\n  names and forms of God were indefinitely multiplied, but God,\n  never.\u201d\u2014G. Maspero, _Hist. Anc._, ch. i. p. 29.\n\nThe true name of God appears to have been, with the Egyptians as with\nthe Hebrews, the greatest of mysteries. Probably it was not allowed to\nbe written; in any case, as in the papyrus Harris, its utterance was\nforbidden. \u201cI am He who makes trial of the warriors, he whose name is\nknown to none. His name must be kept in silence on the borders of the\nriver: whoso shall utter it, he shall be consumed. His name must be\nsilent upon earth.\u201d\n\nWe find this in the hymn to Ammon,[144] and the remainder of this text\nleads us further into the doctrine of a Trinity which Egyptian theology\nhad preserved amidst other primeval traditions.\n\nFootnote 144:\n\n  See papyri in the museum of Boulag.\n\n    \u201cCreator of the pastures whereon the cattle feed, and of the plants\n    which nourish man; he who provides for the fishes of the sea and the\n    birds of heaven, who gives the breath of life to the germ yet hidden\n    in the egg, who feeds the flying insect and the creeping thing, who\n    provides the stores of the mouse in his retreat and of the birds in\n    the forest[145]\u2014homage to thee, the author of all, who alone art,\n    ... who watchest over men when they repose, and seekest the good of\n    thy creatures; God, Ammon, the preserver of all; Tum and Armachis\n    worship thee in their words, and say, Homage to thee, because of thy\n    immanence in us; prostration before thy face, because thou producest\n    us; ... the gods bow before thy majesty, and exalt the soul of him\n    by whom they were produced, happy in the immanence of their\n    generator,\u201d etc.\n\nFootnote 145:\n\n  Conf. Job xxxviii. 39-41.\n\nIt will be perceived that Tum and Armachis appear to form, with Ammon, a\ntriad, of which the persons are distinct without being separate, each\nperson being represented as reposing in one divine substance, of which\neach is an aspect, of which each expresses an attribute, and of whose\nindivisible essence each forms a part.[146]\n\nFootnote 146:\n\n  At Heliopolis the divinity appears under three forms: Atoum, the\n  Inaccessible God; Choper, the Creator (the scarab\u00e6us God); and Ra, the\n  Manifestation of God\u2014the visible sun. It was not until later that we\n  find a feminine divinity.\n\nIt is not to be supposed, however, that this lofty and abstract\nconception was appreciated by the multitude, with whom, on the contrary,\nthe numerous names and forms of their deity degenerated into a monstrous\npolytheism, and who, in spite of the reiterated affirmations of the\nhymns and inscriptions, crowded their altars with fantastic idols.\n\nBut for the depositaries of the sacred doctrine there was but one God,\nliving in the midst of the divine triads, uncreated, and the principle\nof life. He was also the principle of truth: \u201cHold nothing as truth but\nthe Eternal and the Just.... Man is only the appearance; and the\nappearance is the supreme lie.... What is the First Truth? He who is one\nand alone, the Lord of Truth and Father of the gods.\u201d\n\nThe explanation to this formula is to be found in the other text which\nsupposes the Word to be the principle of the divine persons:\n\n[Illustration: _Giving utterance to the Word, exist the gods._]\n\nHermes Trismegistes, commenting upon the above, says: \u201cHe who made the\nworld made it not with his hands, but with his word.\u201d And again:\n\n    \u201cThe luminous Word (_Verbum_), which emanates from the Intelligence,\n    is the Son of God.... The Intelligence of life and light engendered,\n    by the Word, another creative Intelligence, the god of fire and\n    fluids, who in turn formed seven ministers, enveloping in their\n    circles the sensible world, and governing it by what is called\n    destiny. This spirit is necessary to all; he gives life to all,\n    sustains all. He flows from the holy source, and unceasingly comes\n    to the aid of the spirits and of all things living.\u201d[147]\n\nFootnote 147:\n\n  We seem to have here a vague idea of the Holy Spirit, with his Seven\n  Gifts, which are resplendent in the world of nature as well as in the\n  world of grace.\n\nThis spirit, Tum, or Tum Cheper (creator), is described in the texts as\n\u201cMaster of understanding, ... giving to all things their motion: when he\nwrought in the abyss of the waters,[148] then was produced the\ngladsomeness of the light. The gods rejoiced at its beauty.\u201d\n\nFootnote 148:\n\n  \u201cAnd the spirit of God moved over the waters\u201d (Gen. i. 2). \u201cAnd God\n  saw the light that it was good\u201d (Gen. i. 4).\n\nThe Author of the universe is also worshipped as the principle of\nGoodness under the name of Oun Nofr\u00e8\u2014the Good Being; and the\ninscriptions reiterate the appellation:\n\n[Illustration: _The good God; greatly beloved ... greatness of loves._]\n\n\u201cHis love is in the south: his graces in the north: all hearts are\ntransported with his beauty.... When he traverses the heavens in his\nbark, and travels in peace through celestial space, his rowers are in\ngladness.\u201d[149]\n\nFootnote 149:\n\n  Hymn to Ammon-Ra.\n\nAgain, in the wisdom of his secret counsels, God is described as holding\nin reserve all that may happen in the future. \u201cHe is that which is, and\nthat which is not,\u201d says the _Todtenbuch_; \u201cfor that which is, is in my\nhand, and that which is not is in my heart.\u201d\n\nIt has been necessary to dwell at some length on the Egyptian doctrines\nrespecting the nature of God and his relation to the world before\napproaching another feature of exceeding interest in their\ntheology\u2014namely, _the history and office of the Redeemer_.\n\nThis mighty Liberator, the first hope of whom was given by God to our\nfirst parents, appears under various forms in the traditions of all the\npeoples of a distant antiquity, and among these traditions the most\nancient and the most pure is certainly that of Osiris, whose noble and\nbeneficent attributes raise him above all the divinities of other\nnations, represented as coming to bring succor to man. The Doctors of\nthe church were themselves struck with admiration before this august\nfigure, and did not hesitate to identify the name of Osiris with that of\nour Lord Jesus Christ,[150] being convinced that the belief respecting\nhim was but an echo of the primitive revelation. It would indeed be\ndifficult to explain otherwise its correspondence to the Messianic\nprophecies given later to the chosen people, or the analogies of the\nOsirian teaching with the accomplishment, in the life of our Lord, of\nthe hopes which, during long centuries, it kept alive in the countless\ngenerations of Egypt.\n\nFootnote 150:\n\n  This fact, which appeared inexplicable temerity on the part of\n  Tertullian, is justified by what has of late years been\n  discovered from original documents, which correct the classical\n  misrepresentations of Egyptian theology.\n\nThe special attribute of Osiris is _goodness_; it is he who is\n_Oun-Nofre_ the Good Being _par excellence_; it is he who, with Tum (or\nPhtah) and Thoth, partakes of the divine essence, and is called, like\nAmmon, _Neb-oua\u2014the Lord alone_.\n\nIn the papyrus 3292 in the Hall of Tombs in the Louvre is the following\npassage: \u201cHail to thee, Osiris, ... the great eldest Son of Ra, Father\nof fathers,... King of immeasurable time and lord of eternity.... None\nknows his name; innumerable are his names in the cities and the\nnomes.[151]... Hail to thee, ... the one who didst rise from the dead.\nHe is the lord of life, and we live by his creations; none can live\nwithout his will.\u201d The second aspect of the life of Osiris is his\nsojourn upon earth in human form, his death, and passage into the land\nof the departed. Plutarch tells us that Osiris, lord of time, made\nhimself man and reigned on earth, giving his people wise and holy laws;\nthat he taught them agriculture and reverence to the gods, going through\nall the country to instruct his subjects, whose attention he won and\nwhose manners he softened by the penetrating charm of his words and by\nmusic.[152]\n\nFootnote 151:\n\n  It is of these innumerable names that the Egyptians formed their long\n  litanies, which are, as it were, the type of those of the Catholic\n  Church. M. Ancessi mentions having heard at Cairo some wandering\n  musicians chanting under his window an old legend in the simple rhythm\n  in which the melodic phrase, incessantly repeated, has a close\n  resemblance to the Catholic litanies.\n\n  The following is a comparatively small portion of the papyrus of\n  Neb-Qed, where the departed, arrived in the hall of Supreme Justice,\n  enumerates the faults which he has avoided, proclaiming, at the same\n  time, some of the titles of Osiris:\n\n  \u201cO thou who marchest, [_who art_] _come forth from An_! I am without\n  fault.\n\n  \u201cO consumer of shadows! _come forth from the double retreat_; I have\n  not slain any man.\n\n  \u201cO purity of the face! _come forth from Rastou_; I have committed no\n  fraud on the measures of corn.\n\n  \u201cO Two Lions! _come forth from heaven_; I have committed no fraud in\n  the dwelling of justice.\n\n  \u201cO Flame! _come forth in turning backwards_; I have told no lie.\n\n  \u201cO Rampart! _come forth from the mysterious abode_; I have done\n  nothing worthy of condemnation.\n\n  \u201cO thou that vivifiest the flame! _come forth from Hat-Phtah_; my\n  heart has had no evil intentions.\n\n  \u201cO thou that turnest back the head (etc)!... I have been no detractor.\n\n  \u201cO mystery of the leg! _come forth from the night_; I have not given\n  way to anger.\n\n  \u201cO light of the senses! _come forth from the mysterious region_; I\n  have had no intercourse with a married woman.\n\n  \u201cO blood! _come forth from the chamber of the lotus_; I have not been\n  depraved.\n\n  \u201cO thou who perpetually renewest that which is! _issued from Khem_; I\n  have not been violent....\n\n  \u201cO thou who hidest words!... I have not been prodigal of words.\n\n  \u201cO Nofre-Toum in Ha-Phtah-Ka. I have not committed abomination.\n\n  \u201cO thou who art unchanging! _issued from Dadou_; I have done no\n  outrage against the gods.\n\n  \u201cO thou who sendest forth the heavenly river! come forth out of Sa\u00efs;\n  I have not made the slave to be maltreated by his master.\n\n  \u201cO thou who vivifiest intelligent beings! I have not defrauded the\n  loaves in the temple.\n\n  \u201cO beautiful Neb-Ka! I have not profaned the meat of the gods.... I\n  have not taken off the wrappings of the mummies.... I have not taken\n  away milk from the mouth of the infant.\n\n  \u201cO thou whose eyes are like a sword! I have committed no fraud in the\n  abode of justice.\u201d\n\n  Each title given to Osiris alludes to some mystery or teaching in the\n  Egyptian theology.\n\nFootnote 152:\n\n  Music amongst the ancients was, far more than it is with us, an\n  agreeable pastime. Socrates declares that philosophy is nothing but a\n  sublime music: \u1f61\u03c2 \u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03bf\u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 \u03bc\u03b5\u03bd \u03bf\u1f54\u03c3\u03b7\u03c2 \u03bc\u03b5\u03b3\u03af\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03ba\u1fc6\u03c2. In the third\n  book of his _Republic_ Plato goes much further, and affirms that the\n  musician alone is truly a philosopher: \u1f44\u03c4\u03b9 \u03bc\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03c2 \u1f41 \u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03cc\u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03bf\u03c2.\n  The chanted poems and traditions were for ages the depositaries of the\n  laws, ritual and history of a nation.\n\nEven according to the myths, however, righteousness does not long\nprosper upon earth. The Principle of Evil, enraged against him,\ncompassed his painful death when his life upon earth had attained\ntwenty-eight years[153]\u2014often represented by twenty-eight lotus-flowers\nin the inscriptions, and fixed by the traditional age of the Apis.\n\nFootnote 153:\n\n  It has hitherto been difficult to discover the circumstances of the\n  death of Osiris, or the primitive tradition of his sufferings, about\n  which several legends have successively prevailed. The one given by\n  Plutarch cannot be of great antiquity. In the Isle of Phil\u00e6, which, if\n  we may so express it, had a special _devotion_ to Osiris, the history\n  of his life is given in a series of bas-reliefs in a small sanctuary\n  on the west of the great temple, his death and resurrection forming\n  the principal subjects.\n\n  There is a splendid passage relating to this god in Plutarch, ch.\n  lxxix., _Treatise on Osiris and Isis_.\n\nBut for Osiris, as for the true Saviour, the hour of death is the hour\nof victory. He rises again, and reigns henceforth, king of an eternal\nkingdom.\n\nThe priests and faithful of Osiris could not endure the attempts made by\ntravellers and philosophers to find a resemblance between this pure and\nlofty divinity to any of their own disreputable gods, or to fix in the\ndepths of the earth and the abode of the dead the dwelling-place of him\nwho had \u201cno kind of communication with substances subject to corruption\nand death.\u201d No other god had in Egypt so many temples and worshippers as\nthis the favorite deity of the country, since, besides its own local\ndivinity, each of the nomes worshipped Osiris and Isis, and thus the\n\u201cProtector of souls\u201d was, from the Mediterranean to the cataracts, the\ngod of all the Egyptians.\n\nThe anniversary of the death of Osiris[154] was every year observed with\nlamentations throughout the land, until the hour of his resurrection,\nwhich was hailed with joy, festivities, and triumph; this people, always\nso anxious and interested about the future beyond the tomb, having for\nthe \u201cLord of the life to come\u201d the most deep and tender devotion. For,\nof all the phases of his worship, that which occupied the largest place\nand exercised the profoundest influence on the religious life of this\ngreat nation is connected with the office of Osiris in regard to each\nseparate soul. All the funereal inscriptions dwell upon this. Osiris was\nnot only their saviour but their judge. In the paintings and sculptures,\nand the vignettes of the ritual, he is usually represented enthroned in\nthe Hall of the divine Justice, where, enveloped, all but the face and\nhands, in the shroud which had enfolded him in the tomb, and holding in\nhis right hand the hyk, or pastoral staff (not unlike an episcopal\ncrosier), and in the left a double-thonged scourge, he awaits the soul\nof the departed. At his feet are the divine balances, wherein will be\nweighed the heart of the dead. At the threshold of the hall Maat, the\nsymbol of justice and truth, receives the soul and presents it to the\nJudge.\n\nFootnote 154:\n\n  Most nations of antiquity have known the traditional mystery of a god\n  suffering, dying, and rising again. The worship of Adonis, long\n  prevalent among the Syrian races, penetrated, under the name of\n  Thammuz, even into the sanctuary of Israel (Ezek. viii. 14). Macrobius\n  speaks of it also among the Assyrians, and of the lamentations of\n  Proserpine; and the same belief is to be found in the long poems of\n  India. It is also probable that the Moabite worship of Beelphegor was\n  analogous to that of Osiris, Adonis, and Thammuz (see Numb. xxv. 2).\n  Women are here, as in Egypt, at Byblos, and Athens, especially charged\n  with his worship.\n\nThe soul\u2019s first words on being brought into the presence of its God\nwere: \u201cI am the Osiris [such a one],\u201d giving his earthly name.[155]\n\nFootnote 155:\n\n  In the papyrus Neb-Qed we find as follows: \u201cWords, on entering the\n  Hall of Double Justice to see the face of the gods, spoken by the\n  Osiris Neb-Qed. He said: Hail to thee, great God, Lord of justice! I\n  come into thy presence to behold thy beauties ... _on the day of the\n  giving account of words_ before the Good Being. I place myself in your\n  presence, my lords; I bring you the truth.\u201d\n\nThis assimilation of the faithful worshipper with his divine type is one\nof the most elevated and touching characteristics of the Egyptian\ndoctrine; nor does anything analogous to it exist in any other religion\nof antiquity\u2014it is only in Christianity that we find it again. In the\nsame way that the Christian is a living member of Christ, sharing in his\nlife, rights, and merits, bearing his name, taking refuge behind the\nperson of his Saviour, so does the worshipper of Osiris become a living\nmember of his liberator, and another Osiris; and at the hour of death\nthe soul calls for aid from him who had also passed its dark portal and\ncome forth again victoriously.\n\nNothing is more touching than the prayers addressed by these suppliant\nsouls to their protector; thus we read, in a papyrus of the Louvre:\n\u201cAmensaouef the departed says to Osiris: Receive in peace this Osiris,\nAmensaouef justified.... Open to him thy gates, that I may enter there\nwhen my heart shall desire: may the guardians of thy pylones not fight\nagainst me, and may I not be thrust back by thy guards, that I may see\nGod in his beauty; that I may serve him in the place where he dwells.\u201d\n\nTo obtain a right to these favors, the soul, as in the litany already\nquoted from the Book of the Dead, recalled its innocent life; in the\n_Book of the Breathings_ the dead continues his justification by\nenumerating his good works: \u201cO gods who dwell in the lower hemisphere!\nlisten to the voice of the Osiris [such a one]; he is come before you.\nThere is in him no fault; no testimony arises against him.... He gave\nbread to the hungry and water to the thirsty; he gave clothes to the\nnaked;[156] he offered peace-offerings to the gods and oblations to the\n_manes_.\u201d\n\nFootnote 156:\n\n  Cf. Job xxix. 12-17, and xxxi. 16-22.\n\nAccording to the result declared by the unerring balances, judgment was\ngiven, and the name of the righteous written down by Thoth in the Book\nof Life. The just had right to enter into the \u201cMysterious Retreat,\u201d the\nplace of eternal bliss, to eat the fruit of the tree of life, _Astu_,\nand rest in its shadow; to drink the waters of the river of life, to sit\ndown at the heavenly feast with Osiris, and to find the fulness of\nhappiness in the contemplation of the face of God. The impious were\ndriven to endless punishment in the fiery gulfs of _Amma_, while\n\u201cintermediate souls\u201d were purified, by an expiation proportioned to\ntheir faults, in the Lake of Fire.\n\nThe most curious document, after the _Todtenbuch_, which Egypt has\nbequeathed to us on the subject is the long MS. entitled _The Book of\nthat which takes place in the Lower Hemisphere_.[157] The author there\ndescribes, as if he himself had visited them, all the various localities\nof these regions of darkness. In it we advance, with Osiris and his\ndead, along the gloomy paths which frequently remind us of the\nwanderings of Dante. The way is divided into twelve \u201cHours\u201d with their\ncorresponding stations, and is peopled with mysterious phantoms and\nmythological forms, who sometimes stop the travellers and at others\nfavor their progress. It is said at the seventh hour: \u201cWho knows this,\nthe panther devours him not.\u201d[158] The name of this hour is, \u201cHe who\nrepulses the reptile, who wounds the serpent Ha-her.\u201d[159]\n\nFootnote 157:\n\n  M. Deveria has given a summary of this book, in his _Notice des\n  Manuscrits du Mus\u00e9e du Louvre_.\n\nFootnote 158:\n\n  It is also a panther that Dante encounters at the entrance of the\n  forest which is the commencement of the mysterious realm of Death. The\n  Egyptian texts mention also the lion, of which the Catholic liturgy\n  retains the remembrance in the Offertory for the Mass for the Dead:\n  _Domine Jesu Christe, libera animas defunctorum ... de ore leonis, ne\n  absorbeat eas Tartarus._\n\nFootnote 159:\n\n  Each hour of this night has a name, according to the mystery\n  accomplished in it. The eighth hour is characterized by the defeat of\n  the great serpent, cast into the abyss. One of his names is _Apep_\u2014_he\n  who lifts the head_, the _proud one_, represented by a serpent pierced\n  with arrows.\n\nThe most detailed description of the Egyptian hell is given in the third\nregister of the eleventh hour. There we are shown seven goddesses\nstanding, each armed with a sword;[160] the flames which spring from\ntheir mouths fall into seven gulfs, wherein condemned souls,\nhieroglyphic symbols of spirits, heads cut off, etc., are confusedly\nmingled amidst the fire. Each gulf is designated in retrograde\ncharacters by the word _Had_, reminding one of the Greek Hades; and each\ngoddess has a name which indicates her powers and functions. It was this\nhell that was called also _the second death_\u2014an expression preserved by\ntradition to the days of Christianity, and repeated by St. John in the\nApocalypse, in which we find almost all the ancient formul\u00e6 of the\nreligious beliefs of primitive times.\n\nFootnote 160:\n\n  \u201cIn that day, fear ye before the sword; the vengeance of the sword is\n  burning; that ye may know that there is a judgment\u201d (Job xix. 29).\n\nWe have now briefly to consider Osiris under the aspect of _the Risen\nOne_. When, like the sun overcoming the shades of night, he rises from\nthe dead, he is called Horus; and although the texts insist upon the\nabsolute identity of the divine personality who manifests himself under\nthese two aspects, Horus nevertheless, in the mythological form of the\ndoctrine, is called his son\u2014the Avenger of his father Osiris.\n\nThis formula, \u201cI am Horus, the Avenger of his father,\u201d occurs repeatedly\nthroughout the _Todtenbuch_; the Avenger being the God himself awakening\nfrom the tomb under a new form, and taking possession of the second life\nthat knows death no more; that which happened to Osiris being repeated\nin each departed soul, of whom he was the type and the Saviour.\n\nLater on Egyptian mythology furnished Osiris with assistants for this\ncombat with death. The _Book of the Lower Hemisphere_ represents, at the\ntenth hour of the journey through the lands beyond the tomb, and at the\nmoment when the trial is about to end, four gods, each bearing a bow and\narrows, with the legend: \u201cThese with their bows and arrows, going before\nthe great God, open to him the eastern horizon of heaven. This great God\nsays: Choose out your arrows, draw your bows; wound for me mine enemies\nwho are in darkness at the gate of the horizon.\u201d[161] This combat is\nrenewed for each soul, and the avenging God invariably intervenes with\nhis attendant spirits. M. Ancessi considers that we have here an\nunexpected and natural commentary upon the words of Job, \u201c_I know that\nmy Avenger liveth_,\u201d and proceeds to examine the sense of the word\n_goel_, or avenger, of the Hebrew text.\n\nFootnote 161:\n\n  Cat. of Egypt. MSS., _Book of the Lower Hemisphere_, p. 15.\n\nIn the social order of the wandering tribes a traditional law regulated\nthat, in case of murder, it rested with the family of the victim to take\nvengeance on the murderer. It was for the son to avenge his father, or,\nin default of a son, the nearest relative, who thus became the _goel_ of\nthe slain. It is easy to imagine the terrible effects of this fatal law,\nwhich still prolongs itself through centuries, and sometimes does not\nend before a whole tribe has been cut off.\n\nBut besides the earthly avenger, there was another\u2014God himself, who\nintervened at the hour of death to adjudge the punishment of the wicked\nand take in hand the cause of the departed. Such is, in fact, the\ncharacter of the mysterious protector whose aid is claimed by Job when\nhe exclaims, \u201cI know that my _Goel_ is living\u201d; he can count upon him,\nas in his tribe he counts upon the never-failing avenger of the cause of\nthe oppressed.[162]\n\nFootnote 162:\n\n  Osiris surrounded his children with so much solicitude that he is\n  represented as even sending his attendants to visit their sepulchres.\n  We find, for instance, the following in papyrus 3283 of the Louvre:\n  \u201cSaid by Osiris to the gods of his suite: Go, then, and see this\n  dwelling of the departed, that it may be thus constructed; hasten it\n  for the moment of his heavenly birth with you; respect him; salute\n  him, for he is honorable.\u201d It is curious to find so early the _dies\n  natalis_ of our martyrologies.\n\nWe need only allude to the frequency with which, in all poetical and\nimaginative nations, a metaphor becomes a myth, to perceive the facility\nwith which the idea of the resurrection of Osiris became the birth of\nHorus in the cradle of his father\u2019s tomb. Thus there was a violent\ndeath; there was a son; the next step naturally transforms Horus into\nthe avenger.\n\nHow often is it the case that a word of apparent unimportance, having\nfound its way into a dogmatic explanation, ends by entirely disfiguring\nits sense, like a graft left by an unknown hand in the bark of a tree,\nand which produces a complete change in its fruit![163] Thus, as time\ngoes on, we find grouped around Osiris, Horus the Avenger, who is called\nhis son, Isis and Nephtys, who are his sisters, forty terrible assessors\nwho surround his tribunal and aid him as judge, besides a multitude of\ndetails which compromise and disfigure the ancient doctrine; while the\ntext of Job preserves the mysterious germ of the Osirian doctrine in its\nsimplicity and grandeur, and then applies it in prophetic allusion to\nthe death and resurrection of Messias the Redeemer.\n\nFootnote 163:\n\n  \u201cHow often would the Catholic faith have hopelessly foundered amidst\n  the innovations which the heretics and sectaries of all times have\n  attempted to foist upon her, had not an infallible authority watched\n  over her and secured her integrity! I know nothing more convincing as\n  to the necessity of this doctrinal magistracy than the incessant\n  variation of the religions of antiquity. From a distance, and at first\n  sight, they seem to have changed the least; whereas, on the contrary,\n  their history has been nothing but a gradual and perpetual change, the\n  laws of which it may not be impossible some time to discover.\u201d\u2014_Le\n  R\u00e9dempteur et la Vie Future._\n\nAn additional probability that the words of Job contain an allusion to\nthis doctrine is to be found in the remarkable identity of the remaining\nportion of this text with the formula of the Egyptian papyri. After his\naffirmation of faith in a living Redeemer Job immediately adds, with the\ntheologians of Egypt: \u201cIn my flesh I shall see God, whom I, I shall see\nfor myself; mine eyes shall see him, and not [those of] another.\u201d\n\nThe passages in the _Todtenbuch_ and funereal inscriptions are\nnumberless in which we find it said of the departed:\n\n[Illustration: _This glorious spirit, in his flesh, he himself, he sees\n(God)._]\n\nAgain: \u201cI come to thee, Lord of gods and men; I come to contemplate thy\nbeauties.\u201d \u201cI behold the great God in the interior of his tabernacle; in\nthis day of the judgment of souls.\u201d\n\nThe resemblance is so striking between the Hebrew and Egyptian texts\nthat comment is needless; nevertheless, we would guard against the\nsupposition that the ideas uttered by the patriarch were borrowed from\nEgyptian theology; for, besides that in the words of Job there is the\nabsence of any myth or secondary personage whatever, it appears certain\nthat these doctrines, preserved in greater purity in their primitive\nform among the Semitic races, may be traced back to the time of the\nseparation of the families of Sem and Cham, whom they respectively\naccompanied into their distant wanderings as their most precious\nheritage; but whilst the scribes and doctors of Egypt gradually\nenveloped them in an exuberant mythology, the pastoral tribes of Sem\npreserved them in the simplicity of the first ages.\n\nAnd yet all these doctrines, which are proved to be the heritage of\nhumanity, would have been lost and buried with the Egyptian dead had it\nnot been for the intervention of Christ. In vain for three centuries did\nthe loftiest intelligences of Greece weary themselves in studies whose\nresult was to prove that man was incapable of forming true notions of\nGod, the soul, and our destinies from the chaos of systems which\nenveloped the original revelation when our Lord brought to the human\nrace the realization of its venerable traditions and the faith of its\nearliest days.\n\nLet it not be objected that the doctrines of the Redeemer were more\nancient than his advent and known to man before he taught them upon\nearth; for man having always had the same duties to fulfil in regard to\nhis future destiny, of necessity God did not leave him in ignorance of\nthem from the time of his origin; and when, later on, they were\nforgotten, and the whole world lay in darkness, then arose the Light of\nwhich a faint reflection in the firmament had long heralded the\napproach, though clouded most before the dawn.\n\n\n\n\n                               MILLICENT.\n\n\n                                   I.\n\n\nAbout two years ago we were sitting in our sunny _salon_ in the Avenue\nGabrielle, my mother and I, she reading, I at my harp, when Tomlins, our\nEnglish maid, opened the door, her face all alight with suppressed\nlaughter.\n\n\u201cWell, Tomlins?\u201d said my mother.\n\n\u201cPlease, ma\u2019am, it were _such_ a joke!\u201d said Tomlins. \u201cI was a-comin\u2019\npast the porter\u2019s lodge when I 'eard a gentleman trying that 'ard to\nexplain himself, and he 'adn\u2019t 'alf a dozen words o\u2019 French, he 'adn\u2019t;\nand the _concierge_ he could make neither 'ead nor tail of what he was\nwanting to say; and it _was_ that funny I couldn\u2019t for the life of me\nbut burst out a-laughin\u2019!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat was a shame! You should have gone to the gentleman\u2019s assistance,\ninstead of laughing at him,\u201d said my mother reprovingly; \u201che would have\ndone so had he seen you in a difficulty.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think he was Hamerican, ma\u2019am,\u201d said Tomlins, in a tone which clearly\nindicated that she thought this fact an extenuating circumstance of her\nmisbehavior.\n\n\u201cThat makes no difference,\u201d said my mother; \u201cyou know enough of French,\nsuch as it is, to have been useful to him, and you should have come\nforward. But how do you know he was an American?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe wore a white 'at, ma\u2019am, and that\u2019s what Henglish gentlemen don\u2019t\nuse to, leastways not this time of year. He be the family that has took\nthe flat down-stairs for the winter.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! he is a neighbor, then!\u201d remarked my mother; and, turning to me,\nshe added: \u201cPerhaps I ought to go down and see if we can be of any use\nto them?\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed, mamma,\u201d I replied hastily, \u201cyou will do nothing of the sort! We\nhave had enough of American acquaintances. These are most likely\nenormously rich people, whose neighborhood, if we knew them, would be\nnothing but a bore.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe have known some very rich ones who were exceedingly pleasant,\u201d urged\nmy mother.\n\n\u201cYes, and that is why I have registered a vow never to know another\u2014not\nif I can help it, at least,\u201d I replied. \u201cJust as you have grown to care\nfor them they sail away across the Atlantic, and you never see them\nagain! No, please, let us have nothing to do with these people\ndown-stairs! They may be perfectly charming, and, if they are, all the\nmore reason for keeping clear of them.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is all very selfish and not at all like you,\u201d persisted my mother.\n\u201cThese people are at our door, strangers, and at the mercy of the\n_concierge_, who will fleece them and worry them till they are driven\nwild; it is a real act of charity to come to their rescue. I will send\nTomlins down with my card.\u201d\n\nI gave up the contest. I knew that, when there was an act of kindness to\nbe done, it was no use trying to oppose my mother, especially on such\nselfish grounds as my present ones. The card was sent accordingly with a\nmessage, and about ten minutes later up came the whole tribe\u2014Dr.\nSegrave, Mrs. Segrave, and Miss Sybil Segrave. They were simply beside\nthemselves with gratitude. Their delight on discovering that there was a\ndeliverer at hand, under the same roof with them, was quite affecting.\nHow they ever found the courage to come and face the situation at all,\nwith such a lively horror of its consequences, was a matter of great\nsurprise to us. Miss Segrave spoke French fluently, but this\naccomplishment apparently was reserved solely for ornamental purposes;\nher disconsolate parents had evidently not thought of pressing it into\nsuch vulgar service as parleying with the _concierge_ and the cook\u2014two\ndomestic enemies before whom they had already learned to shake in their\nshoes.\n\nThere was something about the three that smote my heart at once. There\nwas a freshness, a frankness, a spontaneous trustfulness that it was\ndifficult to resist. I made a stand for it, nevertheless, and was as\ncoldly unresponsive to their exuberant warmth of manner as was\nconsistent with politeness. The doctor, however, took me by storm, and\nin one minute and a half I had capitulated.\n\nHe was only doctor by courtesy; he had taken every degree that could be\ntaken, but he had only practised as an amateur, being, as my prophetic\nsoul had warned me, \u201cenormously rich.\u201d He was about fifty-five years of\nage, tall, slim, dark, but he had a quizzical expression of face, a\ntwinkle in his eye, and a spring in his manner that made you forget he\nwas not a boy.\n\nMrs. Segrave was a complete contrast to him. Middle-sized, stout, and\nunfashionable in appearance, she had the gentleness and the kindliness\nof half a dozen mothers rolled up into one; her voice was low, her\nmanner simple almost to homeliness, but full of that easy\nself-possession that stamped her at once as a lady\u2014a most winning woman.\n\nSybil\u2014O Sybil! How shall I describe her? She was not a beauty, and yet\nshe made the effect of being one. There was a brilliancy about her that\nis indescribable; it lighted up the room the moment she entered. Pull\nher to pieces, and she was nothing; take her as a whole, and she dazzled\nyou. Her features were irregular, her complexion was nothing particular,\nbut there was a sparkle, a glow, a grace about her altogether that were\nmore striking than the loveliest coloring or the most perfect symmetry.\nI can see her now as she appeared to me that first day, standing on her\nhigh heels, a little behind the doctor and Mrs. Segrave, her black eyes\nglancing right and left like flashes of lightning, her scarlet feather,\nset like a flame in her black velvet hat, illuminating her olive skin,\nand her gold-brown silk dress glistening like a separate patch of\nsunshine in the sunlit room. A most picturesque creature she looked. I\nlonged to hear her speak. No one was kept long waiting for this in\nSybil\u2019s presence.\n\n\u201cThis is the very kindest thing I ever heard of!\u201d said Mrs. Segrave,\nholding out her fat little hand to my mother.\n\n\u201cYou have saved a family man from suicide, my dear madam!\u201d said the\ndoctor in the heartiest tone.\n\n\u201cFather!\u201d protested Sybil, \u201cthere you are making _such_ a character for\nus! Mrs. Wallace will set us down as a family of mad Americans. I assure\nyou, Mrs. Wallace, we are all perfectly in our right minds, and _very_\ngrateful to you.\u201d\n\nThis sortie broke the ice into splinters. We all laughed, shook hands,\nand sat down, and the doctor began forthwith to pour out his troubles.\nTheir name was legion. He had not been twenty-four hours in the house,\nand the _concierge_ had already driven him to the verge of insanity.\n\n\u201cIf I could speak to the rascal, I\u2019d be a match for him, and soon make\nhim know I would stand no nonsense,\u201d he went on to explain. \u201cBut that\u2019s\nwhere he has me on the hip, as Shakspere says; he keeps jabbering on,\nand I can\u2019t answer the fellow. I know what he\u2019s driving at, I know he\u2019s\nrobbing me; but what aggravates me most is that he thinks he\u2019s fooling\nme.\u201d\n\nMy mother poured all the oil she could on these angry waters, and in ten\nminutes I could see that she and the doctor were sworn friends.\n\nSybil listened so far to the conversation with an air of amused\ninterest, just as I was doing; then abruptly turning from it, as if she\nhad had enough of the subject, \u201cYou are a musician, I see,\u201d she said\u2014my\nharp and piano stood open ready for action. \u201cI am perfectly devoted to\nmusic! I will come up and play duets with you, if you let me?\u201d I said I\nshould be delighted.\n\n\u201cBut I like talking ten thousand times better than music,\u201d she went on.\n\u201cMusic is a way of expressing one\u2019s self with another instrument than\none\u2019s tongue; but one tires of it after a while. One never tires of\ntalking; _I_ never do.\u201d\n\nI could readily believe this, but assented as to a general proposition.\n\n\u201cDo you read a great deal?\u201d she continued. \u201cI don\u2019t. I find life is too\nabsorbing, too full; one has no time left for reading. Have you? Human\nbeings are the books I enjoy most. I am so _intensely_ interested in my\nfellow-creatures! I like to study them, to turn them inside out, to\nanalyze their characters, to exchange views with them. I do so enjoy\ndiscussing life. Don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nThis time she did \u201cpause for a reply,\u201d and I was able to make one. It\nwas not very satisfactory.\n\n\u201cNo, really! You don\u2019t care for discussing life! Well, I _am_ surprised\nat that. Dangerous! What a funny idea! But if it were, that would only\nmake it ten times more interesting to me; there is such an excitement in\ndanger! If I had been a man I should have been passionately devoted to\ntiger-hunting. Now, life is a kind of tiger-hunt, when one comes to\nthink of it; one can always get some excitement out of it\u2014watching other\npeople at the hunt, I mean. Don\u2019t you think so? People take such\ndifferent views of life. Good gracious! one would never get to the end\nof one\u2019s friends\u2019 views, if one began, even on one particular subject.\nTake love and marriage, for instance; what _can_ be more intensely\ninteresting than to discuss marriage with a person who holds views\n_diametrically_ opposite to one\u2019s own?\u201d\n\nShe rattled on in this way for half an hour: it was very amusing. I felt\nvery tame beside her, and I fancied she must have found me insufferably\ndull and unsympathetic. I found out afterwards that I was mistaken in\nthis; her estimate had been very flattering. On reflection it need not\nhave surprised me; there is nothing a great talker likes so much as a\ngood listener.\n\nWe all parted most cordially, with mutual congratulations on the chance\nthat had brought us together.\n\n\u201cI feel as bold as a lion,\u201d said the doctor as he shook hands with my\nmother. \u201cI am ready to brave an army of _concierges_.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! keep the peace; keep friends with him at any cost. If you make him\nyour enemy, he will worry your life out,\u201d was her parting injunction.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d she said, when the door had closed on our new acquaintances,\n\u201cwhat do you think of them?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think them perfectly odious!\u201d I replied.\n\n\u201cMy dear Lilly!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. They are just the kind of people we are sure to get fond of, to\nmake a friendship with, and then away they will fly, and we shall never\nhear or see them for the rest of our lives.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are determined to make a tragedy out of it, so I will not\ncontradict you,\u201d said my mother. \u201cMeantime, I shall enjoy the pleasant\nneighborhood, and trust to its not ending so badly. They are here for\nsix months certain, and if they like it, and the countess likes to renew\ntheir lease, they may remain for six months more. They intend to make\nthemselves very comfortable, meantime, and to receive a good deal.\u201d\n\n\u201cHumph! They will be sending us invitations to their entertainments, I\nsuppose,\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cThat is very likely.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey will have their share in their thanks, as far as I am concerned,\u201d\nI said; and I sat down to my harp again. \u201cI have no fancy to go and\nfigure as a housemaid amongst their magnificent American toilettes.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am vain enough to flatter myself that my child would look like a\ngentlewoman, whatever her surroundings might be,\u201d observed my mother\nquietly, \u201cand that she does not depend on dress for her individuality.\u201d\n\nWhat else could I do but jump up and kiss her for this speech, and\ndeclare myself ready to go and sport my white muslin and pink ribbons in\nthe midst of all the latest wonders of Worth & Company?\n\nIt was not many days before I had an opportunity of putting this heroic\nresolve into execution.\n\nYou may laugh; but it was heroic. I realized this distinctly, even\nbefore the supreme crisis of the eventful evening came. Sybil herself\ncame up with the card of invitation.\n\n\u201cMamma was putting it into an envelope to send it by Pierre,\u201d she said;\n\u201cbut I said that was the veriest nonsense, and that I would take it\nmyself. Of course you are disengaged? You _must_ be disengaged!\u201d\n\n\u201cUnfortunately, we are,\u201d I replied.\n\n\u201cWhy, Lilly Wallace, what _do_ you mean!\u201d screamed Sybil.\n\n\u201cJust this: that I am a trifle proud, and just vain enough not to care\nto look a guy wherever I go, and that I am pretty sure to look that at\nyour house on the 22d. You will all be dressed to kill, as you\nsay\u2014rigged out in the very newest fashions by the most expensive\ndressmakers in Paris\u2014and I shall have to appear like a school-girl in\nplain white muslin. I never wear anything else; mamma can\u2019t afford it. I\nshall have a new one, and she will give me a handsome sash and fresh\nflowers; but that is all. She will appear herself in plain black velvet,\nwithout either old point or diamonds. If you think we will make too\nhideous a blot on your splendor, say so honestly, and we will spare you\nthe disgrace.\u201d\n\n\u201cLilly, you are the very oddest girl I ever came across in the whole\ncourse of my life!\u201d protested Sybil. \u201cWhy, how _can_ you talk so? You\nwill look perfectly lovely in your sheer white muslin. I only wish we\nAmericans were not such fools as to spend all our money on our backs as\nwe do; I can tell you most of us hate it and think it awfully hard to\nhave to do it. But we can\u2019t help it; we should get so laughed at if we\nwent to a ball in white muslin that we should _die_ of shame.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s a pleasant lookout for me!\u201d I remarked.\n\n\u201cOh! it\u2019s quite a different thing with you,\u201d Sybil declared, and with a\nwarmth I felt was sincere; indeed, I felt she was sincere all through.\n\u201cYou are English, and we know perfectly well you have a different\nstandard in those things.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd my mother?\u201d I said. \u201cWhat sort of effect is she likely to produce\nin her plain black velvet?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe will look like a queen\u2014that\u2019s all; you know she will, Lilly.\u201d\n\nI did know it; I had known it as long as I could remember. I had been\nbrought up by my mother in a black velvet dress, and believed, nay,\nknew, that she looked as beautiful and queenlike in it as if its soft\nand sombre simplicity had been embroidered in gems and beflowered by all\nthe Worths in Christendom.\n\nI confess, nevertheless\u2014and I do so with shame\u2014that I felt mortified at\nher having to present herself in this splendid gathering of\nTransatlantic rank and fashion in the attire which had borne her\ntriumphantly through many a stately Parisian crowd. I was really dazzled\nby the splendor of the dresses when we stood in the midst of them. There\nwas no distinguishing the young from the old, the maid from the matron;\nsilks, satins, laces, jewels glistened indiscriminately on all. There\nwas a great deal of beauty amongst the women\u2014there is sure to be in an\nAmerican assembly; but the richness of their dresses surpassed anything\nI ever beheld. In a French _salon_ you may expect to meet a great deal\nof elegance\u2014some dresses that stand out from the common level of taste\nand becomingness by their more brilliant hues and elaborate trimmings;\nbut here all were brilliant, all were elaborate, all were magnificent. I\nreally did feel an anachronism as I stood there in my innocent,\nfluttering muslin, while these superb, many-colored birds-of-paradise\nfloated and rustled all round me, sweeping the dark carpet with miles of\nsilk, and satin, and velvet, and lace of every hue in the rainbow. It\nwas like being shut up in a kaleidoscope; the pattern shifted, flashing\ninto new forms before my eyes at every turn, until I felt fairly\nbewildered by the moving glory. What kind of conversation could go on\nunder external conditions like these? How were people, women at any\nrate, to collect their thoughts to converse on any possible subject\nexcept the one that was under their eyes, brought before them in such\nvictorious, fascinating guise? If they were not talking of dress, their\nown dress, their friend\u2019s dress, dress in general or in particular, they\nwere most assuredly thinking of it. And small blame to them. I know I,\nfor one, could think of nothing else.\n\nNothing could exceed the courtesy of our hosts. They led up guest after\nguest to introduce to us; all the magnates were presented to my mother,\nall the young ladies to me. They were very gracious, every one of them,\nbut we did not get on well after the first exchange of commonplaces. How\ncould we? What interest could a white-muslin creature like poor me have\nin the eyes of these sumptuously-attired young ladies? I said simply\nnothing to them, I suggested nothing; I was a blank. Sybil never sat\ndown for a moment. She was untiring in her efforts to make everybody\nhappy and pleasant and at home. She kept flitting about from room to\nroom, bringing young gentlemen up to young ladies, seeing that no one\nwas overlooked, that congenial elements were drawn together, that\nantagonistic ones were kept asunder. There probably were some\nantagonistic ones, though they were invisible beneath the gay,\nharmonious surface\u2014that pale, stately-looking girl, for instance, whom I\nhad noticed sitting apart beside a large console that separated her from\nthe gaudy group standing close by. I knew she was a great friend of\nSybil\u2019s, because I had seen her photograph in a dainty gilt frame in the\nplace of honor on her writing-table. I saw Sybil making a dart to her\nside every now and then, and interchanging a few hurried words in a tone\nof close confidence; and yet she took no pains to bring her forward or\nto introduce people to her. There was something peculiar about the\ngirl\u2019s air and countenance that drew my attention and made me wish to\nspeak to her. I seized the first opportunity to whisper this wish to\nSybil.\n\n\u201cThe pale girl in the corner? Whoever do you mean? Oh! Millicent Gray.\nYes, by and by. I don\u2019t think you would care much to talk to her; I mean\nI don\u2019t think you and she would hit it off very well,\u201d said Sybil in a\nhesitating way; and somehow it was borne upon me that she thought\nexactly the contrary; that we should hit it off too well, and that she\npreferred, for reasons of her own, not to bring us together. I there and\nthen resolved that I would make Millicent Gray\u2019s acquaintance before I\nleft the room\u2014or die.\n\nDid Sybil see this in my face, I wonder? She had a way of flashing a\nlook at you with her round black eyes that suggested a power of reading\nyou through and through which was sometimes uncomfortable. I felt it so\nnow, and, trying to assume an air of supreme indifference, I observed,\nlooking in another direction:\n\n\u201cThen never mind. I only fancied talking to her because no one else has\nbeen doing so; she looked lonely.\u201d\n\nSybil\u2019s rose-colored skirts floated away in the direction of Millicent\nGray, and for a moment I half-expected she was going to bring her up to\nme. I was mistaken; she bent over her friend, and began talking in\nanimated tones, gesticulating with her fan in an excited manner.\nMillicent listened apparently with more surprise than approval; there\nwas a faint expression of sarcastic resentment on her pale, thoughtful\nface, and an imperceptible movement of her shoulders seemed to shrug\naway some remark of Sybil\u2019s with smiling dissent; as she did so, her\neyes turned towards me and our glances met. There was a mute recognition\nin them which we both felt. I blushed, feeling rather guilty for\nwatching her so closely; she smiled, and, in spite of myself, I obeyed a\nlaw of nature and smiled too. The rooms were now so full that it was\ndifficult to move about; there was small chance of the crowd swaying me\nacross towards Millicent, and she sat on, surveying the scene from her\nnook with a face that was more expressive of quiet observation than\nenjoyment. She was dressed in white silk, with waves of tulle flowing\nover it, but without further ornament\u2014neither ribbons nor flowers; she\nwore one large crimson rose in her hair, a long _train\u00e9e_ of leaves\ndropping down from it and entangling a rich curl of her dark hair. The\nrelative simplicity of the dress singled her out as a very remote cousin\nto my white muslin, and I felt more than ever convinced we should prove\nsympathetic to each other. How was I to make good my vow to speak to her\nor die? The chances were that I should die, for just at this moment\nSybil bore down on me from the rear, and took me in tow through the\nbillows of silks and lace into her own boudoir, which was two rooms off\nfrom the central _salon_ where my pensive heroine abided.\n\n\u201cAre you having a good time of it, Lilly?\u201d she inquired, darting her\nbright black eyes through me, when we came to a little breathing space.\n\u201cWhat do you think of our American society? Are our women as handsome as\nyours? Are our young men as agreeable?\u201d\n\n\u201cFour questions in one breath!\u201d I cried, pretending to gasp. \u201cLet me\nanswer the first\u2014the only one I can meet on such short notice: I am\nhaving a capital time of it. You are the best hosts I ever saw, all\nthree of you. But, Sybil, do introduce me to that girl in white silk.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I won\u2019t,\u201d said Sybil. \u201cYou must want some refreshment. I don\u2019t\nbelieve you\u2019ve taken so much as an ice; I\u2019ve seen you let the trays pass\na dozen times untouched. Come into the supper-room and have something.\nStay,\u201d and she bent close to me and went on in a whisper: \u201cI will make\nMr. Halsted take you in. You see that young man with the fuchsia in his\nbuttonhole? He is perfectly charming. I have had such a delightful talk\nwith him just now!\u201d\n\n\u201cAbout what?\u201d\n\n\u201cGood gracious! About everything.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have been discussing life with him?\u201d\n\n\u201cPrecisely.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what has come of it? Has he proposed, or is he only hovering on the\nbrink, poor wretch?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow absurd you are, Lilly, with your English ideas!\u201d cried Sybil, still\nin a _sotto voce_, although the music drowned everybody\u2019s voice. \u201cYou\nwon\u2019t understand that one may discuss life with a young man without\nmeaning any harm!\u201d\n\n\u201cHarm? To his heart, do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cOr to one\u2019s own.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you got one, Sybil?\u201d I asked quite seriously.\n\n\u201cYes, I have, and a _very_ sensitive one too, let me tell you,\u201d she said\nin her vehemently emphatic way. \u201cMr. Halsted, will you take my friend to\nhave some refreshment? Mr. Halsted\u2014Miss Wallace.\u201d\n\nAnd off I went with this perfectly charming young man.\n\nThe first person I met in the supper-room was my mother, whom the doctor\nhad just taken in and was plying with some delicious nectar of an\nAmerican drink.\n\n\u201cMy dear, I was beginning to wonder what had become of you,\u201d she said.\n\u201cIt is growing rather late, is it not?\u201d\n\nThe doctor protested, but we made good the opportunity as soon as his\nhospitable back was turned, and disappeared from the brilliant scene.\n\nAnd Millicent Gray? I was of course in honor bound to die, as I had not\nspoken to her; but I thought it better to live, and try and make good my\nresolution in some other way. Chance favored me unexpectedly. A few days\nafter the magnificent reception on the first floor I went down to\ndiscuss life quietly with Sybil for half an hour, when the servant said\nshe had been obliged to run out for a few minutes to her aunt\u2019s, next\ndoor, but that she would be back presently, and had begged I would go in\nand wait for her.\n\nI had not been many minutes in the _salon_ when the doctor came in. He\nhad been \u201cdown town\u201d to Galignani\u2019s, and had gleaned all the news that\nwas abroad, what steamers were signalled, which had come in, which had\nsailed, and who had come in by the last arrival. The doctor was a\nterrible flirt. He sat down on the sofa beside me, and began to repeat\nverses from Tommy Moore about my \u201cbright eyes that were his heart\u2019s\nundoing,\u201d and I know not what besides. Mrs. Segrave heard us laughing,\nand came in to see what it was all about.\n\n\u201cAh! my dear,\u201d she said, \u201che whispered those very same verses to me\nfive-and-twenty years ago. Don\u2019t believe him; he\u2019s a gay deceiver.\nCharles dear, did you ask Mrs. Wallace what we were going to do about\nthis claim the _concierge_ is making of twenty francs a month extra for\nbringing up our letters?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I did not,\u201d said the doctor. \u201cIn fact, I had not time yet; but I\ndare say Miss Lilly can tell us just as well!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! if it\u2019s anything about the _concierge_ you had much better appeal\nto mamma,\u201d I said to Mrs. Segrave. \u201cShe is at home now, and if you go up\nyou will find her alone.\u201d\n\n\u201cI see how it is: you want to get me out of the way!\u201d said Mrs. Segrave.\n\u201cYou want to hear what more Charles has to say about your bright eyes.\nWell, well, I\u2019ll go; I\u2019ll not be a spoil-sport.\u201d\n\nShe was going to open the door when Pierre opened it, and in\nwalked\u2014Millicent Gray. After the usual greetings Mrs. Segrave said,\nturning to me:\n\n\u201cYou know Sybil\u2019s friend, Miss Gray, of course? No! I was sure you had\nmet. Then let me introduce you\u2014\u201d\n\nAs soon as we had got \u201cwell into conversation,\u201d the doctor proposed that\nhe and Mrs. Segrave should leave us young ladies together, and go up to\nconsult my mother about this new imposition of the _concierge_.\n\nWhen Millicent and I found ourselves alone there was an awkward pause\nfor a moment; we felt as conscious as a pair of lovers thrown together\nfor the first time. At last we looked at each other and began to laugh.\n\n\u201cI am so pleased to meet you,\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cNot so much pleased as I am,\u201d she replied. \u201cI have been entreating\nSybil to make me acquainted with you, and she would not. We came near\nquarrelling over you the other evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo did she and I! What could have been her motive?\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cDid she not tell you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you don\u2019t guess?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo! Pray tell me, if it is not a secret,\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cOh! no, it\u2019s no secret,\u201d replied Millicent, laughing. \u201cYou are a\nCatholic. She was afraid to let me know you.\u201d\n\n\u201cLest I should contaminate you!\u201d\n\n\u201cLest you should convert me.\u201d\n\nI was silent from sheer surprise.\n\n\u201cYou see what a dangerous person she thinks you!\u201d said Millicent,\nlaughing.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t see why she should,\u201d I replied, rather nettled. \u201cI never tried\nto convert her.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps because you felt it was a hopeless case,\u201d said Millicent, who\ncould not apparently see the thing in a serious light; for she was\nlaughing still, and looked altogether highly amused.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know whether I felt about it one way or the other,\u201d I said. \u201cI\nam utterly bewildered that Sybil should have laid hold of the idea of my\nbeing so dangerous in that line; from the moment I discovered what her\nnotions on religion were I avoided even touching on the subject directly\nor indirectly, and yet she looks upon me as a lion or a fox going about\nand seeking whom I may devour!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no; you must not think that,\u201d protested Millicent. \u201cShe looks upon\nyou as dangerous, but in quite another sense from proselytizing. She\nsuspects me\u2014very unjustly, I assure you\u2014of having what she calls Roman\nCatholic proclivities; and when I expressed a wish to know you\u2014she raves\nabout you in the most enthusiastic way\u2014she said nothing would induce her\nto make us acquainted; that you were just the kind of person to whisk me\ninto the Catholic Church before I knew where I was.\u201d\n\nThere was something at once so absurd and so thoroughly characteristic\nof Sybil in this remark that, in spite of myself, I burst out laughing.\n\n\u201cI promise solemnly,\u201d I said, \u201cthat I will not whisk you in without\ngiving you due warning, and, moreover, having your full and free consent\nto the operation beforehand.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you. That is generous,\u201d said Millicent; \u201cand to prove my sense of\nit I solemnly promise not to whisk you into my church without having\nyour full and free consent beforehand.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, by the bye,\u201d I said, \u201cit never seems to have occurred to Sybil\nthat the danger might be mutual; that I ran a risk as well as you by our\nbecoming acquainted?\u201d\n\nMillicent was hesitating in her answer when we heard a loud ring at the\ndoor, and in an instant Sybil burst into the room. She stood for an\ninstant looking at us, and then cried out in her ringing tones:\n\n\u201cWell, is it all over with you? Has she done it?\u201d\n\n\u201cDone what?\u201d I said. \u201cMiss Gray has not attempted to do anything except\nto make herself exceedingly agreeable.\u201d\n\nSybil laughed merrily.\n\n\u201cI call that exceedingly smart\u2014quite worthy of a Yankee!\u201d she cried. \u201cBy\nthe way, it puts the thing in a new light. Milly, turn on the guns and\ntry and convert _her_.\u201d And she pointed to me with her chinchilla muff.\n\u201cThat _would_ be a feather in one\u2019s cap! Good gracious!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen why should you not try for it yourself?\u201d I inquired. \u201cSybil, I am\ninclined to be very angry with you for making me such a reputation. You\nknow perfectly well I have never had a word of controversy with you\nsince we have known each other; never done the least thing to try and\nmake a Catholic of you. You know I have not!\u201d\n\n\u201cI know nothing of the sort,\u201d protested Sybil. \u201cI know this: that you\nand your mother are the very most dangerous pair of Catholics I have\never met\u2014just the kind of Catholics to knock one\u2019s prejudices on the\nhead with one blow.\u201d And she banged the table with her pretty little\nmuff. \u201cYou never preach, either of you, or talk controversy, or do any\nmortal thing to put one on one\u2019s guard; but you do every conceivable\nthing to make one fall in love with your religion: you are the very milk\nof human kindness, you never speak ill of any one, you are always ready\nto help people, you spend your time going after the poor, nursing the\nsick, and heaven knows what besides; for you are up at cock-crow, and\nout by candlelight saying your prayers, when we are fast asleep in our\nbeds. Milly Gray, now mark my words\u201d\u2014and she faced round and confronted\nMillicent with uplifted muff, in a Sibylline attitude of warning\u2014\u201cmark\nmy words: this is none of my doing, and whatever comes of it is not to\nbe laid at my door.\u201d\n\n\u201cSybil, I promise that, whatever catastrophe the future of this day may\nhave in store, it shall not be visited on you,\u201d said Millicent. \u201cYou\nhave warned me of my peril, and, you know, he who is forewarned is\nforearmed. Tell me, now, what have you done with Mr. Halsted?\u201d\n\n\u201cDone with him? What did you want me to do with him?\u201d\n\n\u201cEither kill him or cure him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should kill him, if I could,\u201d said Sybil. \u201cI never knew so perverse a\nman in the _whole course of my life_.\u201d\n\nShe dragged out the last words with an emphasis that might have led one\nto suppose the course of her life embraced a period of at least\nninety-nine years.\n\n\u201cWhat is he perverse about?\u201d inquired her friend.\n\n\u201cHe won\u2019t change his politics, he won\u2019t go back to the States, and he\nwon\u2019t marry the girl he ought to marry.\u201d\n\nShe enumerated these grievances with a gusto of indignation that made us\nscream with laughter.\n\n\u201cI thought his politics were on the right side\u2014that is, on your side,\u201d\nsaid Millicent when she had recovered her gravity.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the wrong side,\u201d said Sybil; \u201c_her_ politics are strongly\nDemocratic, and there is not the ghost of a chance for him, unless he\nturns Democrat too.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut if he does not want a chance?\u201d I ventured to put in.\n\n\u201cBut he ought; I want him to want it. She\u2019s the very sweetest girl in\nthe whole of the United States; and her father is the dearest old man,\nand would give her a splendid fortune if Mr. Halsted would marry her.\nAnd everybody believed he would; only old Nick put it into his head to\ncome out to Europe, and he has gone and fallen in love with another\ngirl!\u201d\n\n\u201cWho won\u2019t marry him?\u201d suggested Milly.\n\n\u201c_Cer_tainly not!\u201d declared Sybil.\n\nAt this juncture Dr. and Mrs. Segrave came in, bringing my mother with\nthem. She was dressed for me to go out with her, so I had to run off to\nequip myself, having first cordially invited Millicent Gray to come and\nsee me as soon as possible.\n\nShe came the next day, and on a strange errand, considering the warnings\nof Sybil.\n\n\u201cI am anxious to be of some use to the poor,\u201d she said, after we had\ntalked some little time, \u201cand I don\u2019t know how to go about it here. I\nsuppose there are no Protestants to visit, or at least they must be very\nfew; would there be any objection to my visiting Catholics?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot the slightest,\u201d I replied, \u201cunless you intend to whisk them into\nthe Protestant Church before they know where they are; in that case I\ndon\u2019t think M. le Cur\u00e9 would care to enlist your services.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have no sinister designs of that sort, I assure you,\u201d said Millicent;\n\u201cand to prove it, I want you to let me go with you on your rounds. I\nwill make myself useful in any way you appoint, and I will do exactly as\nyou tell me\u2014as far as I know how, that is.\u201d\n\nI said, of course, that I should be delighted to have her as a\ncompanion, and that we should begin our partnership to-morrow; but my\nmother came in as we were settling about the hour we were to meet, and\nunexpectedly put a spoke in the wheel.\n\n\u201cDoes Mrs. Gray approve of this arrangement, my dear?\u201d she inquired.\n\n\u201cI have not mentioned it to her,\u201d replied Millicent, her American ideas\nof independence evidently a little shocked by the question; \u201cbut she is\nsure to approve of it when I do. Is there any reason why she should\nnot?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere may be. You are a Protestant, and this scheme of visiting the\npoor with my daughter must bring you in contact with Catholics of\nvarious classes\u2014the poor, the Sisters of Charity, perhaps incidentally\nwith M. le Cur\u00e9 and other priests. Before you embark on these perils I\nshould prefer that your mother\u2019s consent was secured. We English mothers\nhave Old-World prejudices about parental authority, you perceive,\u201d added\nmamma, smiling; \u201cyou will not mind humoring mine in this case.\u201d\n\nMillicent declared her perfect readiness to do so. She looked like one\nwho would gladly humor everybody\u2019s wishes. I was already in love with\nher. The charm which attracted me that night amidst the gay crowd had\nnot fled \u201clike the talisman\u2019s glittering glory\u201d on a nearer approach. I\nwas at a loss to see where the point of mutual attraction lay between\nher and Sybil; but Sybil was one of those creatures who spirited away\nyour sympathies before you had time to challenge the thief or lay a\nprotecting hand upon your treasure. She was a siren, who drew you to her\ncave and did not devour you. Millicent was a complete contrast to her in\nappearance as well as in character; her eyes were deep blue, and her\nhair, which was very dark, whitened her fair complexion to the\ntransparency of alabaster, and gave a stronger individuality to her\ndelicate features than blond hair, which seemed their natural\nbirthright, could have lent them. She was very tall, and her small,\nbeautifully-formed hands and feet put the seal on the character of\nsingular refinement which pervaded her whole exterior.\n\nMy mother was greatly taken with her. \u201cYou have committed yourself more\nseriously in this case, it strikes me,\u201d she remarked when Millicent had\ntaken leave.\n\n\u201cThey are settled in Paris permanently,\u201d I replied; \u201cI asked her that at\nonce. I should not have embarked on an intimacy with her, if they had\nbeen only birds of passage.\u201d\n\nMrs. Gray made no difficulty about Millicent\u2019s joining me in my visits\nto the poor; she observed, indeed\u2014very naturally, I thought\u2014that \u201cMrs.\nWallace ran just the same risk in allowing her daughter to associate\nwith Millicent.\u201d Millicent returned next morning quite jubilant with\nthis message, and we set out on our first walk together. We agreed that\nwe were not to improve this or any future opportunity to convert each\nother. Was I quite sincere when I entered on this agreement? Looking\nback on it, I think I can honestly say I was. I meant that I would not\ndiscuss religion or say anything to prejudice Millicent against her own;\nthat I would rigidly avoid controversy; and in all this I kept my word.\nBut I did not disguise from myself that I had a great longing to see her\na Catholic, and that I should do my best in another way to bring about\nthis result. For this purpose I had her name put down at Notre Dame des\nVictoires for prayers. I asked several of my friends to pray for the\nsame intention, and I made a point of praying every day for it myself. I\ntook her to see S\u0153ur Lucie, a Sister of Charity I was very fond of, and\nI interested her in the same object. I counted a good deal, too, on the\nimpression which the faith of the poor was likely to make on her.\n\nI was just then much occupied with a poor woman named Mme. Martin, who\nwas dying, who had been dying these five years of a very painful malady.\nI think she was the first person I took Millicent to see. She lived in a\nroom on the sixth floor\u2014that is, in the attic\u2014of a house where her\nmother was _concierge_. She had been better educated than the generality\nof her class, having been brought up as a teacher of singing. This\npursuit had subsequently thrown her into the society of persons much\nabove her in position, and the contact had contributed still more to\neducate and refine her. She had consequently acquired something of the\nvarnish of a lady, and, without being really educated, she had gained\nthat increased capacity for suffering which even imperfect education\ngives. Her illness had thrown her back into her original position and\nsurroundings, and these were perfect misery to her. She could not bear\nthe society of the servants\u2014her constant one now, owing to that horrible\nFrench system of stowing away the servants of every flat in the same\nhouse into pigeon-holes under the roof, old and young, men and women,\ninnocent, honest girls and vicious old veterans in dishonesty, all\ncrammed higgledy-piggledy in a proximity full of dangers to both soul\nand body. This population of the pigeon-holes was insupportable to Mme.\nMartin; she had nothing in common with them nor they with her. They\npitied her\u2014for the French are always kind-hearted\u2014but they resented her\nevident superiority, and often showed their pity in a way that hurt more\nthan it soothed. She writhed under the compassion of these coarse,\nvulgar-minded men and women, whose conversation turned chiefly on the\ndomestic concerns of their masters, how they cheated them, the tricks\nthey practised on them.\n\nThey came to see, after a while, that she did not care for their\nsociety, and they ceased to inflict it on her, and Mme. Martin came\ngradually to be as isolated as if she had been living in a desert. She\nwas glad of it in one way. We most of us prefer solitude to\nunsympathetic company; we had rather be left alone than intruded on by\nthose loud voices and heavy steps that jar so painfully on the nervous\natmosphere of a sick-room; but there were times when her loneliness\nweighed terribly on her, when she longed for any hand that would but\nraise her paralyzed limbs from a posture that had grown agonizing from\nprolonged immobility, that would give her the drink that was just beyond\nthe reach of her arm. Her mother could come to her but very seldom; she\ndared not absent herself during the busy portion of the day from her\nlodge downstairs. S\u0153ur Lucie was very kind, and came as often as she\ncould; it was she who had taken me to her and begged me to look after\nher. I was the better able to do so that Mme. Martin lived only five\nminutes\u2019 walk from our house. I don\u2019t think I ever came in contact with\na sufferer who edified me more than this poor woman. It was not that she\nwas so wonderfully pious, or heroic, or resigned; she was all three by\nturns, but none constantly. Perhaps it was this very fluctuation that\nmade one realize so vividly the supernaturalness of the struggle she was\ncarrying on. You saw the power of the sacraments, the action of grace\nworking on her soul, almost as visibly as that of medicine on the body.\nShe was a woman of very strong passions, acute sensibilities, and ardent\nimagination; you can fancy what it was to such a nature to be immured in\na room about twelve feet long by eight, with a roof slanting to the\nfloor at one side, and a window in the slant, incapable of moving in her\nbed without help, dependent on charity for even that bed and for the\nbread she ate. For the first years of her illness this misery was so\nunendurable, she told me, that she thought it would have driven her mad,\nand the terror of this prospect was the most unbearable thing of all.\nShe had not the consolations of religion then. Her artist life, with its\nalluring perils, its wild companions, its passionate aspirations, had\nled her away from the realities of the faith and gathered a mist before\nher eyes. But she fell ill, and then the mist began to clear away. The\nSisters of Charity found her out, and the old sacred memories of\nchildhood were awakened; her First Communion, with its sweet, pure joys,\nits lovely, solemn pageant, the bright companionship of kindred hearts\nstarting with the fervent promise to the divine Guest whose first coming\nwas the grand event, the supreme crisis of their little lives, the goal\nto which, thus far, their lives had tended\u2014all this came back like a\nwell-remembered dream at the sight of the gray habit and the white\ncornette. It was the old, old story: the prodigal had wandered into a\nstrange country, and had grown homesick and turned back, and the Father\nhad met him half way on the road. She had not fed upon the husks of\nswine, poor Mme. Martin; only \u201cforgotten to eat her bread,\u201d and hunger\nhad driven her home. She spoke to me of her conversion in terms of such\ndeep humility and compunction that I might have fancied her the most\nappalling sinner who had ever lived, if S\u0153ur Lucie had not told me the\nexact history of it.\n\nBut it was not all sunshine and smooth waters even after this blessed\nwelcome home. There were dreadful battles to be fought yet. She fought\nbravely, but not always with a smiling face and a glad heart. Oh! no.\nThere were days, of such terrific anguish, such utter, black despair,\nthat it used to seem to me sometimes that her faith _must_ fail this\ntime, that nothing short of a miracle could save her now. And nothing\nelse did. What greater miracle is there than the triumph of God\u2019s grace\nover our corrupt and fallen nature, the victory of sacraments over the\ndevil that holds our soul? It was a greater wonder to me every time I\nwitnessed it in Mme. Martin. This presence of an evil spirit in her\u2014a\nreal though invisible presence of tremendous, almost omnipotent\npower\u2014was so palpable that I used to feel something like the kind of\nterror one would feel near a person possessed. I always felt perfectly\nhelpless while the crisis lasted, and would sit there and listen dumbly\nwhile she uttered her bitter, fierce words, not raving in loud, wild\naccents, but with a sort of hard, suppressed anger, a deep-down\nrebellion against the cruel, all-powerful will that was torturing her.\nThere was no use arguing or preaching, or trying to make her see the\nsinfulness and the stupidity of it all; one could do nothing but bear\nwith it, praying silently to God to come to her, and lay his finger on\nthe wounded soul, and speak with his voice, and bid the winds be still.\n\nOne thing struck me with peculiar significance: no matter how fiercely\nrebellious she was towards God, she could always turn with a softened\nglance towards his Blessed Mother. There was an old print of the _Mater\nDolorosa_ on the wall over her bed, and it was the strangest thing to\nsee the poor sufferer lift her dark, vindictive eyes to it with a\ntender, compassionate, entreating glance, while words of almost savage\npetulance against the Son were still hot on her lips. Once I remember\nher bursting into tears as she turned towards it in one of these sudden\nappeals. The fiend was exorcised for that day. I sat beside her till she\nhad cried herself to sleep like a tired, naughty child.\n\nThese terrible days were invariably followed by periods of compunction,\nhumble self-reproach, and love so fervent and consoling that it used to\nseem to me they could never pass away, that the darkness could never\nreturn, that this time the rescue was complete and irrevocable. The\nhumility with which she would beg my pardon for the scandal she had\ngiven me, the way she would upbraid herself for her base ingratitude to\nour Blessed Lord, were more touching than I can describe. She would look\nup fondly towards the _Mater Dolorosa_ with such an expression of\ntenderness on her haggard, sunken face, and say, as if apostrophizing\nit: \u201cAh! I knew she would gain the victory. I knew she would not desert\nme! _Pauvre m\u00e8re! Elle a tant souffert!_\u201d\n\nThe first day that I took Millicent Gray to see her she was in one of\nthese blessed, penitential moods. It had lasted through several\ndays\u2014days of fearful suffering, and nights of sleepless weariness. She\nuttered an exclamation of joyous welcome when I appeared.\n\n\u201c_Que le bon Dieu est bon!_ I knew he would not keep me waiting much\nlonger. My little stock of patience was just coming to an end!\u201d And she\nsmiled good-humoredly.\n\n\u201cWhat is it you want?\u201d I inquired.\n\n\u201cI was dying with thirst,\u201d she said, \u201cand I managed to draw this cup to\nme by hooking my finger in the handle, but I was in such a hurry to\ndrink it that it slipped from me, and I am all wet and half-perished!\u201d\nAnd, indeed, she was trembling with cold; her hands were like ice and\nher teeth chattered. I hastened to lift her up on her pillows and repair\nthe accident, Millicent helping very dexterously. I had prepared Mme.\nMartin for her visit, so merely introduced her as a friend of mine, who\nwould be glad to come and see her sometimes, if she allowed it.\n\nWhen we had settled her in some degree of comfort, Millicent and I sat\ndown and began to converse. Mme. Martin was in too great pain to join in\nthe conversation, except by throwing in a word now and then to show she\nwas following it, but one could see she was interested in what we were\nsaying. There was an unusual brightness and peace about her, in the\nexpression of her face and the tone of her voice; I rejoiced that\nMillicent should see it, for I knew it could not fail to impress her.\n\n\u201cWas last night as bad as the preceding ones?\u201d I said when we were going\naway.\n\n\u201cYes; it was very bad. I did not get a moment\u2019s rest till it was\ndaylight,\u201d she said; and she smiled quite serenely.\n\n\u201cMy poor friend! How cruelly tried you are!\u201d I could not help\nexclaiming. \u201cMay God give you courage!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe does! he does!\u201d she cried fervently. \u201cIt is a miracle how good he is\nto me\u2014a miracle.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe must ask him for another one, that your courage may be rewarded by a\ncure,\u201d said Millicent kindly.\n\n\u201cOh! no. Don\u2019t ask for that! I don\u2019t want it!\u201d said Mme. Martin quickly,\nas if she were frightened the miracle was going to be wrought on the\nspot. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be cured, only to be sustained, and to go on\nsuffering a long time\u2014as long, that is, as He likes\u2014that I may prove I\nam not ungrateful; that I love him a little bit after all he has done\nfor me! All he has done for me!\u201d There was a look almost of ecstasy on\nher features as she said this, her face slightly upturned, but her eyes\nclosed as if she were looking within her, into that sanctuary of her\nsoul where God was present. I felt, rather than saw, Millicent turn a\nsudden, startled glance towards me.\n\n\u201cThat is the most precious and most beautiful of all miracles,\u201d I said\npresently, \u201cthat our hard hearts should be softened by the cross, and\nthat we should come to love it for His sake; is it not?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d she replied; \u201cit is the one I have most prayed for. It is to her\nI owe it.\u201d And she turned to the _Mater Dolorosa_. \u201cIn my worst moments\nI always felt for her; that my cross was nothing compared to\nhers\u2014nothing! _Pauvre m\u00e8re!_\u201d\n\nWhen we were out of earshot, on the landing about half way down the\nnarrow stair, Millicent stopped, and, looking round at me, said: \u201cHer\nbrain has begun to be affected; she is a little mad, poor creature, is\nshe not?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d I replied, \u201cshe is; she has got what we call the madness of the\ncross. Many of our saints have died of it: _la folie de la croix_.\u201d\n\nMillicent stared at me for a moment with an expression that suggested\nsome vague alarm as to my own sanity, but she made no further remark\nuntil we had got out into the street.\n\n\u201cWhat did she mean by saying it was the Virgin Mary that worked the\nmiracle for her?\u201d she then asked.\n\n\u201cShe meant that the Mother of Sorrows had prayed for her and obtained a\ngreat grace for her.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut God would have given it to her, if she had asked him, without going\nto any creature for it, would he not?\u201d answered Millicent.\n\n\u201cPerhaps; but he would be more willing to grant it to a creature who was\nsinless and his Mother, and who had stood by the side of his cross, than\nto a poor weak, rebellious creature who had sinned a thousand times and\nmore. Does it not seem likely?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! putting it in that way,\u201d said Millicent dubiously. \u201cBut he is God,\nour Saviour; he must love us more than she does. He died for us; the\nVirgin Mary did not die for us?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, really, Millicent\u2014almost,\u201d I said, and, stopping, I looked her\nstraight in the face. \u201cFancy a mother that loved her son, her only son,\nas Mary must have loved him, standing by while he was being executed\u2014I\ndon\u2019t say scourged, and beaten, and hammered with nails to a gibbet,\nmurdered piecemeal with the rage of devils let loose from hell, but\nsimply hanged, or even beheaded; would it not be worse to her than any\ndeath that ever a mother died? And then fancy her blessing the men that\nmurdered him, praying for them, adopting them! And you can say the\nMother of God did not die for us?\u201d\n\nMillicent made no answer, but walked on in silence. We said no more\nuntil we got to my door, and then I asked if she would not come up and\nrest a while.\n\n\u201cNo, I prefer to go home, thank you,\u201d she said, putting out her hand.\nShe held mine for a moment, as if she were going to say something; but\nshe did not, and we parted silently.\n\nShe seemed strangely moved.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\n\nI did not see Millicent until the following Sunday, when she came to ask\nme if I would go for a walk in the afternoon.\n\nSybil happened to be there when she came in.\n\n\u201cWhat hour do you go to church, Milly\u2014the morning or the afternoon?\u201d\nasked Sybil. I saw the drift of the question: she suspected Millicent\nhad been to church with us.\n\n\u201cI generally go in the morning; mamma likes it best,\u201d replied Millicent.\n\u201cShe was not well this morning, so we are going to late service. And\nyou?\u201d\n\n\u201cMe? I don\u2019t go to late or early. I stay at home and think it over,\u201d\nsaid Sybil.\n\n\u201cThink what over?\u201d I asked. \u201cThe service?\u201d\n\n\u201cServices in general, religion in its cause and effect\u2014life altogether,\nin fact,\u201d summed up Sybil. \u201cWill you two let me join you in your walk\nthis afternoon, or shall I be in the way?\u201d We both protested we should\nbe delighted to have her; and at four o\u2019clock we were assembled\ndown-stairs in her boudoir, ready to start, when a loud ring sounded at\nthe door.\n\n\u201cGood gracious!\u201d screamed Sybil; and she dropped into a chair, the\npicture of astonishment and vexation. \u201cI\u2019ll bet any mortal thing you\nlike that that is Mr. Halsted! Was there ever anything so provoking! I\nso wanted to have a walk with you!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy need his coming prevent you?\u201d I said. \u201cThe doctor and Mrs. Segrave\nare at home, are they not?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Lilly, how can you talk so!\u201d she exclaimed. \u201cWhat does that matter\nto Mr. Halsted? He comes to see me!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you throw us overboard?\u201d I said. \u201cThat\u2019s complimentary. What do\nyou say, Millicent?\u201d\n\nMillicent laughed. She was not sorry at heart, I could see, that we were\nto be left to a _t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate_. Perhaps Sybil saw it, too, for she said,\nstarting up suddenly:\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t throw you overboard. Let him call again. Let him come with us,\nif he likes. Have you two any objection?\u201d\n\nMillicent said she had none. I, however, demurred.\n\n\u201cYou will think it absurdly priggish,\u201d I said, \u201cbut you know I am\nhalf-French\u2014at least, I live amongst the French, so I can\u2019t afford to\nknock against their _hautes convenances_; and if I were seen walking\nwith a gentleman without my mother or some married chaperon, it would\nmake quite a _scandale_.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow inconceivably ridiculous!\u201d cried Sybil, staring at me with round,\nshining eyes. \u201cWhat a grand privilege it is to be a free-born American\nwoman! I wouldn\u2019t be a slave like you\u2014no, not for the empire of France,\nLilly!\u201d\n\nPierre came to the door to announce Mr. Halsted\u2019s arrival, and we all\nsallied into the drawing-room. Sybil burst out into regrets at having to\ngo out, and then, pointing a finger of scorn at me, \u201cOnly fancy!\u201d she\ncried\u2014\u201cyou\u2019ll hardly believe it, but it\u2019s a fact\u2014Miss Wallace says she\ndare not come out for a walk with you without her mother, lest it should\nmake a scandal in the town! Did you ever hear anything so\npre_pos_terously absurd, Mr. Halsted?\u201d I crimsoned to the roots of my\nhair, and longed to choke Sybil on the spot. Happily, gentlemen being\nthe same in all countries, Mr. Halsted saw my embarrassment and turned\nit off with easy good breeding.\n\n\u201cMiss Wallace has been brought up in France,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is quite\nnatural she should have adopted the notions and manners of the country;\nbut it\u2019s rather hard on us poor fellows. We are cut off from our most\ncherished prerogatives here in this centre of civilization. May I call\nthis evening? You promised to teach me the Polish mazurka?\u201d\n\nSybil hesitated. There was to be a dinner-party that evening, so the\ndancing lesson could hardly take place, and I knew he wanted to figure\nin the mazurka at a Polish house the next night.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t this evening,\u201d she said musingly; then, as if moved by a sudden\ninspiration, she flung down her muff. \u201cI see I must victimize myself for\nmy country\u2019s sake, and give up my walk to save you from making an\nexhibition of yourself to-morrow before the assembled nations. You two\ngo and take your walk alone.\u201d\n\nMr. Halsted entered a feeble protest, which Sybil did not even so much\nas notice, but proceeded to take off her bonnet and prepare for the\ndancing lesson.\n\nWe were not long on the road together when Millicent opened the subject\nof religion; Sybil\u2019s idea of \u201cthinking it over\u201d being the ostensible\npretext.\n\n\u201cI wonder you don\u2019t talk to her about it,\u201d she said; \u201cyou might do a\ngood work in that direction, if you tried.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy making a Catholic of Sybil?\u201d\n\n\u201cBy making a Christian of her.\u201d\n\n\u201cPoor Sybil! Is she as bad as that?\u201d I said, laughing. \u201cShe is more in\nyour line than mine, at any rate. She hates popery like fire; I would as\nsoon try to convert the Great Mogul.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are a great puzzle to me, do you know,\u201d said Millicent, looking at\nme with a glance of searching curiosity. \u201cCatholics as a rule are such\nardent proselytizers, and you seem to have no taste in that direction at\nall.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you known a great many Catholics before me?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cYou are the first I may say I have ever known.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen how can you answer for what we are as a rule?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have always understood it,\u201d she replied.\n\n\u201cYou have understood, or rather misunderstood, many things about us,\u201d I\nremarked. \u201cIs Mr. Halsted in love with Sybil, do you think?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Halsted is _nothing_ of the kind. Nice conversation for the Sunday\nafternoon!\u201d said a sharp, bright voice, and Millicent and I leaped half\na mile asunder as Sybil popped her scarlet feather in between us.\n\n\u201cI made sure you would be discussing theology,\u201d she cried, \u201cinstead of\nwhich I find you discussing me!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd why are not you discussing the mazurka with Mr. Halsted?\u201d demanded\nMillicent and I together.\n\n\u201cBecause I thought better of it,\u201d was Sybil\u2019s terse explanation, nor\ncould we extract any other from her.\n\n\u201cWhat were you talking about before you began about Mr. Halsted and me?\u201d\nshe inquired, flashing her lightning glances from one to another.\n\n\u201cWe were talking about you and the Great Mogul,\u201d I replied, \u201cand I was\nconsidering which of you I should first set about converting.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou had better begin with him,\u201d said Sybil. \u201cHave you done for Milly\nalready?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot\u2014quite\u2014\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cI should like to have it out with you once for all, Lilly,\u201d she said,\n\u201cand just hear from beginning to end what your religious views are, and\nhow far exactly they differ from mine.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have views on religion, then?\u201d I said in a tone of surprise.\n\n\u201cCertainly I have, Lilly Wallace,\u201d retorted Sybil with indignant\nemphasis, \u201cand I should like very much to compare them with yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat would be difficult,\u201d I replied, \u201cfor I have no views.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot the ghost of one,\u201d I repeated. \u201cWe Catholics never have; we listen\nto the church and accept all she teaches. There is not such a thing\namongst us as a view; we would not know what to do with one.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood gracious! That reasonable beings should let themselves be so\ngul\u2014so\u2014that you should\u2014in fact, it\u2019s beyond belief!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, that\u2019s just what it is not beyond; it is our belief that binds our\nreason and puts views out of the question,\u201d I said. \u201cWe have our faith\npropounded to us by the church, and the church is the infallible witness\nof the truth; we have not to make out a creed for ourselves, as you\nProtestants have.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen why did God give us brains, if we are not to make use of them?\u201d\ndemanded Sybil. \u201cI would not hand over my conscience to any man or any\nbody of men living; I would rather take my Bible and make out the right\nand the wrong of it myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cSuppose you make it out all wrong\u2014for you admit there is a right and a\nwrong to it\u2014what then?\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cIt does not much matter, so long as our intention is good. God Almighty\ndoes not expect us to be infallible.\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly not!\u201d I replied; \u201cthat is precisely why he made his church\ninfallible, to save us from our own fallibility and teach us what to\nbelieve and what not to believe. If I believe black and you believe\nwhite, we can\u2019t both of us be right; one or other must be in error, and\nGod, who is Truth itself, can\u2019t approve equally truth and error?\u201d\n\n\u201cI tell you what it is, Milly,\u201d said Sybil, turning round sharply on\nMillicent, who was walking on the other side of her, \u201cit is _very_ bad\nfor you to be discussing theology with Lilly Wallace in this way. Mind\nwhat I tell you, no good will come of it!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I\u2019ve not opened my lips!\u201d protested silent Milly. \u201cIt is you who\nare discussing it; it was you began it!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I had not, you would,\u201d retorted Sybil; \u201cyou are perfectly _crazed_\non religious discussion. I see how it is going to end!\u201d\n\nI burst out laughing. Millicent, however, looked amazed.\n\n\u201cI will tell you what _I_ see,\u201d I said: \u201cthat you had much better have\nstayed at home and discussed life with Mr. Halsted than come out here to\nbully us. It would be serving you right if I made a papist of you on the\nspot.\u201d\n\nSybil saw that Millicent was vexed, and, adroitly dropping the subject,\nburst out into vehement denunciation of French conventionalities. If it\nhad been any other country in the universe, Mr. Halsted might have come\nout for a walk with us, and we should have had an excellent time of it;\nfor he was the very best company she knew. We continued, nevertheless,\ndespite his absence, to enjoy a very pleasant walk, and to steer clear\nof burning subjects the rest of the way. The incident, however, left its\nmark on us all three, and from that day forth there was an imperceptible\nbut a very decided change in Millicent\u2019s \u201cviews.\u201d As to Sybil\u2019s, I never\ngot a glimpse of them, so it may not be rash judgment to express a doubt\nwhether she had any.\n\nI kept to my promise of avoiding controversy with Millicent, and she,\nseeing my reluctance to gratify her curiosity on this point, gave up\ntrying to overcome it. We talked very freely on religious customs and\ninstitutions, but whenever she demanded my reasons for believing this or\nthat I evaded controversy by that inexorable Catholic answer so\naggravating to a Protestant\u2014\u201cThe church teaches it.\u201d\n\nThe winter passed, and the spring, and my mother and I were preparing to\nleave Paris to spend the month of June in London. One of my greatest\ndifficulties in going away was how poor Mme. Martin was to get on in my\nabsence. Millicent had come with me once a week to visit her. She would\ncontinue to do this when I was gone, I had no doubt; but the poor soul\nwas in a state that required a visit every day, and I hardly dare ask or\nexpect that Millicent would break from her mother and her own\noccupations regularly every day for this purpose, or that Mrs. Gray\nwould allow it. I told her of my trouble, and the next morning she ran\nin looking quite radiant.\n\n\u201cMamma says she will allow me to go every morning from eleven to twelve\nand sit with Mme. Martin and do all she wants; is it not good of her!\u201d\nshe exclaimed, embracing me.\n\n\u201cIt is!\u201d I cried, \u201cand very good of you, dear Milly. You can\u2019t think\nwhat a relief it is to my mind! I was miserable at the thought of\nleaving her without some one to take my place of a morning; and she is\nso fond of you, poor soul! She is so touched by your charity\u2014above all\nin a heretic!\u201d I added, laughing.\n\n\u201cCharity covereth a multitude of sins,\u201d said Millicent. \u201cI suppose the\nsin of heresy is included?\u201d\n\nIt was quite true: Mme. Martin was wonderfully taken with her. She\nadmired her grace, the quiet distinction of her manner, the subdued\nelegance of her dress\u2014a Frenchwoman has an eye for _la toilette_ so long\nas the breath of life is in her\u2014and most of all the gentle kindness with\nwhich Millicent performed the little services of the sick-room. It was\nquite beyond her comprehension that so much sweetness and goodness\nshould exist in anybody who was not a Catholic; it was most amusing to\nsee her _na\u00eff_ wonder at this phenomenon, and her surprise that I did\nnot abolish it.\n\n\u201cBut, mademoiselle, why do you not _explain_ to her how dreadful it is\nnot to be in the true church?\u201d she would urge again and again; and to my\nanswer, \u201cI have tried, but she cannot see it,\u201d she would return the same\nwondering exclamation, \u201c_Est-il-possible_!\u201d\n\nShe evinced as much pleasure as surprise when I told her that Millicent\nwas to come every day during my absence, and read to her and put things\ntidy in the little room.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d I said, \u201cyou must pay back all this kindness by getting the grace\nof the faith for her.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! if I could but do it,\u201d she exclaimed heartily.\n\n\u201cYou may do a great deal,\u201d I said; \u201cyour prayers ought to be very\npowerful with our Blessed Lord, because you are on the cross.\u201d\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\u201cIf I lay on it lovingly, as he did,\u201d she said; \u201cbut I don\u2019t\u2014not always,\nat least. I wriggle, and kick, and try to slip off it every now and\nthen.\u201d And she heaved a deep sigh.\n\n\u201cYou are not a saint,\u201d I said; \u201cof course you have your ups and downs,\nbut you would rather stay on the cross for any length of time than get\noff it, if you could, against the will of God, would you not?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! yes, that I would,\u201d she answered impulsively.\n\n\u201cThen you are all right,\u201d I said. \u201cNever mind the wriggling and the\nkicking; your heart is loyal to God, and that\u2019s what he looks to. Set\nabout asking for Mademoiselle Gray\u2019s conversion, and he will not refuse\nit to you. Offer up all your sufferings for it from this time forth, and\nI feel perfectly certain our Lord will grant it to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I will try,\u201d she said, in an accent of simplicity and earnestness\nthat sounded already like a guarantee of success; and then, looking at\nher _Mater Dolorosa_, she added suddenly: \u201cI will ask _her_ to get it!\u201d\n\nI had brought some fresh flowers, and was arranging them in a pretty\nvase that Millicent had given her, when my eye fell upon a new book that\nlay beside it. It was _Notre Dame de Lourdes_, which S\u0153ur Lucie had\nbrought her the day before.\n\n\u201cI will get Mademoiselle Gray to read me some of it every morning,\u201d said\nMme. Martin; \u201cthey say it is beautiful. Do you think she will mind\nreading it?\u201d\n\nI thought not, and was delighted with the suggestion.\n\n\u201cI have a beautiful life of St. Francis de Sales which I will bring\nyou,\u201d I said, \u201cand you will ask her to read it to you when this is\nfinished. He was a charming saint, and had a great deal to do with\nconverting Protestants; ask him to help you.\u201d\n\nWe consulted what other books it would be advisable to get, and what\nsnares were to be set in other ways for Millicent. S\u0153ur Lucie was, of\ncourse, to be actively established in the service, the orphans were to\nbe set to pray\u2014nothing was to be left undone, in fact, for the capture\nof the unsuspecting soul. Of course this was all very treacherous and\nbase, and we were no better than a pair of designing Jesuits\u2014so our\nProtestant friends will say, if they should happen to light on my little\nstory. I cannot help it if they think so.\n\nWe left Paris, my mother and I, and during the three months of our\nabsence Millicent devoted herself like a real Sister of Charity to the\nservice of our poor friend. The weather became intensely hot, but she\nnever let this deter her; she never missed a day. She was inexhaustible\nin her devices for amusing and comforting the poor paralyzed invalid:\nshe made her bed, and dusted her room, and kept it fragrant with\nflowers; she brought her little delicacies of every sort; she read to\nher by the hour\u2014for, though it had been understood that she was only to\ndevote from eleven to twelve to this visit of charity, she managed\ngenerally to spend double that time there. All this kindness called out\npassionate love and gratitude from Mme. Martin. She longed with the most\nintense longing to requite it by drawing down a blessing upon Millicent;\nshe told me afterwards that the yearning to obtain the faith for her\ngrew to be a kind of thirst that never left her day or night. She\noffered her sufferings\u2014and they were manifold and terrible\u2014her weary,\nsleepless nights, her long days of feverish loneliness, every pain and\ntrial of soul and body, not once nor many times a day, but constantly,\nfor her dear benefactress\u2019 conversion, till it became an _id\u00e9e fixe_\nthat was never absent from her mind, and found vent continually in\ninterior aspirations or ejaculatory prayers; waking or sleeping, there\nit was, a part of herself, something that never left her. If she lay\nawake at night, restless and throbbing with pain, she comforted herself\nwith the thought that it was so much suffered for this dear object; she\nfell asleep praying for it, and woke up to pray for it again.\n\nWe returned to Paris just as Mrs. Gray and Millicent were getting ready\nto start for some watering place, from which they were to proceed to the\nsouth and not return until the spring. Their departure was a real sorrow\nto me. I had grown sincerely attached to Millicent, and she to me. I had\nstruggled at first to keep my feelings within the proper bounds, not to\nlet myself slip into bondage and so prepare the day of reckoning that\nwaits on all human affections; but the chains had coiled round me\nunawares, and when it came to saying good-by I found myself hopelessly a\ncaptive. We parted with full hearts and promises of mutual remembrance.\nMillicent was afflicted with that common vice, hatred to letter-writing,\nwhich so many of our friends make us suffer from, so we exchanged no\nvows in this respect, I steadily refusing to write unless my letters\nwere answered. Our separation was therefore likely to be complete.\n\n\u201cYou will pray for me, at all events?\u201d she whispered as we embraced.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d I said, \u201cbut on condition that you pray for me.\u201d\n\nSybil went with me to the railway station to see the Grays off. She was\nsorry to lose Millicent, but I could see at the same time that she was\nglad to have her out of the way.\n\n\u201cI never expected to see Milly come so safely out of it!\u201d she exclaimed\nas we turned away, after watching the train puff out of the station. \u201cI\ncould have staked my head on it that you would have made a Romanist of\nher by this.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou would have lost your head, then, and, such as it is, you would be\nworse off without it,\u201d I answered crossly. \u201cOne really would imagine, to\nhear you talk, Sybil, that the faith was a disease that people caught\nlike measles or the small-pox.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd so it is\u2014that is\u2014I don\u2019t mean exactly that\u2014but it certainly is\ncontagious; everybody says it is, and that there is nothing so dangerous\nas living amongst good Catholics. I was terrified out of my life for\nMilly; I told her so over and over again, and did my very best to\nprotect her. But I must say you have behaved very honorably, Lilly; I\nsuppose there is hardly a Roman Catholic you know who would have behaved\nas well.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou mean to be complimentary, so I suppose I ought to say 'thank you,\u2019\u201d\nI replied, while I could not but laugh at her impertinence. \u201cJust tell\nme one thing, Sybil,\u201d I said: \u201cYou admit the right of private judgment,\ndon\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo I? Why, I admit nothing else!\u201d screamed Sybil.\n\n\u201cThen if Protestants, in right of their private judgment, choose to\nbelieve in the Catholic Church, what have you to say against it?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly this: that in becoming Catholics they don\u2019t exercise their private\njudgment, they renounce it,\u201d said Sybil.\n\n\u201c_After_ they become Catholics; but in the first instance? The act of\nrenunciation involves an exercise of the judgment, does it not?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! if you are going to be metaphysical, I give in,\u201d said Sybil; \u201cI\nhate and detest metaphysics!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, just answer me this much,\u201d I pleaded: \u201cDo you think Catholics are\nall certain to be damned?\u201d\n\n\u201cGood gracious! I don\u2019t believe one of them will be damned. Not the good\nones, at any rate\u2014not such as you, Lilly!\u201d replied Sybil with\nextraordinary vehemence.\n\n\u201cThen why, in the name of wonder, should you have such a horror of any\none becoming a Catholic?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cWhy? Why, because it\u2019s a dreadful thing to ... change one\u2019s religion,\nand the Roman Catholic religion is full of superstitions, of mistakes of\nall sorts.... But look! I declare that\u2019s Mr. Halsted on the other side\nof the street, and he sees us and is coming across!\u201d\n\n\u201cIn time to rescue you from metaphysics,\u201d I said. \u201cI hope he won\u2019t stand\nand speak to us; do you think he will?\u201d\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t let him; I\u2019ll make him walk on at once with us,\u201d said Sybil.\n\n\u201cO Sybil!\u201d I cried, \u201cyou must not do that; mamma would be very angry if\nI were seen walking with him alone.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat nonsense! You\u2019re not alone; _I_'m here,\u201d said Sybil.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t count,\u201d I said; \u201cyou know you don\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, you talk of being complimentary,\u201d protested Sybil, \u201cbut that\nbeats all _I_ ever said in the way of polite compliments.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must dismiss him at once,\u201d I said hurriedly, for he was close on us\nnow; \u201cif you don\u2019t, I\u2019ll call a cab and go home alone.\u201d\n\nMr. Halsted, serenely unconscious of being a cause of terror or\ncontention, approached, smiling, with his hat in the air. He rather\naffected the extreme of French courtesy in his demeanor towards ladies;\nwhich was a mistake, for his native American urbanity, frank and free\nfrom grimace and palaver, was much more formidable, if he had but known\nit. Strange to say, it had not occurred to me before that he was here on\ninvitation; but this fact flashed on me suddenly as I noticed Sybil\u2019s\nembarrassment. It was certainly hard on her to have to turn him away\nafter inviting him to meet her. I saw but one way to rescue her and\nmyself.\n\n\u201cI am so glad you have come; you will accompany Miss Segrave,\u201d I said.\n\u201cI am rather tired, and shall be thankful now to drive home. Will you\nkindly call a cab?\u201d\n\nThere was a little pretence of protest, from Sybil, of offering that we\nshould both drive, but I overruled this and had my own way. I was glad\nto be alone. I wanted to think about Millicent, to look back over the\nshort history of our intercourse, to look forward to its possible issue.\nI felt disappointed. I had hoped to find her, if not a Catholic, at\nleast very near it, on my return; I had built so much on Mme. Martin\u2019s\nprayers, on the example of her patient piety, and the living triumph of\nthe faith which she presented. Then I began to reflect that after all I\nwas quite in the dark as to how far these hopes had been disappointed. I\nhad had scarcely any opportunity of judging. Millicent and I had not\nbeen once entirely alone since my return, and it was impossible to enter\non the subject in a room where others were present. By the time I\nreached home I had cheered up, and began to take a more hopeful view of\nthings. God works slowly, I said to myself; what are three months to his\neternal patience? Mme. Martin was full of hope, though, like myself, the\ndelay seemed long to her.\n\nHer own day of trial was drawing to a close. I found her very much\nweaker, and altogether more worn and exhausted than when I left. Her\nsoul, on the contrary, seemed to have risen to a higher and purer\nregion, and to be breathing the air from the heavenly hills; her spirit\nof detachment, her love of the cross, had reached those heights where I\ncould only follow her with a gaze of wondering, awe-stricken admiration.\nI had always felt a poor creature by the side of her, but I had felt\njustified in offering her sometimes what little help I could, reminding\nher of consolations and truths that temptation or overpowering physical\npain had momentarily obscured. From this time forth I never dared to do\nso. Indeed, the opportunities which she herself had formerly furnished\nfor it never occurred. That folly of the cross which had been a source\nof mild scandal to Millicent on the occasion of their first meeting had\ncome to be her normal state. She had chewed the bitter wood until it had\nbecome sweet. The winter wore on and brought no change in her condition,\nexcept the gradual, almost imperceptible decay of strength which\nforetold the approaching close of the struggle. She continually asked\nfor news of Millicent; I was able to tell her that she was well and\nhappy. There were some American families at Cannes who wrote now and\nthen to the Segraves, and generally reported of mutual friends; but\nMillicent herself perversely refrained from writing to me. I half\nsuspected that there was a motive in this. I said so to Mme. Martin, and\nit consoled her greatly.\n\n\u201cYes, it is very possible,\u201d she remarked. \u201cI often fancied Mademoiselle\nGray wished to speak more openly to me than she did; the life of St.\nFrancis of Sales evidently made a great impression on her. Sometimes,\nwhen she was reading to me, she would stop and look up as if she were\ngoing to ask a question, but, after hesitating a moment, she would go on\nwithout saying anything.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must pray harder than ever,\u201d I said; \u201cthere is nothing else to be\ndone.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen I am in purgatory, please God, I will pray for her,\u201d she replied.\n\n\u201cI hope you may go straight to heaven without going through purgatory at\nall,\u201d I said; \u201cyou have suffered so long and so patiently!\u201d\n\nBut she shook her head, and answered, with a look of austere humility I\nshall never forget:\n\n\u201cWhat are my sufferings compared to my sins\u2014compared to the holiness of\nGod?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you long very much to see heaven\u2014to know what it is like?\u201d I said,\nafter we had been silent a while.\n\n\u201cNo; I can\u2019t say I do,\u201d she replied. \u201cI only long to see God.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you realize at all what the vision will be?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d she said, and her black eyes, so deep-sunk in their sockets, were\nlifted up with an expression of eager, tender yearning that was\nindescribable. \u201cI realize nothing; but when I try to do so, I feel the\nmost wonderful peace stealing over me\u2014a sense of safety, of rest, of\nhappiness. I can\u2019t describe it; but it is like a foretaste of the bliss\nof Paradise\u2014_to see God_! That is what makes Paradise!\u201d\n\nShe was speaking rather to herself than to me, in a low voice, scarcely\nabove a murmur. I felt that God was very near to her; the low-roofed\nattic was filled with an august, unseen Presence that touched us with a\nthrilling solemnity.\n\nPresently I said: \u201cYou will remember me when you see God, will you not?\nYou will pray for me by my name?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! yes, that I will,\u201d she answered, with a loving smile; \u201cafter my\nmother, you are the first person I shall name. I shall tell our Lord how\nkind you have been to me for his sake; I shall beg him to pay it all\nback to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is very little to pay,\u201d I said; \u201cit has been a privilege and a\ndelight to me to come and see you. But I will ask you to do some\ncommissions for me the first thing when you get into heaven.\u201d\n\nI gave her the commissions. There were three. Millicent Gray\u2019s\nconversion was the second on the list. She promised me solemnly that she\nwould execute them, either in heaven, if she was so happy as to go there\nstraight, or else in Purgatory, if this were possible.\n\nIt was wonderful to see the calmness with which she lay there discussing\nthe prospects of the life beyond, the simplicity and childlike\nfearlessness with which she watched the approach of death, while at the\nsame time her soul was filled with a sort of awful reverence at the\nthought of appearing before God. It was impossible to witness it without\nhaving one\u2019s faith quickened.\n\nChristmas came. The winter was unusually severe, and the intense cold,\nfrom which it was impossible to protect her fully in her miserable room\nclose under the thin roof, brought terrible aggravation to Mme. Martin\u2019s\nsufferings. It interfered, too, with my daily visits; when the snow came\nI was compelled to limit them to one or two a week. This was a privation\nto both of us. I had grown not only deeply interested in her, but\nsincerely attached to her, and she, on her side, had come to love me\nwith a love of sympathy as well as gratitude that was very precious. It\nwas like being in the companionship of a soul in purgatory; she seemed\nso _loosened_ from this life, so lifted up, as if the nearness of God\nwere all but a visible reality to her. The more the shadow of death\nclosed round her, the more fully the light from the heavenly mount\nseemed to shine upon her. My visit was the solitary break in her long\nday\u2014the only little breeze of human sympathy and comfort that came to\nrefresh her. I knew it was a great trial to her to be deprived of it;\nshe had often said the sound of my steps on the stairs was like a drink\nto her when she was parched with thirst; sometimes she greeted me\nplayfully with the salutation, \u201c_Bonjour, mon verre d\u2019eau fra\u00eeche_!\u201d But\nshe had now grown so strong in sacrifice that it was difficult to trace\nthe slightest symptom of regret in her. She would reproach me for coming\nout in the severe weather, declaring that she would rather never see me\nthan have me take cold; that it was wrong of me to run such risks; and\nthat there was no necessity for it, because she wanted for nothing, her\nmother came up twice a day to look after her, and so on.\n\nOne day she asked me if I had any news of Millicent. I had heard that\nvery morning from Sybil that she was figuring with great success in some\nprivate theatricals at Mentone. But I did not like to tell Mme. Martin\nthis; I feared it might shock her, or at least jar painfully on her\npresent mood.\n\n\u201cShe is very well,\u201d I said. \u201cYou know she is very bad at writing\nletters; I only hear of her through friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was dreaming of her last night,\u201d she answered musingly. \u201cHow I wish\nshe might become a Catholic before I die! It would be such a consolation\nto me to hear of it!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will hear of it in the next world, please God,\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cYou think souls know what goes on on earth?\u201d she inquired.\n\n\u201cOf course they do!\u201d I said. \u201cHow could there be joy in heaven for the\nreturn of the sinner unless they heard of it?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! yes, in heaven, to be sure; but I was thinking of purgatory. Do you\nthink they know there what happens here below?\u201d\n\n\u201cI see no reason for not believing it,\u201d I replied. \u201cMany saints and\ndoctors have believed it; why should not our guardian angels carry\nmessages from us to the angels of holy souls, if not to themselves\ndirect, and tell them when we are helping and praying for them, and ask\ntheir prayers for us in return? It is a belief that fits in perfectly\nwith the doctrine of the communion of saints.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is a most consoling idea,\u201d she said. \u201cI shall be longing for a\nmessage from your guardian angel to tell me I have obtained all your\nrequests.\u201d\n\n\u201cPray hard, then, that you may not have long to wait,\u201d I said, kissing\nher face, that was looking up at me with a smile. I smoothed her pillows\nonce more, and fussed about the bed and the room, with a pretence of\nbusily setting things to rights, but in reality to hide an emotion that\nI could neither explain to myself nor master. I remember turning back,\nas I was closing the door, to have a last look at her. She made a sign\nwith her head, and answered me with an affectionate smile.\n\nOn the stairs I met S\u0153ur Lucie.\n\n\u201cShe seems just the same, _ma s\u0153ur_,\u201d I said. \u201cHow long do you think it\nwill last like this?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! not very long now,\u201d she replied. \u201cThis cold will soon bring it to\nan end. She may be carried off at any moment.\u201d\n\nMy heart gave a great thump against my side. I could not realize it, and\nyet it had been borne in upon me that this was the last visit I should\npay her. The longing to kiss her once more, to say good-by with the full\nconsciousness that it was to be for the last time, was so strong that I\ncould not resist it. I turned back with S\u0153ur Lucie, and went up again to\nher room. She did not seem surprised\u2014at least, she said nothing about my\nreappearance. I waited a moment while S\u0153ur Lucie questioned her, and\nthen kissed her and said good-by.\n\n\u201c_Au revoir_,\u201d she said, \u201c_au revoir_. I will not forget your\ncommissions; and mind you pray for me _always_.\u201d\n\nI was laid up with a violent attack of neuralgia for several days after\nthis. One afternoon, about four days after I had seen her, a messenger\ncame from S\u0153ur Lucie to say that Mme. Martin was dying; she was to\nreceive the Viaticum and Extreme Unction in an hour, and had expressed a\nwish that I might be present. The doctor was in the room when the\nmessage was delivered. I entreated him to let me get up and go, if it\nwas possible.\n\n\u201cYou will do as you wish,\u201d he replied, \u201cbut you will do it against my\nemphatic prohibition. I won\u2019t answer for the consequences, if you\nattempt it.\u201d\n\nOf course this settled the question. Had I been rash enough to try to\ndisobey him, my mother was there to prevent it. I was greatly\ndistressed. I had looked forward for so long to being with her at the\nlast, to receiving her last kind word of farewell, and helping her with\nmy love and my poor prayers through the great passage. My mother saw how\npained I was, and volunteered to go and take my place, and tell Mme.\nMartin how grieved I was at being prevented. She just arrived as the\nroom was being made ready for the coming of the priest. The dying woman\nhad insisted on being taken out of bed and placed sitting up in a chair,\nthat she might receive our Lord more befittingly on this his last visit\nto her; this was done accordingly with great difficulty and immense\nsuffering to herself. She insisted, too, on being washed, and dressed in\nher best clothes, and, what struck me as still more characteristic at\nsuch a moment, she entreated her mother to put on her Sunday clothes,\nand to wear a cap which was only taken out on very great occasions. When\nall was ready, and the three assistants sat praying in silence, Mme.\nMartin signed to my mother that she wished to speak to her. \u201cGive my\nlove and thanks to Mlle. Lilia,\u201d she whispered, \u201cand tell her I will not\nforget her commissions.\u201d Then, after a short silence, she said, as\nquickly as she could gasp out the words: \u201cHe is coming! Make haste!\nLight the candles!\u201d\n\nThey did so, but waited still full ten minutes before the tinkle of the\nsilver bell was heard on the stairs. S\u0153ur Lucie told me this incident\nwas not such a rare occurrence with the dying; that frequently they\nannounce the approach of the Blessed Sacrament when the priest is yet a\nlong way off, as if their senses were quickened by some spiritual\nfaculty that is only awakened in death. The solemn, magnificent rite was\nperformed, but it was too late to think of Holy Communion. The priest\ngave the last absolution and began the prayers for the dying. Before he\nhad finished them the long struggle was over. Mme. Martin was at rest.\n\nAbout five weeks after her death I received a letter from Millicent,\ninforming me that she had become a Catholic. \u201cIt has been all so quickly\ndone; I seem to have been so completely taken up and lifted into the\nchurch,\u201d she said, \u201cthat I cannot help thinking some powerful\nsupernatural agent has been at work all along overruling my own will. I\nhad no more idea of becoming a Catholic than I had of turning\nMohammedan\u2014although all my sympathies had been quite gained over to the\nchurch by you and Mme. Martin\u2014when one evening I went to act Racine\u2019s\n_Athalie_ at the house of a friend here. When it was all over, and the\npeople were crowding round me with compliments and congratulations, a\ngentleman, a Catholic priest, came up and spoke to me; he thought I was\na Catholic, and began at once to discourse on the grandeur of the Bible\nnarrative and Racine\u2019s interpretation of it. I undeceived him as soon as\nI had the chance; he seemed sorry and surprised, but went on talking\nvery pleasantly, and, when we were saying good-evening, I said: 'My\nmother will be happy to see you, M. l\u2019Abb\u00e9, if you would not object to\ncall upon a heretic!\u2019 I cannot to this day tell what moved me to say\nthis. The next moment I thought I must have been out of my mind. He\nreplied good-humoredly that he was not afraid of heretics, and was very\nglad when they were not afraid of him. My dear Lilly, if the heretics\nonly knew, they would fly from that man as the devil does from holy\nwater! He came to see us next day; it so happened mamma was out, so I\nsaw him alone. I met him several times again, and\u2014well, dear, before the\nmonth was out I was a Catholic. When I look back on it, it seems to me\nthat I was in a dream, and that I was led on and on without any\nconscious will or action of my own, but just let myself follow the lead\nof some invisible attraction, some magnet that drew me in spite of\nmyself, and here I am safe in St. Peter\u2019s net and happily landed in his\nbark. Are people often converted in this way? Tell me if the church has\ninvisible fishermen who go about casting nets and catching wayward,\nsilly souls thus, or is it a special dispensation of mercy invented for\nme?\u201d\n\n\u201cDear, grateful Mme. Martin! How quickly and well you have executed my\ncommission! Make haste and fulfil the others now!\u201d I cried out to my\ndead friend on reading Millicent\u2019s letter. She has kept me waiting for\nthe other two; but I have not a doubt they will come in good time.\n\nYou can imagine Sybil\u2019s feelings on hearing of this event. I shall\ncertainly not attempt to depict them. Yet, in the midst of her genuine\ndispleasure, there was a high note of satisfaction\u2014the exultation of a\nprophet who had lived to see his prophecy fulfilled. I am sure this was\na great comfort to her. We did not quarrel, though she let me plainly\nsee she looked upon me as a kind of spiritual murderer. On the other\nhand, she took a more merciful view of it: It was to be, it was written;\nI was the appointed, or the permitted, instrument of Millicent\u2019s\ndestiny, and if I had not come some one else would; Millicent was doomed\nfrom the beginning.\n\nIn the spring my fears were realized: the doctor and Mrs. Segrave and\nSybil sailed away to New York.\n\nA few days before they left Paris Sybil burst into my room in high\nexcitement.\n\n\u201cWill you believe it!\u201d she cried. \u201cMr. Halsted has taken his place in\nthe _Tiger_ and is going back with us!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, and why not?\u201d I said. \u201cYou and he will have delightful\nopportunities for discussing life on deck every day.\u201d\n\nSoon after their arrival I had a letter from her informing me that they\nhad discussed it to the issue I had long since foreseen: she was to be\nmarried to him in a month.\n\n\n\n\n                  THE MADONNA-AND-CHILD A TEST-SYMBOL.\n\n\nAmong the most beautiful of American lakes is one in the northern part\nof New York State. The old Indian name for it was Horicon, or Holy\nLake\u2014called so, perhaps, from the transparency of its water. Its banks\nabound with historic memories. They have been a battle-ground for\nEnglish and French, and again in the war of Independence. But what\nspecially endears it to Catholics is its consecration by the Jesuit\nmissionary Father Jogues, who gave it, on the Eve of Corpus Christi, in\nthe year 1646, the name of Lac du Saint-Sacrement\u2014Lake of the Blessed\nSacrament. Unhappily, the name it bears at present is the one conferred\nupon it by Sir William Johnson, who, courtier-like, dubbed it Lake\nGeorge, after George I. of England.\n\nMay its Catholic name soon be restored! As an earnest whereof there now\nstands on the right shore\u2014about a mile and a half from the head\u2014a\nbuilding known as \u201cSt. Mary\u2019s of the Lake,\u201d from which, through the\nsummer months, a silvery bell rings out the _Angelus_ at morning, noon,\nand evening. Strangers are informed that this building is \u201cthe\nmonastery\u201d; but a front view of it presents one feature which dispenses\nwith all need of inquiry as to the creed of its occupants: not the cross\nupon the roof\u2014for heresy has stolen that; but an unmistakable\n\u201cencroachment of popery\u201d in the shape of a Madonna-and-Child.\n\nAmong the curious who have ventured upon visiting \u201cthe monastery,\u201d a\ncertain good woman was one day discovered standing before the house and\nlooking up at the statue. On being asked what she thought of it she\nreplied, in the accent of Vermont: \u201cWaal, it gives me a feeling as if\nsomething was crawling all over me to see the Virgin so big and the\nSaviour so small! It\u2019s the Saviour that ought to be big.\u201d Now, this\nsentence, absurd as it sounds, contains, we may say, an entire theology.\nTo one who has never been a Protestant it is unintelligible, no doubt;\nbut to one who has, or has had, that misfortune it expresses, though\npoorly, an idea of which he is, or has been, himself conscious. Our\nfriend was sufficiently familiar with the Gospel story to know that the\nfigures before her represented the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. Her\nremark, too, evidenced her belief in that story. She meant to tell us,\nin her simple way, that we made almost everything of the Virgin and\nalmost nothing of the Saviour. Perhaps, had she been better educated,\nshe would have expressed a preference for seeing the Saviour alone, and\nnot as a child but as a man. Such, at least, would have been the\nwriter\u2019s own sentiment, years ago, when he was a Protestant. Not but\nthat we should have felt more at ease had there been no image there at\nall; for the genius of Protestantism dislikes images: it is essentially\niconoclastic. But, certainly, we would rather have seen any image than a\nMadonna-and-Child.\n\nHere are two points for investigation: Why Protestantism is essentially\niconoclastic; and why it is particularly uneasy and bitter in the\npresence of a Madonna-and-Child.\n\nThe heresy of the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, was Eastern, and raged\nin the eighth and ninth centuries; even reviving, for a time, after its\ncondemnation by Pope Adrian I. and the Seventh \u0152cumenical Council. It\nsought to abolish sacred images and pictures, on the ground of their\nbeing idolatrous. Originating with an ignorant soldier, Leo the\nIsaurian, who had become Emperor of Constantinople, and \u201cmanifesting\nitself\u201d (to borrow the words of D\u00f6llinger) \u201cas a blind and senseless\nhatred of the imitative arts,\u201d we wonder that such a fanaticism could\ngain footing at all. But, in fact, it developed into a persecuting\nheresy which \u201cshed more blood,\u201d says the same writer, \u201cthan any which\nhad preceded it.\u201d\n\nNow, Protestantism has been said to partake of all the previous\nheresies; and we, for one, can testify to the truth of the accusation;\nfor, after becoming a Catholic, we discovered, in the course of study,\nthat our mind had entertained, at some time or other\u2014though not always\nculpably, we trust\u2014nearly every heresy ever known. But that\nProtestantism has especially distinguished itself by its iconoclastic\nzeal will be questioned by no one who is acquainted with its history.\n\nWe say, then, that Protestantism, as such, is _necessarily_\niconoclastic. And, first, from the negative attitude which its very name\nimplies\u2014from its principle of asserting the right of private judgment to\nthe rejection of extrinsic authority. Man, having a body as well as a\nsoul, and living in an order of the visible and the palpable, naturally\nseeks to _image_ his ideas\u2014to place them outside of himself in a\nrepresentative form. And particularly does he feel this need in matters\nof religious belief. Whence we find the use of symbolic representations\nin all the ancient religions. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman minds were\npeculiarly fertile in symbolism\u2014most so the Greek (the _word_ \u201csymbol\u201d\nis Greek). But a creed, if it can be called a creed, which consists of\nnegations\u2014which finds its vitality in protesting against\nauthority\u2014cannot consistently use symbols; for, obviously, it has\nnothing to symbolize. Protestantism, therefore, instinctively dislikes\nimages, seeing in them the symbolic representation of what is positive,\naffirmative, dogmatic.\n\nAgain, Protestantism started with another principle which gave it a\ntradition of iconoclasm\u2014the principle of a false supernaturalism. The\nsupernatural was exaggerated, to the destruction of the natural. Our\nnature was declared to be totally depraved, so that even free-will was\nwanting to us. Consequently, instead of being able to co-operate with\ngrace and acquire merit, we had to be justified by \u201cfaith only\u201d; the\nrighteousness of Christ had to be \u201cimputed\u201d to us\u2014thrown over our\ndepravity like a cloak over a leprous body. Now, of course, as an\nimmediate result of this doctrine, away went the saints; for they were\nno better than ordinary mortals\u2014possessing no merit of their own and\nnothing to be venerated for. And with them away went their images.\n\nFurthermore, this exaggerated supernaturalism involved elimination of\nthe visible and the material from the economy of grace. For the natural\nbeing evil, the visible and the material were evil too, as a part of the\nnatural, and therefore incapable of forming a system intermediary and\nsacramental between the soul and grace. Hence, away went the idea of a\nvisible church, and away went sacraments and sacramentals. Now,\nimages\u2014representations of any kind\u2014come under the sacramental system,\ninasmuch as, by raising our thoughts to their originals, they help us to\ncommune with the unseen, and put us in mind the more constantly to\ninvoke that mercy or intercession from or through which graces flow to\nus. Therefore, again, away went images with the rest of the sacramental\nsystem.\n\nBut, now, does not all this hostility to the visible and the material as\nelements of religion look very much like a misunderstanding on the\nsubject of the Incarnation? If Christ is God-Man, he is _God made\nvisible_\u2014God with a human soul and a _material_ body. Surely, then, to\nmaintain that Christianity has nothing to do with the visible or the\nmaterial is to betray an unfamiliarity with the meaning of the\nIncarnation.\n\nThis unfamiliarity will become the more apparent when we shall have\nconsidered an objection to what has been said on the iconoclastic\ntendencies of Protestantism. We may not unreasonably be reminded that\nProtestantism has passed through various important changes in the course\nof its career, and especially within the last half-century; that the\ndoctrine of total depravity has long gone out of fashion and is\npractically extinct; and, again, that Protestants do use symbols\nnow\u2014such as the cross and the triangle\u2014while some of them encourage\npainted windows, and even images, in their churches. Very true. And the\nchange is not surprising\u2014what with unnaturalness of doctrine on the one\nhand and conflict of principle on the other. \u201c_Naturam expellas furca,\ntamen usque recurret_,\u201d says Horace\u2014\u201cYou may drive nature off with a\npitchfork, yet she will keep running back.\u201d Then, as to principles,\nlogic, like murder, \u201cwill out.\u201d The doctrines of the Reformation, though\nnegations of Catholic dogmas, took a positive aspect for themselves; and\nthe right of private judgment, which had made them, was only consistent\nin destroying them. Within the last half-century\u2014and particularly within\nthe last quarter\u2014the principle of self-sufficiency has found its extreme\nin the complete rejection of the supernatural. Its votaries who have not\nreached that terminus are drifting thither, if unconsciously. And hence\na reaction, in favor of what are called \u201corthodoxy\u201d and \u201cchurchmanship,\u201d\nis perceptible among all earnest Protestants who retain belief in\nChristianity as something more than philanthropy, something with a\ndivine meaning. Not that they at all suspect (except those in the front\nranks of the movement\u2014the Ritualists, who openly avow it) that they are\ngoing back upon the Reformation. But they are. And as they advance they\ntake in ideas which are less and less compatible with genuine\nProtestantism. One of these ideas is symbolism, the representation of\ndoctrines by signs or images\u2014as the triangle signifies the Blessed\nTrinity and the cross the Redemption.\n\nOur argument, therefore, that Protestantism, _as such_, is necessarily\niconoclastic or hostile to images, holds good in spite of the fact that\nmodern Protestants are returning to the use of symbols. This return\nmeans that they have abandoned the position taken by the Reformers, and\nhave set their faces\u2014how little so ever they think so\u2014Romeward and\nhomeward.\n\nHere, then, comes in a very appropriate question. If Protestants are\ngradually relinquishing their old iconoclastic spirit\u2014if nowadays they\nset up the cross to express their faith in the Atonement, and use the\ntriangle as an affirmation of their belief in the Trinity\u2014where is their\nsymbol for the Incarnation? Of course they acknowledge the Incarnation.\nThey bracket it with the Trinity as a fundamental doctrine of\nChristianity. Then why do they not equally symbolize it? Evidently,\ntheir not even attempting to do so\u2014their having no symbol for it\u2014is\nabundant proof of what has been just said, that, while they profess to\nreceive the doctrine, they are strangers to its meaning. They understand\nby it merely the divinity of Christ, and beyond this keep it in the\nbackground and give it no practical bearing. The Atonement is everything\nwith them; the Incarnation nothing. But Christianity is _the religion of\nthe Incarnation_. For call it, if you will, the religion of the cross,\nthat term does not designate it as a whole. The truth expressed by the\ncross depends on the truth of the Incarnation; and so does every other\nChristian dogma. Christianity, therefore, is either the religion of the\nIncarnation or it is nothing. _As that_ it must stand or fall. And if we\nwould express it as a whole, we must symbolize the Incarnation. Now, the\ncrowning proof (were any needed) that the Incarnation, rightly\nunderstood, has no place in Protestant theology lies in the fact that,\nbesides not attempting to symbolize the doctrine themselves, all\nProtestants agree in a common aversion (not to say abomination) to the\nonly symbol possible, which is\u2014the Madonna-and-Child.\n\nAnd why is the Madonna-and-Child the only symbol of the Incarnation?\nBecause the Incarnation means that God is man; but how can we express\nthe truth that God is man, except by showing that he has a Mother? In\nhis divine nature he has no mother; then, if he has a mother, he is man.\nWhence the creeds do not merely say that Christ is the Son of God, or\nthat the Son of God was made man, but affirm that he was \u201c_born of the\nVirgin Mary_\u201d; \u201c_Incarnate of (or from) the Virgin Mary_\u201d\u2014thus setting\nforth the same divine Person as at once the Son of God and the Son of\nMary. That is, they show us Incarnate God as a Child in his Mother\u2019s\narms; they _symbolize_ the Incarnation (a creed is called a \u201csymbol\u201d) by\nthe Madonna-and-Child.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThus far, then, we have seen that the genius of Protestantism is hostile\nto images in general, and to the Madonna-and-Child in particular,\nbecause it is out of joint (so to speak) with the genius of the\nIncarnation. We have here a very singular spectacle: a vast body of\nprofessing Christians, who hold, with us, the doctrine of the\nIncarnation, and have not formulated any heresy about it in their\n\u201cconfessions of faith\u201d (we are not including Unitarians among\nChristians; for they have no more right to the name than Mohammedans); a\nbody of Christians who say with us that they \u201cbelieve in Jesus Christ\n... born of the Virgin Mary\u201d; who keep \u201cmerry\u201d Christmas, too, with\nus\u2014Christmas, the feast of the Madonna-and-Child\u2014who yet, for all this,\ninstead of dwelling with delight on a representation of the Infant\nSaviour in the arms of his Blessed Mother, invariably show that they are\nnot at home with it as a religious symbol.\n\nCan it be that they are insensible to what is beautiful and touching?\nNo; their hearts are as human as ours. Any other mother and child by an\nartist of moderate skill could scarcely fail to interest them. Moreover,\nit is fashionable with cultivated Protestants to admire _this_ Mother\nand Child where the question is one of art, not of religion. They\ndisplay a very creditable taste for the Madonnas of Raphael and other\ngreat painters. Or if the association of religion add a charm, it is\nnothing more to them than the glamour which invests a symbol of pagan\nsuperstition. And in saying this we speak from experience. When, as a\nschool-boy, the writer became acquainted with the mythologies of Greece\nand Rome, he found them full of poetry, and soon came to envy the\nreligion of those old pagans\u2014a religion so much in contrast with the\naridity of his own. So, too, when, a year or two later, he first saw\nCatholic worship (it was Benediction, of all lovely rites), he remarked\nas he came away: \u201cThat religion is full of poetry.\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d was the\nanswer\u2014\u201cof pagan poetry.\u201d And then he was told how all the \u201ccorruptions\u201d\nof Rome had been introduced from paganism; and, as an instance, the\nMadonna was cited. \u201cThey call her the Mother of God,\u201d said the informant\n(a clergyman of the Church of England, who had learnt his lesson well).\n\u201cYou remember Cybele, the 'mother of the gods\u2019? Well, there\u2019s their\nMadonna\u2014the Virgin Mary in place of the goddess Cybele.\u201d He was told\nthis and other things of like nature, and so became imbued with the idea\nthat the Catholic religion was a paganized Christianity. Still, for this\nvery reason (as we are free to confess), it had a fascination for us;\nand the greatest charm of all was its supposed goddess-worship.\n\nAt sixteen, again, our attraction to the Madonna was greatly increased\nby some stanzas of Lord Byron, in which that most wonderful of poets,\ninspired by the beauties of the Mediterranean twilight, and with some\nfamous painting in his mind, thus apostrophizes Our Lady:\n\n    \u201cAve Maria! Over land and sea,\n    That heavenliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee!\n\n    \u201cAve Maria! \u2019Tis the hour of prayer!\n      Ave Maria! \u2019Tis the hour of love!\n    Ave Maria! _May our spirits dare\n      Look up to thine and to thy Son\u2019s above!_\n    Ave Maria! O that face so fair!\n      Those downcast eyes beneath th\u2019 Almighty Dove!\n    What tho\u2019 \u2019tis but a pictured image strike,\n    _That_ painting is no idol\u2014\u2019tis too like!\n\n    \u201cAve Maria! Blessed be the hour,\n      The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft\n    Have felt that moment in its fullest power\n      Sink o\u2019er the earth, so beautiful and soft!\n    As swung the deep bell in the distant tower,\n      And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft:\n    While not a breath crept thro\u2019 the rosy air,\n    Yet all the forest leaves seem\u2019d stirred with prayer!\u201d\n\nPerhaps, too, we were even more impressed by a single stanza in another\ncanto of the same poem, where, in his description of Norman Abbey (his\nown Newstead), he recalls a solitary Madonna-and-Child which had been\nstanding amid the ruins:\n\n      \u201cBut in a higher niche\u2014alone, but crown\u2019d\u2014\n      The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,\n    With her Son in her blessed arms, look\u2019d round:\n      Spared, by some chance, when all beside was spoil\u2019d.\n    _She made the place beneath seem holy ground._\n      This may be superstition, weak or wild:\n    But ev\u2019n the faintest relics of a shrine\n    Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.\u201d\n\nLord Byron, it is true, was not a Protestant, but a deist. But this\nmakes it all the more evident how full of poetry the Catholic religion\nis\u2014and particularly in its worship of the Madonna\u2014when it could so\nattract a mind that rejected Christianity altogether. Other\nnon-Christian poets have proved the same thing, and none more so than\nour own great Unitarian poet, Longfellow, whom, when we first read\n\u201cEvangeline\u201d and \u201cHiawatha,\u201d we supposed to be a Catholic. But\nProtestant poets, too, and of various persuasions, have evinced a\nsympathy with particular features of the Catholic religion as it appears\nto those outside of it, and especially with the Madonna. These see an\n_ideal_ in our Virgin-Mother. And none has expressed this higher view so\nwell as Wordsworth in his celebrated sonnet\u2014to which, perhaps, we are\nindebted for our own first glimpse of her as an ideal. It is one of his\n_Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, and comes among a series in which, as a true\npoet, he is forced to lament the destructive work of the so-called\nReformation.\n\n    \u201cMother, whose virgin bosom was _uncrost\n    With the least shade of thought to sin allied:_\n    Woman above all women glorified\u2014\n    _Our tainted nature\u2019s solitary boast!_\n    Purer than foam on central ocean tost:\n    Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn\n    With fancied roses: than the unblemished moon,\n    Before her wane begins on heaven\u2019s blue coast!\n    Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,\n    Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,\n    As to a visible Power, in which did blend\n    All that was mix\u2019d and reconciled in thee\n    Of mother\u2019s love with maiden purity\u2014\n    Of high with low\u2014celestial with terrene!\u201d\n\nClearly, therefore, it is _not_ an obtuseness to the beautiful, or even\nto the ideal, that alienates the Protestant mind from our symbol of the\nIncarnation. No; the key to the puzzle is this: that the system of\nChristianity known as Protestantism cannot see in the Madonna-and-Child\na symbol _of itself_\u2014has nothing in it capable of being symbolized by\neither Madonna or Child.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Incarnation, once more, is God made visible. As such it must needs\ncreate for itself a visible kingdom on earth: a kingdom over body as\nwell as over soul\u2014a kingdom in the world of mind, and equally into the\nworld of sense and matter. The kingdom thus created will, of course, be\nin harmony with that which created it\u2014the Incarnation\u2014and, therefore,\nwith the symbol of the Incarnation\u2014the Madonna-and-Child; and so will\nfind in the Madonna-and-Child the symbol _of itself_\u2014the mould upon\nwhich it was cast.\n\nHere, then, the reader will perceive what we mean by calling the\nMadonna-and-Child a _test_-symbol. Whatever system of Christianity is\nnot at home with this symbol, or not entirely in harmony with it, is\nthereby convicted of being false, as not the kingdom of the Incarnation.\nSo that, to demonstrate the true Christianity, out of all existing\nsystems calling themselves Christian, we have only to confront them with\nthe Madonna-and-Child.\n\nLet us do this. And, first, we will call up all the Protestant\ncommunions, and particularly the two most important and respectable\u2014the\nstate church of England and her daughter in America; excluding on the\none hand whatever sects deny the divinity of Christ, and on the other\nthat party in the said Episcopalian churches which is working, more or\nless consciously, to bring back \u201cpopery without the pope.\u201d Neither of\nthese extremes is genuine Protestantism.\n\nAll classes of genuine Protestants, when confronted with the\nMadonna-and-Child, acknowledge it, of course, the representation of an\nhistoric fact in which they believe\u2014the birth of Jesus Christ from the\nVirgin Mary\u2014but instinctively feel that it _means a great deal more_.\nThey principally object to the Madonna, as giving the Blessed Virgin too\nmuch prominence. \u201cWe all know,\u201d they argue, \u201cthat she is the Mother of\nour Saviour; but, beyond this, what is she to _us_?\u201d They are not\naccustomed to speak of her, except when they mention her in the Creed;\nor even to think of her, except when they pity or abuse their\n\u201cidolatrous\u201d fellow-Christians. At the same time neither do they care to\nsee the Child, particularly in Mary\u2019s arms or by her side. \u201cHe did not\nremain a child all his life,\u201d they say. \u201cIt was not as a child that he\ncame out in public to work miracles and preach the Gospel; it was not as\na child that he suffered and died. Then what is his childhood to _us_?\u201d\nIn a word, our symbol of the Incarnation reminds them of nothing with\nwhich they are familiar.\n\nThe secret is, they are not within the visible kingdom of the\nIncarnation; they are outside the visible church. Each sect will call\nitself a church, no doubt; and the Episcopalians have something to show\nfor theirs, because, in its outward form, it is a fair imitation of a\nreal hierarchy. But when they say in the Creed, with us, \u201cI believe in\nthe Holy Catholic Church,\u201d they do not mean at all what we mean. To them\nthe Catholic Church of the Creed is the collective multitude of\nomnigenous believers in Christ, instead of signifying a visible\ninstitution divinely endowed to teach and govern, and standing to them\nin the relation of a _mother_\u2014carrying them in her arms and feeding them\nat her breast. If they _did_ mean _this_ by the Catholic Church, they\nwould recognize at once in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol of that church\nwith them in her arms, and would, so far, feel at home with the\nMadonna-and-Child.\n\nNeither, again, have they the Blessed Sacrament\u2014that lovely \u201csecond\ninfancy\u201d of Jesus\u2014or they would joyfully acknowledge in the\nMadonna-and-Child an image of the church with the Blessed Sacrament in\nher keeping.\n\nBut especially would their attitude towards Our Lady be different from\nwhat it is now. Believing in a visible church, they would not insist, as\nnow, on having nothing between themselves and Christ, who, by\ninstituting the church, chose to place an entire system between himself\nand them. And, seeing the type of this church in Mary, they could not\nvituperate our doctrine of the latter\u2019s maternal mediation; not only\nbecause of the church\u2019s mediation, but also because Mary, as the type of\nmother church, must needs be _Mother_ Mary.\n\nNow, to the writer this is all the more clear because it is the history\nof his conversion. Having come\u2014and, thank God! not so late as it might\nhave been\u2014to feel the necessity of a visible church as a mother and\nguide, at whose feet we could sit child-like and learn from her \u201cthe\nwords of eternal life\u201d\u2014to hear whom would be to hear Christ; to go to\nwhom, to go to Christ\u2014we gradually discovered that the Church of\nEngland, in which we had been reared, and to whose ministry we were\nlooking forward, was no such mother and guide, nor ever could be. We\nfound that she did very well as a state church, a moral police, a \u201cpart\nof the civil service\u201d; but that her success in being _fashionable_ was\nowing\u2014_not_ to any _divine_ commission, _not_ to her speaking \u201cas one\nhaving authority,\u201d _not_ to her teaching one definite body of\ndoctrine\u2014but, on the contrary, to her being the creation of Parliament;\nto her _disclaiming_ all authority to teach, except as a fallible human\nwitness; and to her leaving the utmost latitude for every variety and\n_contradiction_ of opinion, so that her clergy were equally at liberty\nto hold or deny such vital doctrines as baptismal regeneration, the Real\nPresence, sacerdotal absolution, and apostolical succession. Added to\nthese doctrines\u2014which we had come to believe from joining first the\nmoderate High-Church party, and then the extreme, or the Ritualists\u2014was\na parallel attraction to the Blessed Virgin, whom we had discovered to\nbe truly the Mother of God. And the two ideas of a mother in the church\nand a Mother in the Blessed Virgin rose together and grew together, till\nwe found them both realities in the kingdom of the Incarnation.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd now we may let Protestantism go. Its votaries are loud in exhorting\nus to return with them to the purity of primitive Christianity. But when\nwe take them back with us over the centuries to the very cradle of\nChristianity\u2014to the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem\u2014and enter that\nsanctuary on the first Christmas morning, are they or we more at home\nthere, in the presence of the Madonna-and-Child? So far, then, from\nestablishing its clamorous pretensions to be the only unalloyed\nChristianity, Protestantism is ruled out of court by our test-symbol, as\nneither the kingdom of the Incarnation nor any part of that kingdom, and\ntherefore\u2014virtually and logically\u2014not Christianity at all.\n\nThe Catholic Church, however, has not the field all to herself yet.\nThere is the Russo-Greek, including some half-dozen independent\ncommunions. Is not she in harmony with our test-symbol?\n\nWhile on the road to Rome we were much attached to the Greek Church.\nMost Anglicans of the \u201cHigh\u201d school are\u2014because they know very little\nabout her. (A case where \u201cdistance lends enchantment\u201d\u2014and a very hazy\ndistance, to boot.) There is one thing, though, which Anglicans ought to\nknow about the Greek Church, and which we did know: the fact that her\nworship of the Blessed Virgin is more \u201cexcessive\u201d (to use their own\nphrase) than that of the Roman Church. We say we knew this, and confess\nthat, instead of being repelled by it, we were the more attracted. So\nfar, therefore, the writer was consistent, at least\u2014unlike other\nAnglicans, who protest especially against our \u201cMarian system\u201d (as they\ncall it), and at the same time babble and dream (for dream it is) of\nunion with the Greek Church. What we were afraid of in the Roman Church\nwas not the Blessed Virgin, but the Pope. We had been so thoroughly\nimbued from boyhood with the notion that the Pope was \u201cAntichrist\u201d and\nthe \u201cMan of Sin,\u201d that the influence of this monstrous superstition\nhaunted us, in some shape, to the very eve of our conversion. We say in\nsome shape. We had come, since a Ritualist, to believe that Antichrist\nwas yet to appear, and that the Pope could not possibly be he.\nNevertheless, we took it for unquestionable that the Papacy was a\nusurpation; had caused the separation of the Greek Church from the\nLatin; and was also to blame, in a great degree, for England being out\nof communion with the other western churches. While under instruction\nfor reception into the church we read Mr. Allies\u2019 _See of Peter_; and\nour amazement at the evidence for the Papacy was only equalled by our\nindignation at the unblushing impudence which had assured us, and with\nsuch pretence of patristic learning, that there was not a single proof\nfrom the first six centuries for the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.\n\nWell, then, the Greek Church _is_ in harmony with our test-symbol to a\ncertain and considerable extent. In the first place, she holds the\nCatholic doctrine of the Incarnation, and by no means keeps it in the\nbackground, but gives it due prominence in her catechism and liturgy.\nAnd since she teaches the devotional use of representations,\nparticularly of pictures, her people are no less familiar than we are\nwith the Madonna-and-Child as the symbol of the Incarnation. Secondly,\nalthough (as must be the case) they have not the same tender _mother_ in\ntheir church that we have in ours, still, all who are in good faith\nbeing by intention Catholics, they can speak, with us, of \u201cour mother\nthe church.\u201d And, again, though they are made much less familiar with\nthe Blessed Sacrament than we are, yet, having a true priesthood (not a\nsham one like the Anglican), a true altar, and a true Mass, the Real\nPresence is a living fact with them. So that they _may_ see in the\nMadonna-and-Child the church and the Blessed Sacrament as we do.\n\nThe Madonna-and-Child, however, being, as we have said, the mould upon\nwhich the church is cast, makes a law which must not be violated in any\nsingle particular. If, therefore, this self-styled \u201corthodox\u201d Greek\nChurch be found out of harmony with our test-symbol in even one point,\nshe is no more the kingdom of the Incarnation than if she were in\nharmony with it at no point.\n\nNow, she does fail to correspond with it in one most important point:\nviz., in her theory of the church as a whole. She holds, like the\nAnglican Ritualists, the theory of a _divided_ church. But the Madonna\ncan no more represent a divided than an invisible church, and those who\nsay, with us, in the Nicene Creed, \u201cI believe _one_ Catholic and\nApostolic Church,\u201d yet maintain that she need not be _visibly_ \u201cone,\u201d\nare more illogical than those who use the words in the sense of an\ninvisible church. That a visible church, of which _oneness_ is a mark,\nneed not be _visibly one_!\u2014could absurdity, in the shape of theory, go\nfurther?\n\nAgain, if this theory of the church as a whole\u2014that she is no longer\nvisibly one as her divine Author made her\u2014renders it impossible to see\nthe type of such a church in the Madonna separately, what meaning will\nit find in the Madonna-and-Child together? It beholds in the Madonna a\nunity which it denies; and in the Child\u2014either nothing at all, or\nsomething which it consciously rejects.\n\nWhat makes a church, according to the apostolic constitution? All\nchurches which have that constitution agree that the essentials of a\nchurch are a _bishop_ with a clergy and laity in his communion. The\nbishop is its nucleus, and _makes_ the church in the sense in which the\nhead makes the body. A bishopless church is a headless body. We say this\nis what all Christians agree upon who believe in apostolical succession.\nSo that even the recent contemptible sect calling themselves \u201cOld\nCatholics\u201d were bound to procure a bishop for their schism, albeit they\nset at defiance both authority and logic.\n\nA bishop, then, and the church in his communion are the normal or\nrepresentative church. Now, we see in this representative church the\nform of the Madonna-and-Child. To some this may seem fanciful. It is\nnot. Every priest is \u201canother Christ\u201d\u2014in the celebrated words of St.\nBernard; and the bishop is the _complete_ priest, as having the power to\nconfer the priesthood. If, then, the Madonna typifies the church, the\nChrist-child typifies the priesthood, and, if the priesthood, still more\nthe episcopate. Again, as Christ has in Mary not only a Mother, but a\nDaughter and a Spouse\u2014for he is her Father by creation (whence Chaucer\nand Dante exclaim, \u201cDaughter of thy Son!\u201d) and her Spouse as the Spouse\nof all elect souls, among whom she is \u201cas the lily among thorns\u201d\u2014so,\ntoo, has the priest in the church at once a mother, a daughter, and a\nspouse; and therefore still more does the bishop stand in this threefold\nrelation to the church. And, once more, as Christ is \u201cthe first-born\namong many brethren,\u201d his Mother being ours also, so is the priest an\nelder brother, ruling his brethren from the arms of their common mother;\nand, if the priest, much more the bishop.\n\nThere is nothing fanciful, then, in our view of the Madonna-and-Child as\na symbol of the normal or representative church. But what does this\nmean, if not that the collective church, consisting as it must of a\nmultitude of single churches, has equally the form of the\nMadonna-and-Child\u2014is equally capable of being symbolized thereby? or, in\nother words, that all single episcopates must be subordinated to one\nuniversal episcopate? Now, the Russo-Greek Church, while affecting (at\nleast in theory) the principle of hierarchical subordination from the\nbishop up to the patriarch, stupidly contradicts her own assertion of\nthis principle, and destroys the church as a whole, by rejecting the\nsupremacy of the Pope. She is, therefore, in this all-important point,\nas much out of harmony with our test-symbol as the Anglican and the\nother Protestant sects; and is ruled out of court, in her turn, as\nneither the kingdom of the incarnation nor any part of that kingdom.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo at last we have only the Roman Church to contrast with the\nMadonna-and-Child. And small need have we to show how harmoniously at\nall points she corresponds with our test-symbol. The Catholic recognizes\nin the Madonna-and-Child not only the Incarnation but its kingdom. He\nsees there the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her hands; and,\nagain, the church our _mother_ with her Christ-child at her breast; and,\nlastly, this same mother as our lady and queen, with her eldest son the\nPope ruling his brethren from his throne on her heart, the _Sancta\nSedes_.\n\nWith regard to this last point we think it strange that\ncontroversialists have made so little use of the Madonna-and-Child of\nthe Apocalypse.[164] We proposed to conclude our subject with a proof of\nthe Papacy from this vision, but must reserve it for a separate article.\n\nFootnote 164:\n\n  Chap. xii.\n\n\n\n\n                           COLLEGE EDUCATION.\n\n\nThe schools of the country have held their days of exhibition or of\ngraduation, the young men are enjoying their holidays, and the teachers\nare preparing themselves for a new year of work. It would seem to be a\nfavorable moment to say a word about the question that more or less\noccupies all who think seriously of the future\u2014education. This word, so\noften used, conveys different ideas, according to the person who speaks.\nIts etymology undoubtedly gives it a certain definite meaning: _educo_,\n_erudiri_ are two words that signify the bringing forth from a negative\nstate to a positive one\u2014from ignorance and rudeness to knowledge and\nculture. But this general idea does not cover the whole matter. We have\nto consider the end to which this process is directed in order to have\nan adequate idea of what it should be. Now, this end we shall have\nclearly before us if we call to mind the end for which man is here on\nearth. Christians all acknowledge and teach that man is here to know,\nlove, and serve God and save his soul. These two, therefore\u2014redemption\nfrom ignorance and a rude state, and the end for which man is here\u2014give\nus the right idea of what education ought to be. The appreciation of\nboth will enable us to avoid two fatal obstacles\u2014presumption and error.\nThe proper state of mind of any one beginning a course of education is\nthe recognition of his want of knowledge. There is nothing so hurtful as\na spirit of pride; for this blinds the mind, makes one overweeningly\nconfident of his powers, attached to his own opinions, and loath to\nreceive instruction. We have heard in our day young people discussing\nthe question whether a man were not able to work out the most difficult\nproblems of human science of himself; whether he absolutely stood in\nneed of the guidance of others; and whether there were any branch of\nhuman knowledge or achievement of past times _any one_ might not be able\nto attain to or accomplish, provided he turned his attention to it, and\ncircumstances were favorable. And when a young man had succeeded in\nmastering a certain amount of learning or science, we have been\nwitnesses of the very remarkable phenomenon of seeing him set himself up\nas one whose opinion should cut short every discussion, and form the law\nof belief or action for those around him. Any one having had any\nexperience of truly learned men, who even may not have been models of\nvirtue, must have been struck at the humility of mind they give proof\nof. They, more than others, appreciate how little they know of what it\nis possible to know; they see the vast field of knowledge of which they\nindividually can but cultivate a part, and common sense keeps them from\nthinking themselves possessed even of all that can be known of what they\nare actually engaged in. They agree in spirit with the celebrated master\nof Plato, whose saying is familiar to us: \u201cI know only this: that I know\nnothing.\u201d The first requisite, therefore, for sound education is a\nhumble state of mind, a disposition to be taught and receive the lessons\nwith docility\u2014a disposition not only needful in a beginner, but required\neven more the further one advances into the domain of knowledge. When\none adds to the original and relative ignorance of us all the further\nfact of the ease with which we go astray, fall into error\u2014a facility so\ngreat as to have given rise to the adage in universal use, \u201c_Humanum est\nerrare_\u201d\u2014it is impossible a man of sense should not recognize the\nnecessity of keeping down the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and\nconfess that, in not having controlled himself in this respect, he has\ngiven the most complete proof of the adage in his own case. We are\ntherefore all in the same condition, all in need of learning, and stand\nin want of a teacher to instruct us and lead us in the path of truth.\nWhat is the truth we are to seek after, who the teacher we are to go to,\nresults from the study of the end to which education is to be directed.\nWe have seen that the end of man is to know, love, and serve God and\nsave his soul, and this tells us what education should be. Anything that\nconflicts with this end is to be rejected; whatever aids us in attaining\nit is to be embraced; and as all truth is in harmony with that end, it\nfollows that education can embrace all sciences that are truly such,\nwhile it must eliminate all error; for error has a logical effect of\nkeeping us from the attainment of that end, especially where that error\nregards the higher branches of speculative education.\n\nHere, then, comes in the most important element in the education of\nman\u2014religion; religion, that is, to teach his head and train his heart.\nIf, as is most certainly the fact, man was made for God and for immortal\nlife hereafter, education that would exclude this element\u2014religion\u2014which\nregulates the relations of man with God, and teaches him how he may gain\nthat everlasting state for which he has been created, is wanting most\ndeplorably in the one thing needful. Such an education fits a man only\nfor matter; is of the earth earthy. It has no higher aim than the\nobjects around him; it is a guide that does not bring into the presence\nof the King, but takes one no further than the domain over which the\nKing\u2019s power is exercised. However much it may delight the eye with\ngrandeur of scenery, proofs of power and of wisdom, it has no right or\nability to introduce into a close communion with the Sovereign, the\nsource of all it beholds. It is simply an unworthy servant banished for\never from the face of his Master. This kind of education, which we shall\nstyle secular, professedly excludes all religious control of any kind\nwhatsoever, and it consequently relies only on reason and scientific\nexamination. Now, reason has been found wanting. In the brightest\nexamples of pagan times, familiar to students of history, are to be\nfound not only actions nature itself condemns, but principles laid down\nby them subversive of natural society and of all Christian\nvirtue\u2014pantheism and immorality. And we owe it to Christianity that we\nhave been rescued from the social life in which such principles\nprevailed and were in practice. Any one nowadays who knows something of\nmen will bear witness to the fact that both the one and the\nother\u2014pantheism and immorality\u2014are on the increase and show themselves\npublicly in the speech of the men and women of to-day. This can be owing\nonly to one cause\u2014the divorce of religion from education. And because\nthis is so, because secular education does not lead us to God, but takes\nus from him, a dividing line must be drawn between religious education\nand secular education; an insuperable barrier exists between them, which\nmust and ought to keep all that believe in revelation on the side of a\ntraining under the eye of religion. And if this be the case with regard\nto all who profess belief in Christ, how much truer is it with reference\nto those who have given their names to the Catholic Church and look to\nher infallible voice for their guidance! In saying this we do not wish\nto speak disparagingly of the learning, the ability, or the zeal of\nthose engaged in the cause of education who are not with us. We respect\nall those who are striving to increase the treasure of human knowledge\nor dispense it to their fellow-men. We join hands with all who are\nearnest in their study of true science, and rejoice in their success. We\nhave no right to question their sincerity. But between their efforts and\nsuccess in discovery, or in acquiring and imparting learning, and the\nway in which they educate, there is a difference most vital and\nessential. The one investigates the works of the Creator, while the\nother leads men practically, where it does not absolutely tell them as\nmuch, to ignore the Creator himself. Godless science can only fill a man\nwith himself, while it offers no guarantee for the preservation of his\nmorals and the attainment of his last end.\n\nOn the other hand, religion goes before the education which is allied\nwith her. With her torch of faith she illumes the darkness of men\u2019s\nminds. She shows them how much more beautiful is the Author of all the\nbeautiful things they contemplate than are the objects themselves. She\nmakes them behold in him the original essential beauty of which the\nuniverse is only a faint participation, and yearn for the possession of\nthat Beauty and sovereign Good she tells them is within their reach; and\nshe shows them how, under her direction, they may not be carried away by\ntransient allurements, by what they see around them, but attain to an\nindissoluble union with that Beauty and sovereign Good\u2014with God himself.\n\nBut it may be said religion has nothing to do with natural science; it\ncramps man\u2019s mind, fetters his intellect, stops his investigation. It\nwill do well enough in its sphere, but its action is hurtful to\nscientific pursuits.\n\nIs this true? It is not true; and we can refute the charge by principle\nand by fact.\n\nAll that exists belongs to God. All science, all truth comes from him,\nthe great First Cause, from whom all things proceed, in whom there can\nbe no contradiction. His works, therefore, cannot contradict him nor\ncontradict each other. Natural truth and revealed truth must, then, be\nin harmony, and we do not fear a conflict between them. The Catholic\nstudent of science is as fearless an investigator as is his rationalist\n_confr\u00e8re_; but the former will not rashly give himself up to\nspeculations the other\u2019s further experience will oblige him to retract.\nThe facts of science will never be in opposition to revelation, though\nthe interpretation of scientific men may be, to their discomfiture later\non. Even if the teacher of revelation, the church, should by any\npossibility, as is asserted in the case of Galileo, fail in a\n_disciplinary_ decree with regard to scientific research, such decrees\nnot being infallible utterances of the Holy See, there remains always\nthe remedy of a reversal when the incontestable proof of the contrary,\nsuch as he did not bring forward, shall be produced. So spoke Cardinal\nBellarmine, one of Galileo\u2019s judges. Though we may safely say that those\nin charge of the interests of the church do well in being exceedingly\ncareful how they interfere with scientific investigation, it\nnevertheless may become necessary at times to curb the license of those\nwho undertake to interpret the truths of revelation according to their\nideas or appreciation of science. How many scientific theories fall to\npieces every day! And is it not reasonable that those who believe in a\nrevelation should not be left at the mercy of every clever scientific\nman who is pleased to have a tilt against it? Let any scientific truth\nbe fully proved, and the Catholic Church will be the first to applaud,\nfor it redounds to the glory of her Head.\n\nWe need not, however, confine ourselves to this negative way of\nadvocating the cause of revelation as friendly to science, for there is\nno dearth of positive proof of the fact.\n\nRevelation is positively of advantage to the study of science. It is\nclear that any one who keeps me, when on a journey, from going out of my\nway saves me an amount of time and trouble. Instead of wandering in the\nwoods and bypaths, I am enabled to keep the highway and so reach sooner\nmy destination. This is one of the important services revelation renders\nscience. It tells us: Don\u2019t direct your attention hither or thither; for\nyou will find out you are wrong, after losing precious time and making\nyourself a laughing-stock. Don\u2019t go in search of the \u201cmissing link,\u201d for\nyou won\u2019t find it. Don\u2019t divide the unity of the human race, for it is\none\u2014of one man and one woman. Don\u2019t grovel with the materialists; for\nman has a spirit, and he is destined for a better life hereafter. Such\nlike warnings we have from revelation, and, instead of going astray with\nevolutionists and so-called philosophers, we employ our time and talents\non points that are serious and practical in science and nature; and\nHeaven knows there are plenty of these to engage us. The result is\nuseful knowledge that does not undo but builds up society and perfects\ncivilization. For this our grateful thanks are due revelation.\n\nThen, again, revelation opens up to us new fields of thought. It gives\nus an insight into what we could not otherwise know. It is as if chance\ndiscovered to us some principle of art or science no one had before\nsuspected. Once presented, reason can occupy itself on it, explore it as\nfar as possible, make deductions and applications. How much human ethics\nhave gained in clearness and usefulness by the light of the command to\nlove our neighbor, and by the example of the Redeemer of man! How much\nspeculative philosophy with regard to personality, responsibility, good\nand evil, and the future life! The crude theories of pagan times excite\nour compassion nowadays, though we honor the ability of their original\npropounders; yet these same theories we see now broached by those who\nhave cast aside revelation, but often with less depth and less wisdom\nthan the pagan in whose mind not all the light of natural religion was\nquenched. No! revelation is the friend of science; science divorced from\nreligion, the vaunted glory of to-day, is the enemy of progress;\nretrograde in all save the energetic talent that is lost in its service.\n\nA few examples will show what revelation or the church has done and is\ndoing for the cause of education; whether it has checked the development\nof man or favored it.\n\nWe will go to the \u201cdark ages,\u201d in which those who oppose the church as\nan educator are wont to find their _cheval de bataille_, their bugbear\nto frighten off those inclined to trust her. We say nothing of the\nunfairness of Protestants who wilfully ignore the sad state of the Roman\nworld consequent on the barbarian invasions of the fifth, sixth, and\nseventh centuries, and the struggles with the Saracens, who penetrated\neven into Italy\u2014a condition of things most inimical to the quiet\nrequisite for study; who pass over the conquest of those barbarians and\ntheir civilization by the church; who pretend to know nothing of what\nwas done by the monks to preserve learning in their monasteries, to whom\nthe preservation of the classic, philosophic, and ascetic works of\nantiquity and of the early church\u2014the Bible among them\u2014is due. We come\nto the thirteenth century. There we see, burning with a light that is\ncelestial, a luminary not of the church only but of human reason\u2014St.\nThomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. There was hardly a branch of\nintellectual pursuit of which he was not a master. His works are\nwonderful, and have always been a precious and useful legacy in every\nsubsequent age. His great work, the Sum of Theology, has remained the\ntext-book of theologians. In fact, no theologian is master of his\nsubject who has not made St. Thomas the object of his constant study.\nThough at times somewhat neglected, we may safely say that at present\nthere is an increasing appreciation of his works. Certainly this is true\nof his philosophical treatise _Contra Gentiles_. There is now a\nwide-spread movement in all civilized nations to return to the use of\nthe metaphysical and ethical teachings of St. Thomas, and it will be the\nmeans of regenerating such philosophical studies in this epoch of\nindividual self-assertion, of _ipse dixits_, when every man of talent\nwho lists puts forth his own hazy speculations as the truth, and strives\nto force down his deductions as the _ne plus ultra_ of science. Domenico\nSoto, at the Council of Trent, defined scholastic theology to be reason\nillumined by faith; we may, like him, style scholastic philosophy reason\nkept in its right path by the torch of faith. In the works of St. Thomas\nwill be found the refutation of the pantheism of Spinoza and the present\nGerman school, of the materialism of Hobbes and B\u00fcchner, of the\nutilitarian ideas of Mill, Spencer, and others of the followers of\nPuffendorf. We shall find, too, in his writings the ablest defence of\nrevelation, and the sound principles that will enable us to put to\nflight the whole host of mythical theorists of the age. So much for\ntheology, metaphysics, and ethics.\n\nIf we wish to speak of the work of the church in poetry, science, and\nliterature, we have a monument of what she could do, even in the middle\nages, in Dante. We hardly know which to admire most in this\nextraordinary man\u2014his native genius, his extraordinary powers of\nimagination, the beauty of his imagery, the remarkable knowledge of\ntheology and philosophy he exhibits in his writings, or the beauty of\nthe language he created. His culture was due to the church; his\ninspiration was drawn from revelation; and his science he drank in at\nthe great schools established and carried on by the church in Italy, in\nFrance, and in England. So pre-eminent is this writer, philosopher, and\npoet, that even in the nineteenth century our own poet whose works are\nread and justly appreciated wherever the English language is\nspoken\u2014Henry W. Longfellow\u2014has deemed it well worthy of his own genius\nto be his translator. Yet Dante is the product of the Catholic Church.\n\nBut the fashion to-day is to extol physical science. Of a truth,\nphysical science does not hold, and should not hold, the first place. If\nman were only matter, it might and should; but he has a soul, and the\nspiritual and intellectual world is his proper sphere. Scientific\nknowledge is useful for the arts that serve to make commerce prosper,\nand should be sought after; but to make commerce and what pertains to\nit, and the material comforts of man, the main object of his thoughts\nand aims is a monstrous disorder.\n\nHowever, even in this sphere of physical science the church is not\nafraid of her competitors. We leave to one side old Friar Bacon and\nother patriarchs of science, and we come to our own day. The church can\npoint to Angelo Secchi, one of the first of living astronomers and\nphysical scientists, and a member of a society that counts among its\nmembers men distinguished in every branch of human knowledge\u2014the Society\nof Jesus. So great is the pre-eminence of this distinguished _savant_ in\nhis native Italy that, since the city of Rome has been in the hands of\nthe present rulers, they have left nothing undone to gain him over to\ntheir side. And it is a pleasure to us to pay this public tribute to the\nnoble fidelity he has shown to his faith, his church, and his society,\ngiving as he does a splendid example of the alliance between the most\nadvanced physical science and the Catholic Church.\n\nAs faithful adherents to revelation, though not Catholics, we may\nmention the late Prof. Faraday and the no less distinguished Dr.\nCarpenter, who show that revelation and science do not war against each\nother.\n\nBut we need not content ourselves with showing that the church is not\nhostile to human learning. It is easy to bring forward facts that put\nher before the world in her true character as the real friend of man,\nthe guardian of his dignity, the zealous protectress of the truth of his\nintellect and of the freedom of his will. _In medio stat virtus_\u2014Virtue\navoids extremes. Our tendency to go wrong is by doing too much or too\nlittle, and we need something to keep us from either of these two\nextremes. It is here the church comes in to fulfil this friendly and\nmuch-needed office.\n\nThere was in the fourth and fifth century an intellectual movement that\nattributed more than its due to human nature. The Pelagian errors gave\nto man a power he does not possess, and those errors are very widely\nspread in this nineteenth century. They ignore the efficacy of grace, or\nthe help the will stands in need of to serve God. Grace, according to\ntheir most favorable view, was only a light for the intellect. Here was\nan excess; too much was claimed for human nature. Such doctrine is\ncontradicted by Scripture and by the Fathers. Our Lord tells us: \u201cI am\nthe vine, and you are the branches; without me you can do nothing.\u201d And\nSt. Paul says: \u201cWe are not able to think of anything [conducive to\nsalvation] of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.\u201d And St.\nAugustine, against those who spoke of some of the precepts as\nimpossible, writes: \u201cGod does not command what is impossible; but\ncommanding [thereby] counsels us to do what we can, to ask for aid to do\nwhat is beyond our power, and aids us that we may be able to do it.\u201d In\nthis case we have the church curbing human pride and keeping the\nintellect and will within its true limits.\n\nIn the sixteenth century there was a movement, resulting from pride and\nrebellion, that had its own punishment in the degradation to which it\nreduced man\u2019s nature. Luther\u2019s dogmatic system had, and has\u2014for it lives\nin Protestantism\u2014the effect of so debasing human nature as to deny light\nto the intellect and power to the will to do anything that was not\nsinful; for he held that the will of man is essentially changed, so that\nit depends on who directs it, God or the devil; and, besides, whatever\nit does is sinful, though covered by the merits of Jesus Christ, which,\nlike Esau\u2019s garments, prevent the knowledge or sight of the true state\nof things and the imputation of sin.\n\nHere was a defect; human nature was denied some of its powers.\n\nThe church fulminated this doctrine, and taught formally that man\u2019s\nintellect and will, though weakened by sin and passion, are not\nessentially changed, and that all man\u2019s acts are not sinful. She\nrecognized something of his original dignity in man. Hers is the spirit\nof the great St. Leo, whose eloquent words made the Christians and\nRomans of his day remember their origin, and the height to which they\nhad been raised by the Incarnation. He exclaims: \u201cRemember, O man! thy\ndignity, and, having been made a partaker of the divine nature, return\nnot by degenerate conversation to thy former vileness.\u201d She bade man\nremember that his nature, never essentially corrupt, had been purified\nby the grace of God, and that \u201cin those that please God there is nothing\ndefiled.\u201d\n\nLuther\u2019s teachings shed a sinister influence far and wide that tainted\neven Catholic universities and affected writers who still professed to\nbe in union with the church.\n\nIn the former University of Louvain Jansenius went so far as to say that\nsome of the gospel precepts were impossible, and that no grace was given\nto fulfil them. The words that were used by St. Augustine to refute the\nPelagians were turned against Jansenius, and the voice of the church was\nheard anew vindicating man from the necessity of committing sin. Later\non came Baius, of the same university, teaching also a doctrine of\nuniversal depravity; and the Sovereign Pontiff proclaimed that negative\ninfidelity\u2014that is, idolatry in good faith\u2014is not a sin; that\nconsequently those who have not grace or the illumination of faith can\ndo many good actions, though such actions have not the merit of those\nwhich are made available through the merits of Christ. Thus again did\nthe church prove herself the friend of human dignity.\n\nFurther on we meet those who, suffering the infection of the air caused\nby the doctrines of universal depravity, deny to the intellect the power\nof discovering the truth by itself. The traditionalists wish to trace\neverything to an original revelation; man has nothing he has not\nreceived from outside. Even his knowledge of God comes from tradition.\nAnd this doctrine the church, through her supreme teacher,\ndiscountenanced. She bade them recall to mind the words of the Book of\nWisdom and of St. Paul, where we are told that God can be known from the\ncontemplation of this visible world.\n\nWe will crave indulgence if we go so far as to venture the assertion\nthat the doctrines of Malebranche and his school had their origin in\nthis same depreciation of the powers of the human intellect. It may be\nsaid that the idea of intuition is a nobler one than that of painful\nanalysis and deduction; that intuition\u2014vision\u2014is the lot of the blessed,\nand therefore a higher state. But this is a state above nature, for the\nblessed; not a natural state in our present condition. Moreover, there\nare reasons to make us believe that Malebranche did not escape the\ninfection of the world of thought prevalent in his day\u2014the disesteem of\nhuman nature; an infection not, indeed, logically connected with the\nsystem of Luther. It was, if we may be permitted so to speak, a\npsychological effect\u2014a habit of mind being induced, whereby one was led\nso to think. This would appear to be evidenced by his doctrine of\noccasionalism, which made God always acting because man could not\u2014a\ndoctrine the authority of the church obliged him to modify, for he would\nthereby have made God the author of sin. Though no official condemnation\nof the theories of Malebranche, regarding the primary mode of knowing\ntruth, has ever been given by the church, or is at all likely to be\ngiven, the deductions of certain of his followers have been condemned;\nand it is well known that the weight of the influence of the Holy See\nhas been cast in the scale of the psychological theories of St. Thomas,\nwhose principle, clearly laid down, is: \u201cOperatio intellectus pr\u00e6exigit\noperationem sensus\u201d\u2014\u201cThe operation of the intellect prerequires the\noperation of sense\u201d\u2014I. 2, qu\u00e6st. iii. art. 3, resp. And in his first\npart, qu\u00e6st. xviii. art. 2, he writes: \u201cIntellectus noster qui proprie\nest cognoscitivus quidditatis rei ut proprii objecti, accipit a sensu;\ncujus propria objecta sunt accidentia exteriora. Et inde est, quod ex\nhis qu\u00e6 exterius apparent de re, devenimus ad cognoscendam essentiam\nrei\u201d\u2014\u201cOur intellect, that properly takes cognizance of what a thing is\n(its essence) as its proper object, receives of the senses, the proper\nobjects of which are external accidents. Hence it is that from what\nappears externally in a thing we come to know its essence.\u201d Of course\nsense is to be taken in its widest meaning, so as not to exclude the\nperception of the modifications going on in our internal being, which\nare the accidents of our spiritual essence. Man, therefore, has no\nnatural revelation, but he arrives at knowledge by the essentially\ninherent powers of his mind\u2014perception, abstraction, generalization. God\nsees by intuition everything in himself\u2014this is essential in him;\ncreated intellects see what is, or intellectual truth, the archetype in\nGod, reflected from creation as from a mirror.\n\nFrom these instances, then, it is evident that the church has always\nbeen the friend of human nature, asserting for it the possession of\nfaculties denied it, protecting it from error, and guiding it in the\nsearch of truth. She is, therefore, worthy of the gratitude of mankind\nfor what she has done in the cause of education, as well as of the\nconfidence of men as an instructor of youth in the future.\n\nWe come now to a more directly practical part of our assumed task, and\nshall consider it our duty to speak plainly, and perhaps in a way to be\ncensured by some; but we do it in what seems to us the interest of our\npeople and country. The Rev. Father. T. Burke, O.S.D., while in this\ncountry some years ago, addressing a society of young men, told them\nthat Americans could not expect to take their position among the\ncivilized nations of the world unless they studied, and studied not\nsuperficially but well. For our part, we thank him for this word. It is\ntime to put out of our heads that we are the most cultivated, civilized,\nwell-informed people of the world. We are not. Alongside the generality\nof the educated men of Europe the generality of the educated men of\nAmerica do not appear to advantage. Who and what is to blame for this?\n\nIn the first place, we blame parents. They ought to know better; they\nhave had experience of the world. They are the natural guardians of\ntheir offspring, and should provide by their experience a remedy for the\ninexperience of youth. Yet they, and especially Catholic parents, are\nthose who put the greatest obstacles in the way of those engaged in\nteaching. They want their boys hurried through school; they can\u2019t see\nthe use of Latin, much less of Greek. As for philosophy, a man can make\na fortune without philosophy; as if a fortune were the only thing worth\nliving for! If that were the case, your California stage-driver who has\nstruck a \u201cbonanza\u201d is the type of what a man should be intellectually.\nHeaven save the mark! We have had such men say to us: \u201cI assure you,\nsir, it is a very great misfortune my education was neglected; I have\nwealth and don\u2019t know how to enjoy it.\u201d There are numbers of unhappy\nwealthy Americans travelling in Europe whose children are looking\nforward to brilliant futures, but who themselves rush from one place to\nanother, tortured by the necessity of having to come in contact with\neducated people and learn daily their own inferiority. We have met such\npeople, and, out of sheer pity for their unhappy lot, have done what was\nin our power to make them forget for a while their troubles.\n\nThe fact is, no greater boon can a wealthy parent bestow upon his child\nthan a thorough, careful education, and every effort should be made to\nsecure such education. And one of the first steps to be taken is that\nparents second the efforts of zealous educators in our Catholic\ninstitutions. These institutions have their defects, but those defects\ncan hardly be remedied without the co-operation of parents. What that\nco-operation should be will be seen further on.\n\nThere are defects in our institutions of education. This is our next\npoint. These defects are in the manner of teaching and in what is\ntaught.\n\nWe acknowledge that there have been great improvements in the manner of\nteaching since we were boys; but with all this the want of uniformity,\nscarcely attainable in this country, will always leave the door open to\ndefects in teaching. As a rule, the mind of a boy is too much taxed with\nspeculative matter, and his memory comparatively neglected. The memory\nis one of the first faculties to show itself active, and it is also\ncapable of wonderful development. In the earlier education of the child\nthe exercise of the memory should predominate; as little strain as\npossible should be put on the mind yet tender. As the education\nprogresses the exercise of the memory should be kept up; choice extracts\nfrom the best poets and writers should alternate with the useful storing\nin the mind of facts and definitions. The preliminary education should\nconsist in the learning of languages, which are means of acquiring\nfurther knowledge by intercourse and reading, not by any means the sum\ntotal of education. We wish our Catholic parents would understand this;\nfor when a boy succeeds in knowing a little French and German they seem\nto think everything done. These languages are only the keys to the\ntreasures locked up in the writings of other nations. They are\nprincipally to be acquired by memory; and, in fact, this is the way the\nmost successful and generally used method\u2014that of Ollendorf\u2014adopts.\nThere is no reason why the boy should not be put at a very early age to\nlearning foreign languages. There is, too, one great advantage in this:\nthat his work at such languages will be lighter and less absorbing when\nhe comes to be engaged in scientific study. Again, care should be taken\nnot to put into the hands of a child books of an abstruse or relatively\ndifficult character; for excessive caution against straining the mind of\nsuch a scholar can scarcely be taken. A great deal of harm is sometimes\ndone from the too high standard exacted by school-boards of the various\ncategories of boys. We have never ceased to praise the judicious\ninterference of our father, who, finding us with an analytical\narithmetic put into our hands at seven years of age, took it away and\nplaced it on the highest shelf of his closet.\n\nWhen a boy is well under weigh in the languages\u2014we do not speak of\nreligious education, which we take for granted\u2014he may very properly be\nintroduced to the study of experimental science and the more difficult\nproblems of analytical arithmetic and mathematics. But these branches\nshould not be arranged in such a way as to compete, as it were, with\nthat much-neglected study, so lightly thought of\u2014mental philosophy. If\none visits our different Catholic institutions of learning, and examines\ntheir system, still more looks into the practical working of it, he will\nfind that the year of philosophy, much talked of, is employed in a most\nperfunctory manner. We would not be understood as attributing any _culpa\ntheologica_ to the instructors. We consider this state of things owing\nfirst to parents, and consequently to their children, and in part to the\nwant of appreciation of the need of such philosophical training on the\npart of the teachers; though also, sometimes, to want of competency in\nthe teachers themselves, whose previous education has been on the old\nplan. We conceive that too great attention and zeal cannot be expended\nin the correction of these defects. Corrected they can be, and they must\nbe, if we wish to take and keep our proper standing. We cannot have a\nuniversity for the present, and therefore it is all important that the\none essential thing a university can give\u2014a higher mental\ntraining\u2014should be given to our young Catholic men. They must receive\nthis in our colleges; they will not have it elsewhere. Of the need of it\nthere can be no question. The great number of able, educated Europeans\nwho, from political causes, have had to leave their native country and\ncome to us, and the large number of Americans who nowadays study in\nEuropean universities, all of whom, in conversation and through the\npress, retail to us the wildest phases of infidel, metaphysical, and\nsocial doctrine, is a sufficient argument to decide the matter, should\nany one hesitate. The church, to be sure, is our infallible guide, but\nthere are many questions she does not treat, or, if she has treated\nthem, her decisions can be understood only by careful study and\nexplanation in the language of philosophy. So far from discouraging the\nstudy of philosophy, of metaphysics, and of ethics\u2014possibly the more\nimportant of the two\u2014she encourages us to make a good use of this\nhandmaid of theology. It is therefore a duty incumbent on those in whose\nhands is placed the education of our young men to pay more attention\nthan ever to this kind of instruction. We know of efforts in some\ninstances that have been made in this direction, but which have failed.\nWe are afraid they were not very numerous. In some instances a tincture\nof metaphysics was deemed enough; ethics were wholly neglected. How this\ncould be has always been a puzzle to us. But it should not be any\nlonger. A careful course of metaphysics that would embrace particularly\nthe refutation of pantheism and materialism, besides establishing\nthoroughly the existence of God and the spirituality and immortality of\nthe soul; and an equally careful course of ethics that would refute the\nutilitarians and socialists of the day, while making clear the claims of\nauthority, the nature of law, the origin of right in the eternal fitness\nof things as seen in the divine Mind, and such kindred questions, should\nbe the object of the most earnest solicitude of the superiors of our\nCatholic colleges. The young students should be made to apply their\nknowledge thus received either by short compositions in addition to the\nrepetition of the lessons taught; or, far better still, by academic\nexercises in which one student defends in the school-room before his\nteacher and fellow-students a thesis or proposition already explained,\nwhile one or two others object against it all they can think of or\nlearn, and this, too, in strict syllogistic form. Exercises such as\nthese would be of the greatest advantage in training the mind to the\nready use of logic, and to refuting the arguments possible to be urged\nagainst sound doctrine. Nothing better than this would tend to take away\nthe reproach so often, and perhaps in some cases most unjustly, made\nagainst our educational institutions, of incompetency for thorough\neducation. Did it depend on us to have the recasting of the system of\neducation, we should be inclined to add on a year of further study as a\nrequisite for graduation, and during the last two years of a young man\u2019s\ncourse we would employ him entirely in the study of metaphysics and\nethics, including the principles of political economy, of the philosophy\nof history\u2014in which the great questions of history, as far as possible,\nmight be reviewed\u2014and in the further polish of his literary English\ntraining. The philosophy of history is most important, for it is a\npowerful teacher. History is not to be studied as a bare narrative of\nfacts; the facts have a language of their own which needs an\ninterpreter. The polish of literary education is of great necessity, as\nit is the one thing those educated in the non-Catholic colleges may be\nsaid to excel us in. We do not dwell much on scientific education,\nbecause that is really of secondary importance, and it is impossible to\ngive boys more than an elementary training in this branch, which may\nserve as a ground-work for further pursuit of it, if one is destined to\nturn his attention in that direction. To enable the superiors of our\ncolleges to carry out such a plan would depend upon the parents of young\nstudents having the fortitude to oblige their sons to remain the\nrequisite time and make a diligent use of their opportunities. Herein\nlies their co-operation in the great work of the future education of the\nyoung Catholic men of America; and our word for it, if they follow this\ncounsel, they will never have cause to repent. They will give us, too,\nfar abler champions of truth than our young men have shown themselves to\nbe in the past.\n\n\n\n\n                 THE DANCING PROCESSION OF ECHTERNACH.\n                        FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.\n\n\nIn the year of our Lord 690 a vessel from the island of Britain left\nupon the coast of Catwyk, in Holland, twelve young Anglo-Saxons who had\nabandoned their newly-converted country to carry the blessing of the\nGospel to their brethren of the Continent. Chief among these young men,\nseveral of whom were of noble birth, was Willibrord, predestined from\nhis mother\u2019s womb to be a glory to the church and famous in the\nestimation of men. The young strangers separated, to work, each in his\nown way, in the vineyard of the Father. Willibrord began that very day\nthe long and heroic apostolate of fifty years which ceased only with the\npulsations of his heart. If we except his two journeys to Rome, where\nthe great servant of the Papacy twice received the blessing and\nencouragement of the Sovereign Pontiff, he did not relax for a single\nday his labors in the vast region which stretches from the mouths of the\nElbe and the Rhine to the banks of the Moselle. At his voice nations\nsitting in darkness rose up to behold the light, idols crumbled before\nthe amazed eyes of their worshippers, churches arose from the soil and\ngathered about their altars multitudes of Christians, lay society\norganized itself little by little after the model of spiritual\nsociety.[165]\n\nFootnote 165:\n\n  _V._ Alcuin in _Vita Willibrordi_ ap. Mabillon. _Acta Sanctorum_, Ord.\n  S. Benedicti, t. iii. p. 567, Venetian edition.\n\nTradition and history show us by turns the great Anglo-Saxon apostle in\nFriesland as the master of St. Boniface; in Denmark, preceding by more\nthan a century the famous St. Anscarius; in the island of Helgoland,\ndestroying the idol of Fosite and braving King Radbod\u2019s wrath; in the\nIsle of Walcheren, where he nearly fell a victim to his heroism and\napostolic zeal; in Campine as the friend of St. Lambert, another\nuntiring athlete of Christ; and, finally, in Luxembourg, where even more\nthan elsewhere his name is glorified and revered. For half a century he\nstood with Lambert and Boniface in the breach, the father of\ncivilization in Western Germany and one of the most signal benefactors\nof mankind.\n\nThe common people, though they forget great poets and great generals,\npreserve the memory of saints. Seventeen churches in Belgium and\nfifty-eight in Holland are under his patronage, without counting those\nin the valleys of the Moselle and the Rhine, where his fame is equally\nwide-spread. Sixty-three leagues apart, a small section of St.\nWillibrord\u2019s vast itinerary, two villages to-day preserve in their own\nnames the undying memory of his works: Wilwerwiltz on the sterile moors\nof the German Ardennes, and Kleemskerk on the low, fertile plains of\nmaritime Flanders.[166] Drawn, as it were, from nothingness by this\ngreat man, these two localities, were other witnesses wanting, would\ntell to later ages the glory of their sublime founder. Answering one to\nthe other across the whole extent of Belgium, they testify to his vast\nlabors and his devotion to the Roman Church, which we unworthily defend\nto-day against the barbarism conquered by him twelve centuries ago.\n\nFootnote 166:\n\n  Wilwerwiltz is a contraction of Willibrordswiltz. As to Kleemskerk\n  (Clement\u2019s Church), we know that in Rome Willibrord received the name\n  of Clement, as did Winfrid that of Boniface, under which he is\n  venerated.\n\n\n                                   I.\n\n\nDuring his apostolic missions through the forests of Luxembourg\nWillibrord remarked one of the most charming and romantic spots in that\nfine country. It was at a turn of the S\u00fbre, which even to-day flows on\nbeneath the shade of savage rocks and deep forests. The valley, widening\nat this place, must at that time have presented a most imposing aspect,\nwhile it offered every facility for a settlement of human habitations.\nIndeed, the dwellings were even then of ancient date. The place bore a\nname recalling incontestably its first Celtic occupants: Epternacum.\nThere, too, the Romans had left traces of their passage. A short league\nfrom Echternach arch\u00e6ologists may still read beneath the great shadowy\noaks and thick brushwood that half hide it the following inscription\nengraved on the base of a monument:\n\n    DE\u00c6 DIAN\u00c6\n    Q. POSTVMIVS\n    POTENS. V. S.\n\nThe upper part of the monument is gone, but enough remains to show that\nit represented two persons\u2014no doubt the goddess and her worshipper, with\na hunting-dog crouched at Diana\u2019s feet. He who overthrew the false gods\nof Helgoland and Walcheren must have crushed in holy ire this monument\nof the paganism he had just destroyed.[167] At all events, the image of\nDiana, once proudly throned above the valley at the edge of the wood,\nnow hides, degraded and mutilated, in the dank gloom of brambles and\nbrushwood\u2014an eloquent emblem of St. Willibrord\u2019s work in this country.\nEchternach, where even then two little Christian oratories stood on the\nsite of the two churches of to-day, attracted the great man\u2019s attention\nand heart. He built there a Benedictine monastery, which was favored\nfrom its foundation by the bounty of two royal families, the\nMerovingians and Carlovingians. Around this focus of Christian life\nhabitations gathered, and, as always happened, the monastery expanded\nand became a town. Such was the origin of the commune of Echternach, one\nof the most flourishing in that happy country of Luxembourg which knows\nneither great cities nor great miseries.\n\nFootnote 167:\n\n  This, at least, is the plausible conjecture of a scholar of the first\n  rank\u2014F. Alexander Wiltheim\u2014in his fine book, _Luxemburgum Romanum_.\n\nThe monastery of Echternach was always dearer to its founder than his\nother foundations. There he loved to pass his rare hours of repose.\nThere, on the 6th of November, 739, at the age of eighty-one years, he\nreached the term of his mortal career. His remains were laid in the\nbasilica of the abbey among his monks and his people. Even in the tomb\nhe continued to be the father of that country and to exercise over men\nthe sovereign authority which his virtues and labors had won. Death has\nno hold upon the saints; when we lower their bodies into the grave we\nrear their images upon our altars. St. Willibrord, more than any other\npatron of the country, is one whose sepulchre may be called glorious.\nFew tombs have inspired a veneration so extraordinary, attracted the\nfaithful in such crowds, excited acts of faith so intense. No sooner was\nhe laid in his grave than multitudes came to invoke the apostle of\nLuxembourg, and frequent miracles bore witness to his powerful\nprotection. A century had not elapsed when this wonderful devotion was\nspoken of by the greatest writer of his time\u2014Alcuin, the biographer of\nour saint.[168] His festival was celebrated by an immense concourse, who\nfilled the air with his praise. \u201cSee, brethren,\u201d says St. Alcuin.\n\u201cBehold the glory of serving God. Our holy patron, for love of Christ,\nleft his native country and led the life of a pilgrim. He trampled under\nfoot the riches of this world; he loved, he clung to poverty. And you\nknow the glory he acquired among men. But preferable far is that which\nhe possesses for all eternity among the angels.\u201d[169] And the\nillustrious friend of Charlemagne, speaking to his contemporaries of\nfacts of which he had been an eye-witness, told of the iron fetters on\nthe wrists and ankles of devout pilgrims which burst asunder when they\ncame to do penance for their sins at the venerated tomb.[170]\n\nFootnote 168:\n\n  Ibi usque hodie divin\u00e2 operante misericordia signa et sanitates ad\n  sancti viri et sacerdotis reliquias fieri non cessant.\u2014_Alcuin O.C._,\n  iii. p. 571.\n\nFootnote 169:\n\n  Id. in _Mabillon_, iii. p. 575.\n\nFootnote 170:\n\n  Id. ib. iii. p. 572.\n\nTwo centuries afterward the voice of Theofrid, St. Willibrord\u2019s\nsuccessor and later biographer, echoes the powerful voice of Alcuin and\ntells of the ceaseless devotion which brings crowds to Echternach every\nyear. He, too, bears witness to the saint\u2019s miracles\u2014so numerous, he\nsays, that a yoke of oxen could not drag the chariot that would hold the\nvotive offerings of wax and metal. And among these wonders, as in\nAlcuin\u2019s day, were to be seen broken chains and instruments of torture\nworn by slaves, which were shattered into splinters.[171] No miracle is\noftener recorded of our saints than this one. I confess I never read the\nrecord in the quaint and simple narrative of our ancient hagiographers\nwithout emotion. Wherever they went the breakers of idols were also\nbreakers of fetters; that word which called men to the knowledge of the\ntrue God called them also to the enjoyment of true liberty. _Christus\nnos liberavit._ Therefore the church has been honored by the opposition\nof all the tyrants who have wished to subjugate nations. They have felt\nthat liberty could be easily destroyed, if they could destroy her who is\nthe fertile mother and the fearless guardian of freedom. But nothing can\navail against the church nor against the liberty which is her offspring,\nwhich her voice called into life, which she has bathed in the blood of\nher idol-breakers.\n\nFootnote 171:\n\n  _Theofridus vita S. Willibrordi_, c. 24 (s\u00e6c. xii.) This life of St.\n  Willibrord is still unpublished; only a few fragments having appeared\n  in _Mon. Germ. Hist._, t. xxiii. Script. The fact I mention is taken\n  from M. Krier\u2019s pamphlet, _Die Springprocession_, p. 33, from the MS.\n  life.\n\nIt was St. Willibrord\u2019s destiny to see crowned heads bow among the\ncrowds that pressed around his altars, and the imperial purple of\nGermany trailing in the dust before his coarse robes of haircloth. In\nthe imposing procession of generations marching towards the saint\u2019s tomb\nit is difficult to distinguish the royal forms mingling with the crowd\nof pilgrims, so petty seem to him who gazes from the altar the earthly\ngrandeur which sets them apart from other Christians.\n\nMany a time in earlier days the Carlovingians had come to pray and\nhumble themselves in the sanctuary at Echternach. They came with hands\nfilled with gifts, and, by one of those strange vicissitudes which the\nfinger of Providence points out, it was one of their number who, blind,\noutcast, and bereft, came later to eat the bread of St. Willibrord and\nseek refuge in the shades of his monastery. History hardly mentions the\nwretched Carloman, rebel son of Charles the Bald, whose eyes were put\nout by his father\u2019s orders, and who received in charity from his uncle\nLouis the Abbey of Echternach _ad subsidium vit\u00e6_.[172] The families who\nsucceeded the Carlovingians in Germany never forgot the saint or the\nduty of paying him homage. In the year 1000 the list of imperial\npilgrimages was opened by Otto III., the young and brilliant prince who\nplanned so many great expeditions, and whom death had already marked\nwith his mysterious seal. Lothaire of Saxony, and Conrad of\nHohenstaufen, came in their turn to pray before the saint\u2019s relics, the\none in 1131, the other in 1145. Then, in 1512, Maximilian joined in the\nprocession, and in memory of his visit gave to the town the bell which\nbears his name and still rings on feast days. Thus, except the\nsacrilegious house of Franconia, all the dynasties of the German Empire\nseem to have been represented at Echternach, and to have paid court to\nthis prince of peace, greater and more respected than they.\n\nFootnote 172:\n\n  M. G. xxiii. Script., _Catalogus abbatum Epternacensium primus_.\n\nEchternach was always the capital of St. Willibrord\u2019s peaceful realm.\nThere was his tomb; there rose convent and basilica, perpetual heralds\nof his great deeds. The convent was a city in itself, and the basilica\nis a most precious relic of eleventh-century architecture\u2014a veritable\npearl which alone would make the reputation of a town. I will not be\ndrawn into further details, for fear of leaving my subject.[173] It\nsuffices to remember that this wonderful monument, a victim of\nrevolutionary vandalism, had been sold as national property, and was\nfalling into decay, when the piety and patriotism of the people of\nEchternach snatched it from certain destruction. They formed, under the\nname of _Willibrordus Verein_, a society whose aim was to recover the\nbasilica and restore it to worship. This society, founded in 1862 by a\nfew citizens in a little town of four thousand souls, now numbers its\nmembers by hundreds. It has already devoted more than one hundred\nthousand francs to the basilica, and will soon crown its work by\nbringing back the shrine of the saint, now preserved in the parish\nchurch. All reverence to the intelligent Christian people who guard\ntheir honor so faithfully and understand so well the interests of their\nown glory! Inspired by the three-fold love of religion, country, and\nart, the Willibrordus Verein is one of the finest institutions that I\nknow. It does honor to the whole of Luxembourg, and will leave a lasting\nmemory. Of how many associations of our day can as much be said?\n\nFootnote 173:\n\n  On the basilica of Echternach read a good notice by Prof. Namur\n  inserted in t. xxii. of _Annals of the Arch\u00e6ological Academy of\n  Belgium_; and another by M. Bock, in _Rheinlands Baudenkmale des\n  Mittelalters_.\n\nThe entire town of Echternach has retained that stamp of antiquity so\neagerly sought by artists, and so much despised by our petty, material\ngeneration. Surrounded by the fantastic hills that form the valley,\nwhose strange summits look like crumbling castles; still enclosed by\nthree-quarters of its ancient fortifications, with here and there a\nruined tower, it strikes the beholder with a surprise which only\nincreases as he penetrates to the interior of the town. Passing through\ncrooked and narrow streets, where each house has an architecture of its\nown which is often very impressive, he reaches the public square, where\nstands the antique town-hall, known by the more ancient name of\nDingsthal, an interesting building which rests on Gothic arcades. The\nparish church is equally worthy of attention for its old Romanic\narchitecture and its beautiful position upon the summit of an eminence\noverlooking the town.\n\nWhat especially tends to give to Echternach its peculiar character is\nthe habits of its population, so in harmony with the tranquil, cheerful\ncountry and its medi\u00e6val monuments. Here more than elsewhere Catholic\nfaith has impregnated the life of the people. All their actions reflect\nits powerful simplicity, its generous hardihood, its customs of ten or\nfifteen centuries back. The poetry of the past, that exquisite influence\nof ancient times which we inhale with delight, is here an incense ever\nascending from this happy valley. In this respect nothing can equal the\ndancing procession of Echternach, which takes place always on\nWhit-Tuesday, in honor of St. Willibrord, and attracts those who come\nespecially to invoke his aid for nervous diseases. This procession has\ntaken place for more than five hundred years. It can be traced back to\nthe fourteenth century, and may be perhaps of even earlier origin. The\ndance has been explained in various ways: sometimes as expressing the\njoy of a Christian people coming to venerate the relics of their patron\nsaint; sometimes as a symbolical representation of nervous attacks,\nepilepsy, and other maladies of the kind, from which the country was\ndelivered by St. Willibrord\u2019s intercession in the fourteenth century.\n\nIt is this ceremony, whose original and picturesque character is quite\nunique in the Christian world, which I am about to describe to the\nreader.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\n\nWhen Whit-Sunday comes an amazing animation rouses the little town from\nits habitual tranquillity, and the excitement only increases on the\nMonday. Hotels and private houses are thronged with guests; many\ntravellers, unable to get lodgings, camp out in the neighboring villages\nor go back to _die Kirch_, to return by railway the next day. The\nstreets are thronged with dusty tourists: gentlemen of leisure regarding\neverything with a patronizing smile, peasants in rustic garb, rich\nstrangers arriving in spruce equipages, and respectable jaunting-cars\nwith three rows of seats, conveying the opulent farmers of the\nneighborhood. Booths are planted everywhere, blocking up the streets and\nsetting their backs against every available corner. Mountebanks and\ncharlatans, who come to levy their tithe on public piety, stun with\ntheir piercing outcries the busy folk running about to look for\nlodgings. Religion preludes the imposing solemnities of the following\nmorning. The faithful flock to religious offices and sermons. All day\nlong they are at prayer before the sarcophagus where lies the body of\nthe saint. There you will see the most fervent; and by their attitudes,\nthe expression of their faces, and the ardor of their gaze, it is plain\nthat they have some great favor to implore and hope not to go away\nunsatisfied. Prostrate before the altar, these rude laborers from the\nEyfel and the Ardennes, with their great horny hands and tanned faces,\nopening their whole hearts to God and absorbed in prayer, are beautiful\nto look upon. They seem to symbolize the destiny of mankind, born to\nlabor, to suffer, and to pray. It is pleasant to ponder and pray in the\nstillness of that little Romanic church, beside the greatest man of the\ncountry.\n\n    It was an humble church with vaulted roof,\n      The church we entered in,\n    Where for eight hundred years the sons of men\n      Had wept and prayed \u2019gainst sin.\n\nThere, on the hill sacred for so many ages, under the shade of the\nlindens that screen the courtyard of this modest edifice, in the\npresence of the wide and peaceful landscape, the heart feels at ease,\nthe mind is in repose. It is like a haven of rest or like some enchanted\ncountry. The hideous, infernal tumult of the church\u2019s enemies dies away\nin this Catholic oasis. Man and nature are in harmony; the serenity that\nreigns in this lovely country sinks into the most stormy heart. Here\nDante would have found the peace he sought under the vaulted roof of the\nmonastery at Monte Corvo.\n\nEvening fell; the chants for Benediction rang through the church as I\nentered. Thousands of voices, accompanied by the grave and solemn tones\nof the organ, were singing the beautiful litany of St. Willibrord, which\nis like the national air of Echternach, and has a peculiar sweetness in\na language that admits of saying _thou_ to God and to the saints:\n\n    St. Willibrord, shining star of our country,\n    St. Willibrord, ornament of the Roman Church,\n    St. Willibrord, breaker of idols,        _Pray for us_.\n\nI cannot describe the effect of this chant, rising on so many voices in\naccents of plaintive supplication, penetrating the heart with its\nexpression of love and trust. These people love St. Willibrord and treat\nhim with a sweet familiarity. \u201cWho and what was he that men should come\nevery year to kneel before his relics and pay him honors so exceptional?\nWhat had he more than others, and by what was he distinguished? By\nbeauty, genius, science, riches?\u201d Such was the idea of the sermon which\nfollowed Benediction, and was heard by that whole multitude in\nbreathless attention, some standing, others kneeling on the flags\u2014for\nall the chairs had been taken away. The sacred orator developed his\ntheme with remarkable skill, and, after proving that St. Willibrord had\nshone by none of these gifts, he concluded that he had reached this\nexceptional glory on earth and in heaven because he had understood and\napplied better than others the divine command, \u201cLove God above all\nthings, and thy neighbor as thyself.\u201d\n\nO grandeur of Christianity! O eternity of the church! A thousand years\nago Alcuin said the same in his panegyric; the modern preacher\u2019s noble\nwords were like the lingering echo of the same Christian voice sounding\nthrough ages\u2014of that voice which ever repeats itself, and yet is always\nfresh, for it is the voice of truth. Thus, at the two extremities of\nthis decade of centuries, the friend of Charlemagne and the young priest\nof Luxembourg were the two ends of a chain whose every link is an\nextinct generation, and which brings down to our own day the\nunchangeable, immortal tradition. One thousand years hence other\npilgrims will come to contemplate these great lessons of time and pray\nbefore the sacred tomb, treading beneath their feet the ruins of our\ncivilization and modern society.\n\nAfter Benediction I went to walk on the heights above the town. The\nnight was clear and the moon hung calmly serene in the heavens. Every\ntime I pass through Echternach I climb these hills; the place is full of\ncalm and refreshment, and I always feel happy there. Looking down upon\nthe town, with its spires and ancient roofs mirrored in the peaceful\nriver, I listened to the last sounds dying away in the streets; for the\ntown went to rest as early that night as on any other. Heaven and earth\nseemed so quiet, so infinitely peaceful! If at that hour propitious to\ndreams you would evoke in spirit the memory of the past, it would rise\nlike a gigantic phantom. One glance cast into the domains of fancy would\nshow the wild valley heaped with Druidic stones, crowned with altars and\nRoman monuments, and traversed by the swift, silvery flood of the S\u00fbre,\nwhich seems to pierce like a dart the mysterious depths of the ancient\nArdennes. On the summit of the height appears a wonderful man, who\nbreaks the Gallic and Roman idols, and with their fragments builds\nChristian oratories; he levels the forest and cultivates the valley;\nbuilds dwellings around the church, calls men, and they come at his\nbidding; and this new Orpheus, with no lyre but his voice, leads in his\ntrain Barbarism, conquered, charmed, converted.\n\nThe next day I breakfasted between five and six o\u2019clock in one of the\nmany pretty pleasure-gardens of the town. The evening before had been\nvery warm; the day dawned under the same auspices, but perfectly clear.\nThe people of Echternach declare that it cannot rain on the day of their\nprocession, or, at least, that the rain must stop before they enter the\nchurch. On all sides resounded clear and full the voices of pilgrims\ncoming in procession from villages near by and chanting the litany of\nSt. Willibrord. These aerial tones, coming to us in the freshness of\ndawn through blossoming trees, opened the day very pleasantly. I went\nout. Through every street there poured a stream of country people,\npreceded by crosses and banners. Whole parishes came with their pastors;\nthey had left home at daybreak and walked several leagues, with prayers\nand chants rousing the wondering birds, unused to hear human voices\npraise the Creator in advance of them. The nearest villages came in\nprocession; others, who could not send a solemn train, furnished a large\nnumber of pilgrims, who marched in isolated groups. Without counting the\npilgrims of the Luxembourg, Belgium, France, and Russia are represented\nevery year. The number of devout Christians whom each anniversary brings\nto the sacred tomb varies from 12,000 to 15,000, leaving out those who\ncome without having made a vow, some from religious feeling, others from\nmere curiosity. About 20,000 strangers in all crowd into the narrow\nprecincts of the little town every Whitsuntide. For whole hours you see\nthe flood of humanity ascend and descend the steps of the parish church;\nfor all the pilgrims on their arrival go first to kneel at the saint\u2019s\nshrine. About eight o\u2019clock the multitudes pass over to the other bank\nof the S\u00fbre, where the procession is to begin. The S\u00fbre forms the\nboundary between the territory of Luxembourg and Prussia. Just there the\nprocession falls into line of march. At the foot of the hills, beside a\nlittle stone cross, they erect a temporary pulpit, from which a priest\naddresses the people before the ceremony begins. Thousands had collected\nto await the coming of the clergy. Some walked about, others sat along\nthe edge of the road or leaned against the parapet of the bridge. The\ncrowd, scattered in picturesque confusion and disorder, buzzed like a\nhive of bees. The throng increased; along every road came hosts of\npilgrims ploughing their way. From afar came vague, indistinct sounds of\nsinging, and along the valley, through the narrow road traced between\nthe S\u00fbre and the hills, there advanced a long column. Banners floated in\nthe sunshine and gleamed through the trees; the procession undulated and\nunrolled its length as it followed the windings of the river. The\nvoices, as they drew nearer, became distinct, and soon the head of the\nprocession appeared. They were pilgrims from Pr\u00fcm, in the Eyfel, more\nthan twelve leagues from Echternach, coming to make their annual\ndevotions to St. Willibrord. These good people had set out on Sunday\nevening; they had walked part of that night and of the next day, praying\nand chanting. On Monday evening they had disbanded, scattering about\nthrough fields and in barns a few leagues from Echternach, and had\nresumed their march early in the morning. Tanned, heated, dusty, clad in\ncoarse raiment, they came on in good order, forming an almost\ninterminable train. It seemed as if the whole village had come. Their\naccoutrements were rustic, fantastic even; the men carried crosswise\nover their backs an umbrella fastened by a string which passed over\ntheir breasts, crossing the strap of a large leathern valise hanging on\nthe other side. The women had baskets on their arms. These valises and\nbaskets held the provisions for that journey of four or five days. It is\nremarkable that this pilgrimage of the people of Pr\u00fcm is voluntary and a\npopular movement; the clergy take no part in its organization, and\nseldom join it, the parishioners making it their own affair. On this\noccasion, indeed, a priest was with them, but the order of march and the\ndevotions were directed by a certain number of men placed at intervals\nin the procession. They carried, as the insignia of office, a red staff\nsurmounted by a little copper cross. The priest, who closed the\nprocession, walked between two young men clad in quaint and antique\ngarb, with hats turned up and trimmed with flowers. One carried the\ncross, the other a large votive candle adorned with emblems, the annual\ngift of their village to the patron of Echternach. The procession\nadvanced in perfect order. Indifferent to curious looks, turning their\neyes neither to the right nor to the left towards the human hedge that\nlined their path, they passed on, saying their rosary aloud and\nrepeating after each _Ave_ this familiar salutation, full of simplicity\nand grace: \u201cSt. Willibrord, we are coming to thy tomb!\u201d I loved to see\nand hear them. Their fervor in prayer and contempt of fatigue, their\nrustic dress and primitive manners, their indifference to all but their\none object, made these peasants a people set apart, and their pilgrimage\na type of the pilgrimage of human life as it ought to be made. I watched\nthe pious train until it entirely disappeared on the other side of the\nbridge; for, before returning to the Prussian bank to take part in the\nsacred dance, the people of Pr\u00fcm were going to kiss the shrine and pray\nbefore the relics of the saint.\n\nAt last, about nine o\u2019clock, a numerous band of clergy appeared, and the\nceremony opened with the accustomed sermon. Fancy the scene: the lovely\nmorning and beautiful country, the vast host of listeners intent on the\nwords of the priest. For a frame there were the high hills on one side,\non the other the silvery course of the S\u00fbre, and below the spires of the\ntown.\n\nNot less wonderful was it to hear on Prussian ground a Catholic voice\ncalling upon thousands of the faithful to pray for the Holy Father and\nthe persecuted church. And while the priest was speaking there came from\nall the heights belated pilgrims hastening to the ceremony. They were\nseen afar off, coming down the steep paths bordered with flowering\nhedges; and the bells rang out full peals, and the word of God was\nscattered among the multitude with the song of birds.\n\nWhen the sermon was ended, the clergy, in white surplices, formed in\nline of march and opened the procession. Behind them came the musicians,\nand afterwards the immense throng of those who were to join in the\ndance. At first there was much crowding. Leaning against the parapet of\nthe bridge, I had to ply my elbows lustily to prevent the multitude from\nsuffocating me, and farther on, when the train began to defile through\nthe narrow street which leads to the S\u00fbre, the pressure was quite\nfrightful. There were not ushers enough to preserve order. A few firemen\nand policemen had to be everywhere at once, and were swallowed up in the\nbillows of the confused crowd. The cause of the disorder was the\nimpatience of some people, who, instead of waiting until the street\nshould be cleared for the beginning of the dance, went forward to post\nthemselves higher up in the procession. This choked the way in some\nplaces, and there was terrible pushing. Women screamed; several were\nnearly suffocated. I saw some men, who, as they awaited their turn with\nphilosophic patience, set their backs against walls and rowed with their\narms against the human flood to save themselves from wreck. A\nhospitality, as unexpected as it was welcome, rescued me from the tumult\nto become a peaceful spectator in a neighboring house instead of an\nactor in the scene. \u201cIt is sweet,\u201d says Lucretius, \u201cwhen the sea is\nswollen and tossed by rough winds, to look from the shore upon the\ndistress of others, not finding pleasure in their troubles, but in our\nown exemption from them.\u201d I felt, in selfish enjoyment, the spirit of\nthese lines, gazing at my ease from an upper window upon the undulation\nof several thousand heads floating apparently upon a liquid expanse.\nActually, a needle thrown from above would not have reached the ground.\n\nOrder was soon restored. The police got angry and used their fists\nunsparingly to force back into their places the intruders, who continued\nto leave the ranks and insinuate themselves in among the front rows of\nthe procession. All this went on while the head of the _cort\u00e9ge_\ndisappeared at the turn of the street, dancing to the traditional air\nplayed by the musicians. It was a quaint tune, rather quick in measure\nand old-fashioned. It was hard to say whether it expressed joyful\nexcitement or the emotions of grief; for music, with its wonderful\nsuppleness, may sometimes speak to us of our joys and sorrows, according\nto the mood in which we listen. And now this melody, centuries old, set\nin motion a dancing multitude. The sight was strange, striking,\nindescribable. To an unaccustomed spectator the first moment is of\nstupefied amazement. His fancy enters a new world; the movement of all\nthese heads bending and rocking in a rhythmic measure produces a\nfantastic effect that no words can convey. I do not know whether I can\ntell exactly what I saw, or if my sketch will give even a faint idea of\na scene which defies analysis and description.\n\nThink of a stream of twelve thousand persons in a street where only\neight can walk abreast; fancy all these people, in rows of four, six, or\neight, advancing, held together by handkerchiefs or staves to keep order\nin the ranks and measure in the dance; fancy them, I say, executing a\ndance which consists of three steps forward and two back, and which\nmoves the whole multitude from end to end with one unceasing action of\nebb and flow. The interminable train stretched over about fifteen\nhundred metres from the bridge of the S\u00fbre to the parish church. It took\nnot less than four hours to accomplish that quarter of a league by\ndancing, and under the direct rays of the sun, without a moment\u2019s rest.\nIt is easy to imagine that order and regularity were sometimes\ndisturbed, but what was lost in symmetry was gained in picturesque\noriginality of detail. There were almost as many different styles of\ndancing as there were various groups, everybody managing his own\naffairs. The groups just behind the musicians succeeded best, being kept\nin step by the music; and in general the people of Echternach danced\nmore harmoniously and correctly than the others. As the bands were few\nand stationed quite far apart, the pilgrims who could not hear them\nhopped about in utter confusion, while the rest had a certain harmony of\nmovement. These eccentricities of choreographic movement were worth\nseeing; here they glided with light step, elegantly and smoothly; there\nthey jumped about with heavy tread and immense exertion. Watching\ncarefully those who seemed to have best preserved the tradition, I\nthought that the most pure and \u201cclassic\u201d rhythm consisted in five steps\nof a dance, quite slow and without turning, three forward and two back,\nmade by gliding rather than bounding. The whole character was grave,\nsolemn, and suited to a religious dance. A band from Echternach opened\nthe march and played the tune for the first pilgrims. The others danced\nto the strains of a few isolated instruments. Each _cort\u00e9ge_ had its own\nmusicians, and, as each parish danced separately, they had their local\nplayers. It is needless to say that variety reigned among the\ninstruments\u2014drums, violins, flutes, clarionets, and hautboys\u2014all hard at\nwork and producing combinations hardly grateful to musical ears. But the\ngood fellows did not pretend to be artists. They worked for conscience\u2019\nsake; they piped and they blew, they beat and they scraped, with all the\naccumulated force of lungs, fists, and bows. St. Willibrord is not\nfastidious; he takes the will for the deed, and if there be here and\nthere some cockney scandalized by this cacophony, so much the worse for\nhim. Ill though they play the melody, it is a good work to make the\nattempt, and the worthy pilgrims accommodate themselves to\ncircumstances. Formerly no fiddler was allowed to play in village fairs,\nif he had not paid for the privilege at the procession of Echternach\nthat same year. This custom, with many others, is obsolete, but many\nmusicians remain faithful to tradition.\n\nThis year, while the procession was crossing the town, there came\nmarching through a cross-street a brilliant band of music preceded by a\nbanner; it was a philharmonic society from Remich on the Moselle, and\nwas received with acclamation. It joined the procession, and its fine\nexecution came as a welcome reinforcement to the poor musicians, who\nwere nearly exhausted.\n\nI could not take my eyes off the wonderful scene, sometimes taking in\nthe whole picture at a glance, sometimes pausing to examine details in\nall their picturesque variety. Most attractive of all was the sight of\nthe children of Echternach, dancing at the head of the procession just\nbehind the village band; they put such life into the affair, and felt it\nsuch a festive occasion. It was refreshing to watch the rosy-cheeked,\nlaughing rogues, usually in their shirt-sleeves, bounding merrily \u201cfor\nSt. Willibrord.\u201d Then came the grown folk of Echternach, then the\nvarious parishes, each, as I said, forming a distinct group with its own\nmusicians. The sexes were separated. Formerly the pilgrims from Pr\u00fcm and\nWaxweiler, who came from the most distant points, had the right of\nopening the procession, while the inhabitants of Echternach, through\ncourtesy, took the last place. Now there is no fixed order; the parishes\ntake their places at hap-hazard, and many people leave the ranks to join\nthe front rows at the risk of throwing the whole procession into\nconfusion. I saw the good people of Pr\u00fcm, with their monumental green\nand blue umbrellas capable of sheltering whole households. Now they were\nunstrung from their proprietors\u2019 backs, and, bound two and two, served\nas a balustrade to be grasped by three or four persons to keep them even\nin the ranks and regulate their step. Here and there, amid the rhythmic\nmovement of these thousands of heads, I descried some unhappy being\nafflicted with St. Vitus\u2019 dance, shown by wild, spasmodic springs,\nviolent excitement, and the pitiful rocking of all the limbs. They were\nusually women, young girls stricken with this terrible disorder. I\nnoticed one in particular whom every one looked at with earnest\nsympathy. She leaped in a wild, feverish way, supported under the arms\nby her mother, whom I knew by the look of anxiety and sadness imprinted\non her face. The kind people of the town stood ready at their doors with\nrefreshing beverages for these poor creatures; but they hardly stopped\nto drink before continuing their dance under the whip of the sun, as the\ngreat Alighieri says, whose words came to my mind more than once at\nsight of these miseries. So drawn along by this weird dance, the\npilgrims appeared and vanished, as wave follows wave, and the monotonous\nmelody carried on ten thousand people to the sound of its fantastic\ncadences. Add one or two thousand pilgrims who, not joining in the\ndance, followed the procession, saying their beads or reciting the\nlitany, and you have in all twelve thousand Christians of both sexes and\nof every age and rank, who, through four whole hours, formed St.\nWillibrord\u2019s triumphal procession and visited his sacred tomb.[174]\n\nFootnote 174:\n\n  According to the _Echternachter Anzeiger_ of June 5, the number of\n  dancers was 10,600; of other pilgrims 1,800. This does not include 188\n  musicians, 72 priests, 1,100 chanters, and various corporations. There\n  were, moreover, 14,000 or 15,000 spectators, making a total of about\n  30,000 people. Comparing these numbers with those of former years, we\n  shall see that the ancient ceremony increases in importance and\n  _\u00e9clat_. This conclusion is correct, as M. Krier\u2019s statistics show,\n  _Die Springprocession_, p. 148. Since the beginning of this century\n  the number of dancers had not before reached 10,000.\n\nAll the energy of the vigorous Luxembourg sinews is required to bring to\na successful close this long and fatiguing pilgrimage, whose\ndifficulties increase as they near their end; for I forgot to say that\nthe procession danced up the sixty-two steps which lead to the parish\nchurch. Not every one can go to Corinth, says the proverb. The same is\ntrue of Echternach, though in a different sense, thank God! But it would\nbe a mistake to think that the famous ceremony demands anything\nexcessive or superhuman. The calm, grave character of the dance, and the\nnumerous pauses which are made necessary by the blocking of the way,\nsuffice to husband the pilgrim\u2019s strength. Their vow, though hard and\nlaborious, is not impossible or dangerous. The proof of this is that\nmany children in the procession dance the whole length of the way twice\nover. No sooner do they reach the church at the head of the procession\nthan they scamper back to join the rear and begin the exercise over\nagain. Pilgrims who, on arriving at Echternach, do not feel equal to\nexecuting their vow, and yet wish to contribute to the brilliancy of the\nfestival, give a few sous to one of these children, and the\nindefatigable little fellows acquit themselves of their task with\nimperturbable seriousness and charming grace. But prodigious people are\nagain the people of P\u00fcrm. They arrive at the town, to use a familiar\nexpression, with twelve leagues in their heels; and at once they set to\nwork and dance four long hours. Then, when their devotions are ended,\nthey take barely time to eat their modest fare out doors or at an inn\ntable, and go home singing and praying to the high table-lands and\nextinct volcanoes of their wild country.\n\nOne should be in the church when the procession pours in by traditional\ncustom through the left aisle, to pass round the altar in the choir and\ngo out through the right aisle. The dance does not cease an instant as\nthey pass through the sanctuary; the orchestra goes on playing the\nquaint, archaic melody, the dancers make the old Romano-vaulted roof\nring with the clang of their measured steps. The pilgrims do not think\ntheir vow fulfilled until, after making the tour of the church, they\nfind themselves in the courtyard before an old wooden cross, where they\nbreak ranks. Nothing can be more fantastic than this irruption of\ndancing and music in the house of God. The spectacle in the church is\nbeyond description; you feel as if you were dreaming, and your spirit\nfloated in the domain of the impossible. What do the people mean? Have\nthey come to pillage and destroy? Is this tumultuous throng the prey of\na sudden delirium, of a dancing mania? Or, if it be worship, does it not\nrevive the solemn orgies of ancient Greece, where certain deities of\nOriental origin were honored by the leaps, the cries, and the races of\ntheir idolaters? No; to the first instant of amazement there succeeds a\nmore correct and complete judgment. Beneath the external agitation,\nbeneath the noise and movement, you see the religious calm which fills\nthese souls, and the solemnity pervading the expression of their inner\nfeelings. It is this contrast which gives to the singular ceremony its\ncharacter of deep originality. No doubt we have lost the sense of\nmysterious symbolism in the sacred dance; we no longer see its true\nmotive or significance; we only know or divine that the devout thought\nwhich first inspired it animates it at the present day.\n\nAmong various ideas suggested by this astonishing experience, there was\none that I could not get rid of, and which returned to me on the\nfestival and its eve again and again. While multitudes knelt before the\naltar, kissed the shrine, touched it with objects of devotion, and\nfilled the church with their prayers, you would have said that the great\nman must be there, present among the faithful, speaking to them and\nlistening to them. What glory equals that of the saints? What other son\nof Adam enjoys such honors? Those whom the Catholic Church has crowned\nwith eternal palms do not reign only in heaven; the human glory which\nthey despised is given to them abundantly, and these little ones, who\npassed through life obscure and despised, see themselves suddenly\nsurrounded with an amazing glory with which C\u00e6sar, Homer, Archimedes,\nand Plato do not shine. The world rings with their name, and the least\nand most ignorant of human beings know, love, and revere them. They are\nnot only illustrious, they receive solemn veneration, they share in a\ncertain way the honors of God himself. Their names are uttered with\nbended knee, nations flock to their tombs, and they are gloriously\nenthroned in Christian hearts. Beside such a destiny is it worth while\nto try to immortalize one\u2019s name and to flutter, as the poet says, upon\nthe lips of men? What is the greatest name on earth, unless it be\nencircled with the aureole of sanctity? Ignored by the crowd, uttered\ncoldly by most of those who know it, respected by a few, but invoked by\nno one with clasped hands and heart uplifted to him who bore it. The\nname of the least saint prostrates in the dust all human generations\nthrough the long succession of ages, and resounds like a word of life on\nall lips. The church alone is the dispenser of glory, and even among\nsecular names the noblest and most lasting are those of Catholic\nassociations.\n\n\n                                  III.\n\n\nThe reader asks, no doubt, what is the final impression produced by the\nspectacle of the dancing procession, and how we should estimate this\nstrange ceremony? I will try to answer the double question clearly. In\nthe first place, one must see the procession with one\u2019s own eyes to\njudge it fairly. The public must beware of newspaper reports, which are\nnumerous and usually wholly incorrect, not to use a more uncivil term.\nThere is no name which certain papers have not applied to the subject;\nfor correspondents of a farcical turn amuse themselves every year at the\nexpense of a credulous public. We may say, _en passant_, that no class\nof beings can be more contemptible than reporters hunting for a\nsensation\u2014travelling bagmen of the press who are allured by scandal as\nthe vulture is by a carcase. It is easy to fancy what the ceremony at\nEchternach must have become under their pen. The very name of dancing\nprocession makes them scent a topic, and, devoid of all religious\nfeeling, they describe first and judge afterwards a spectacle they are\nincapable of understanding. Their descriptions are so unfaithful that\nyou doubt whether the good people ever saw the procession, or whether\nthey did not write the account before going to the ceremony. They give\ncaricatures of a mass of humanity entangled in frightful confusion and\nbounding with all their strength to the sound of a gigantic hubbub. The\nranks get mingled; the dancers crush each other and spring about,\nregardless of the toes of their neighbors, who scream for mercy. With\nrubicund faces streaming with perspiration, and with eyes starting from\nthe sockets, these wretched fanatics would die rather than pause. On all\nsides numbers give up in despair and drop breathless among their\nbarbarous companions. Sometimes they are drawn out of the crowd by\ncompassionate persons and restored to life, but no one in the procession\nstops for anything, and the pitiless Catholic _bamboula_ goes on and on,\nsowing devastation at every step. I spare the reader further details and\ngive only the canvas of an embroidery more or less varied according to\nthe imaginative powers of the correspondent. In short, despite the\ndiversity of some details easy to add, this fancy sketch has appeared in\nnearly all the anti-religious papers in Belgium, and will end in being\nstereotyped. It is needless to say that it is false throughout. Among\nten thousand persons who were dancing I did not see one give out. Also,\ncontrary to another assertion, the number of epileptics and other\ninvalids in the procession is very small. I saw in all five or six\npersons evidently afflicted with nervous diseases.\n\nAfter reading this high-toned description, flavored with a few\nVoltairean jests of the old type, it is natural to pronounce the\nprocession of Echternach an absurdity. The sarcasms of free-thinkers\nannually assail the venerable ceremony, but without injuring it. In\nfact, it is irreverent enough in this nineteenth century to increase in\nimportance. Eye-witnesses of the strange spectacle always retain an\nimpressive memory of it. I confess to having been rather prejudiced\nagainst the grotesque scenes I expected to see. At the end of a quarter\nof an hour I was convinced of the powerful religious character of this\ngreat public act, and I remarked that all the spectators shared my\nfeeling. Any one must have a singularly empty mind and heart not to be\nstruck by the grandeur of the scene. Those who always take a petty view\nof things, because they can take no other, may laugh at the discordant\nmusic and the clumsy dancing of some of the pilgrims. For myself, when I\nsee the same belief, centuries old, translated by thousands of men into\nbold, spontaneous action, I cannot restrain my admiration. Before the\nintrepidity with which these men, trampling under foot all human\nrespect, honor with consecrated rites their patron saint, I feel moved\nand impressed. Where is there such faith left in Israel? \u201cWhen I hear\nthe old tune,\u201d said one of the most honorable _bourgeois_ of Echternach\nto me, \u201cand when I see the first pilgrims arrive, I feel something\ncirculate between my flesh and skin that makes me fairly shiver.\u201d A\nyoung student of the town said to me very prettily: \u201cI do not care much\nfor the dancing of the grown people, but the sight of the dancing\nchildren carries me back to my own happy childhood, and my eyes fill\nwith tears.\u201d\n\nThese feelings are unanimous. You see once in a while in the crowd a\ntravelling clerk on his vacation hazarding a timid and colorless sarcasm\nwhich a generous public passes over unnoticed. Beyond dispute, the sight\nof the procession exercises a moral and religious influence. Like\nincredulity, faith is contagious; timid spirits feel strengthened in\nthis region where the breath of Catholic life circulates so freely; sick\nhearts come out renewed from the spectacle of thousands of Christians\nrevealing the true remedy for human woe. The people of Luxembourg,\nessentially serious and meditative, understand the aim of the ceremony;\nits quaintness does not prevent them from seeing it as it really is\u2014a\ngreat and solemn affirmation of faith, at once an act of penance and a\nprayer, to be preserved in the original form out of respect to their\nancestors and veneration for the saint. Whatever the origin of this\nancient custom,[175] it deserves to be preserved not only because it\nfosters and develops religion in the people, but because it revives\nbefore our eyes, in the most picturesque way, the manners of our\nfathers, whose least traces historians and arch\u00e6ologists are jealous to\ndiscover. A Luxembourg writer says well on this subject: \u201cWe preserve\nwith scrupulous fidelity old monuments and objects of antique art. Why\nnot do our best to preserve in its original type this remarkable\nprocession, this monument graven in the living hearts of our\nbrethren?\u201d[176]\n\nFootnote 175:\n\n  I have given the two current opinions on the origin of the dancing\n  procession. I share neither, and hope my different explanation clear\n  by weight of proof.\n\nFootnote 176:\n\n  Krier, _Dancing Procession_, p. 55. This author wrote his work first\n  briefly in French, then in German with more details. The latter is a\n  serious and interesting work as regards the ceremony. It is also an\n  edifying appeal from a Christian priest to his brethren.\n\nThe intelligent town of Echternach perfectly understands that it is\nincumbent upon its honor to respond to this wish. It has neglected\nnothing in the cause, and at various times has had to surmount great\nobstacles. The administrative prohibitions of Joseph II., the\nbrutalities of the French Revolution, the petty opposition of the Dutch\ngovernment, have not discouraged them; they have held faithfully to\ntheir patriotic tradition, and have no cause to repent it, for they find\nin this devotion a source of great prosperity. Their unalterable\nattachment is the more remarkable because even the clergy have often\nbeen opposed to the procession. In 1777 the Prince Elector of Treves,\nClement Wenceslaus\u2014under the reign of the Febronians, I should\nadd\u2014actually forbade the dance, and thus furnished excuse to Joseph II.\nto forbid it also a little later. To-day quite a number of the clergy\nlook unfavorably on these extraordinary demonstrations of faith. They\nthink religion is compromised by associating it with practices which,\nwithout being bad in themselves, may provoke the mockery of the\nincredulous and alienate them farther from the church. This opinion,\nbased, of course, on a sincere devotion to religious interests, appears\nto me an unconscious and useless concession to the petty spirit of the\nage, which is never satisfied with half-measures. Anti-religious\nfanaticism will not be appeased by our throwing to it as a sop a small\nportion of Catholic treasure. What it wants is the entire suppression of\nreligion. To yield any point whatever will only serve to whet its\nappetite and augment its pretensions.\n\nFar from sharing these fears, I think that in these days of struggle it\nis important to oppose the faith as a whole to unbelief as a whole, and\nnot yield an inch of ground, unless we wish to lose all. From the\nearliest days of Christianity there have been people who took scandal at\nfaith which goes beyond what is strictly necessary; among Christ\u2019s\napostles there were those who blamed Magdalen for anointing the feet of\nher Master with precious ointment. It is instructive to remember that it\nwas Judas who showed himself most shocked by what he called useless\nexpense. We may be sure that, as a general rule, the enemies of the\nchurch detest all her practices and would like to see them every one\nabolished. Give them the dance of Echternach to-day; to-morrow they will\ndemand the suppression of the procession itself, and soon after they\nwill wish to close the church where the saint\u2019s relics are venerated. We\nknow something of this in Belgium. Because we submitted to the\nproscription of jubilee processions last year, we have had to resign\nourselves this year (1876) to seeing God in the Eucharist confined to\nthe temple; and we shall see worse things still, if we do not guard\nagainst them in time. It would, therefore, be mere folly to sacrifice to\ninterested claimants a venerable custom, dear to whole populations and\nfull of poetry and originality. \u201cBut why dance?\u201d you ask. \u201cCannot faith\nbe shown in some other way?\u201d Of course it can. Do not let us kneel down\nto pray, or stand uncovered before holy images, or make the sign of the\ncross, or do a hundred other things equally useless, strictly speaking.\nYet who would propose to give them up? There is in the heart of man a\npowerful, mysterious tendency to express the inner feelings of the soul\nby symbolical actions. Thence come these many ceremonies which have no\nsense in themselves, and all owe their worth to a hidden significance.\nThe dance of Echternach has no other origin; it is the symbolical\nrepresentation of the sentiments of joyful confidence which the people\nfeel in the holy patron of their town. In every age joy has been\nexpressed by dancing, and among those who blame the custom of Echternach\nmay there not be some one who has danced for joy at hearing good news?\nMany examples could be cited since David danced before the Ark of the\nAlliance down to our own days, so readily do these impetuous emotions of\nthe soul translate themselves into movements of the body.\n\nStill, the church, while introducing into her ceremonies a rich and\nvaried symbolism, has never admitted dancing; and this prudent reserve\nis to be admired because dancing, harmless in itself, is one of those\ndangerous things which can, according to time and place, produce\ndeplorable abuses. With the same wise moderation she has not absolutely\nforbidden it; and where the practice has been introduced naturally, and\nhas become a part of popular devotion, she has tolerated it, as at\nEchternach, and even encouraged it because she saw in it clearly a\nreligious element. Nothing is more wonderful in the church than this\nperfect wisdom, this superior good sense, with which she regulates great\nsocial and political questions and decides the petty details of\nindividual life. Her attitude towards this ancient ceremony is as clear\nand correct as possible; she mildly favors it in spite of its strange\nforms, and refuses to blame these unless they become an occasion of\nscandal. From the moment that the dance should lose its traditional\ncharacter of austere and respectable devotion, and become a pretext of\npleasure and disorder, it would be at once condemned by the church and\nwould fall into discredit. Thank God! that day is not near, and the\nprocession of Echternach will still outlive many a kingdom and empire.\n\nAs a matter of course, it will be discussed as long as it lasts, and\nwill always have adversaries and partisans. Prose and poetry will for\never dispute over human society, and will seek to model it after two\nopposite fashions. We live to-day in a prosaic age. Prose triumphed with\nthe French Revolution and has passed through western Europe with a\nhammer, destroying, together with works of art, all the flower of\nCatholic institutions and habits. They will revive, but slowly, and this\ngeneration will not see their complete restoration. Now, despoiled of\nall which lent a charm to existence, society languishes in a desert of\nmonotony. Rhythm, so to speak, has disappeared from our lives with that\nglorious succession of festivals, customs, memories, and hopes which\nsurrounded us from the cradle to the grave. All that was Catholic\npoetry; it enlivened the existence of the poor laborer, and made of a\npeasant, attached to the soil and toiling for his master, a happier man,\nmore contented with himself, than workmen in the cities who get a good\nsalary and enjoy their independence. There is in the human soul a\nsublime aspiration after beauty and poetry which nothing can destroy,\nand its wings grow strong as they meet with resistance. Does not the\ntedium which has devoured the last generation betray a sense of want and\nan aspiration after Catholic life with its artistic magnificence and\npoetic influences? Humanity is tending in that direction, and has\nalready met the enemy who would bar the way. Thence comes the loud and\nterrible struggle which tears the whole earth, and of which we may,\nwithout presumption, hope to see the close.\n\nThe procession of Echternach, like the mysteries of Oberammergau in\nUpper Bavaria, is a precious relic of the old popular poetry of\nCatholicity translated into the habits of life. That is its true and\ncomplete meaning. It is neither more nor less; it is not an act of\nworship nor a vulgar profanation. It stands on that boundary line where\nthe church condescends to popular feeling and makes the hard road\nthrough life easier by her help. It is the natural fruit of popular\ndevotion which sprang from a religious feeling and has been preserved\nwith respectful piety. It could not be imitated or transplanted; like\ngenerous wine, it would lose the flavor of the soil if it were\ncultivated on strange land. It is only possible there where all is\nharmonious with it. One must have a studied hostility towards religious\nthings to fail to see its \u00e6sthetic character, even without recognizing\nthe sincerity and the venerable tone of the old custom. Some people fall\ninto ecstasies over Grecian theories and the beautiful religious dances\nsculptured on the metopes of the Parthenon. Others devote their lives to\nthe study of the chorus in ancient tragedies and its evolutions on the\nstage. I do not say that the dance of Echternach, as such, is comparable\nto these choreographic works of art, but why refuse to a Christian\npractice in use among our fathers the benevolent attention lavished on\npagan society? Has it not a double claim to study in the fact that we\nreceived it from our Catholic ancestors? For five centuries, at least,\nit has lived and flourished among the populations of the Ardennes and\nits surroundings. Every year it draws from their homes thousands of\nthese sedentary peasants; it furrows with the steps of pilgrims the\nlong, white, desert roads of Luxembourg; it draws together in fraternal\nrelations men far removed from each other, by the same prayers and the\nsame emotions; it lifts towards heaven in unalloyed joy their faces\nbowed pitilessly earthward all the rest of the year. It teaches them to\nknow beyond their own fireside and parish the great Christian family of\nwhich they are members, and leaves in their memory for all the rest of\nthe summer and through the long winter evenings ineffaceable impressions\nof peaceful happiness. That is poetry, it seems to me, and of the best\nkind; more is the pity for those who cannot feel it. As the name of\n_p\u00e8lerinard_ is not one that frightens or mortifies me, I will assert\nthat the ancient procession of Echternach inspired me with unlimited\nadmiration, that it edified, moved, and consoled me, and appeared to me\na most charming episode in the great, mournful epic of human life.\n\n\n\n\n                         THE PAN-PRESBYTERIANS.\n\n\nAfter two years of careful preparation the great Pan-Presbyterian\nCouncil has assembled; has eaten seven luncheons in public and at the\npublic expense, and a corresponding number of breakfasts, dinners, and\nsuppers in private and at private cost; and has dispersed; its members\ntalked much\u2014but these were their only deeds. The labor of the\nPan-Presbyterian mountain brought forth not even a mouse. Its promise\nwas large; its performance was ludicrously small\u2014so small that the\nleading journals of England appear to have been almost unaware of the\nexistence of the Pan-Presbyterians, while the principal organ of opinion\nin the Scotch city where the council was held\u2014\u201cclose to the grave of\nJohn Knox, the founder of Presbyterianism\u201d\u2014gave to the record of its\nproceedings not so much space as it often devotes to the report of a\nlocal synod, and dismissed it at its close with good-humored but\ncontemptuous ridicule. Here, however, the ingenuous reader may inquire,\n\u201cWho are the Pan-Presbyterians, and for what purpose were they in\ncouncil?\u201d The question would be a natural one, and he who propounds it\nneed not blush for his ignorance. The people of Scotland may be presumed\nto know all that is worth knowing about Presbyterianism in all its\nforms; but it appears that in certain rural districts of that very\nPresbyterian land the impression prevailed that Pan-Presbyterian was the\ntitle of a new sect indigenous to America, and recently smuggled into\nScotland like the Colorado beetle; while in the more learned circles of\nEdinburgh this bucolic delusion was derided by erudite philologists, who\nexplained that \u201cPan-Presbyterianism is a learned form of stating that\nPresbyterianism is Everything, and that a Pan-Presbyterian is a person\nwho holds that comprehensive yet exclusive doctrine.\u201d In point of fact,\nhowever, the Pan-Presbyterians were simply three hundred and twenty-five\ngentlemen, most of them with the handle of reverend to their names, who\nclaimed to be the delegated representatives of the various Presbyterian\nsects throughout the world. From time to time some of the almost\ninnumerable Protestant sects show that they are ashamed of their\nsectarianism. Those of them who recognize at all the fact that Jesus\nChrist established _one_ church in the world are uneasy when they\nremember that they are members only of a sect which has a human origin.\nThis feeling, if rightly nurtured and obeyed, would lead those who\nentertain it into the fold of the church; but prejudice, pride,\nignorance, and self-interest too often stand in the way, and lead to\nattempts to satisfy the natural Christian yearning for unity by projects\nfor the amalgamation of a few of the sects into one body. Thus we have\nhad a Pan-Anglican Congress, a Bonn Conference, and an Evangelical\nAlliance; and now this Pan-Presbyterian Council. Presbyterianism has a\nhistory of about three hundred and twenty-five years, and in this period\nit has succeeded in dividing and subdividing itself, until even its own\ndoctors do not know with exactness how many different kinds of\nPresbyterians there may be, or in what manner the points of doctrine\nwhich separate them should be formulated. It was suggested at the\ncouncil that accurate information upon this subject was desirable, and\nthe task of obtaining it was entrusted to a committee, who hope they may\nbe able to report in three years\u2019 time. The project for the\nPan-Presbyterian Council was originated by an eminent American\nPresbyterian minister\u2014President McCosh, of Princeton (New Jersey)\nCollege; and it took definite shape at a meeting held in London in 1875,\nwhen \u201cthe alliance of the reformed churches throughout the world holding\nto the Presbyterian system\u201d was organized. Before the council could be\nsummoned, however, careful precautions had to be taken in order to\nprevent the assemblage, which was to meet for the promotion of unity,\nfrom breaking up in a row and resulting in the establishment of one or\nmore new schisms. A charm of novelty was thus imparted to the\nundertaking; every one felt that a Presbyterian synod which could hold\nits sessions without a free fight would indeed be a new spectacle. The\nharmony of the council was to be assured beforehand by forbidding it to\nexercise any authority whatsoever. It was especially prohibited from\nattempting to \u201cinterfere with the existing creed or constitution of any\nchurch in the alliance, or with its internal order or external\nrelations.\u201d Thus the door was opened for the admission of the\nrepresentatives of sects who are almost as wide apart from each other in\nwhat they believe and teach as they are from the church. So long as they\ncalled themselves Presbyterians, or \u201cheld to the Presbyterian system of\nchurch government,\u201d it was enough. There is a Presbyterian sect in\nHolland whose pastors, at least, teach that the Bible is not an inspired\nbook, and who deny the divinity of Christ; there is a Presbyterian sect\nin France which avows the boldest rationalism; there are Presbyterian\nsects in the United States who rejoice with exceeding great joy in the\nbelief that there are millions of infants not a span long frying in\nhell; and there are others who have recoiled so far from Calvinism that\nthey have fallen into Universalism. In Scotland itself bitter strife\nprevails between the various Presbyterian sects on such questions as the\nconnection of the state with the church, the binding force of the\n\u201cStandards,\u201d and the extent and nature of the Atonement; and there is a\nlarge party which is declaring that if a certain reverend professor, who\nhas written to prove that parts of the Bible are forgeries, myths, or\nfables, is disciplined for that expression of opinion, they will revolt\nand help him to set up a sect of his own. But the Pan-Presbyterians\nresolved to concern themselves with none of these things. Everything\nunpleasant was to be avoided; unity was to be talked about, but no\nattempt to effect it by defining truth or denouncing error was to be\nmade. Even with these restrictions the promoters of the council realized\nthe danger of their experiment, and at the last moment they diminished\nits perils by enacting that no one should speak twice on the same\nsubject, and that the discourses should be limited from twenty to ten\nminutes each. The latter provision, which was stringently enforced, more\nthan once saved the council from painful scenes. We had occasion, when\nwriting in these pages six months ago,[177] to show that in the\nPresbyterian body in Scotland theoretical infidelity had made such\nheadway and had obtained so firm a foothold that to deny the inspiration\nof the Bible, and to cast doubt upon the authenticity of the miraculous\nevents recorded in its pages, was regarded by a powerful section as an\nevidence of profound scholarship and of a fearless love for truth,\nrather than as a proof that the advocates of these opinions had ceased\nto be worthy of the name and position of Christian teachers. In a word,\nthe condition of the Presbyterian sects throughout the world was such\nthat a general council of its leading men was highly desirable, provided\nthat there remained in the sects anything worth saving, and they\npossessed in themselves the power of saving it. For ourselves, we\nbelieve that the mutilated fragments of Christian truth still retained\nby the majority of the Presbyterian laity and by a considerable number\nof the Presbyterian ministers are well worth saving; but we fear that\nthe Presbyterians themselves will not, or cannot, save them. If these\nPan-Presbyterians were truly representative men, then, we should say, it\nis all up with Presbyterianism. The spirit which conceived the council\nand which governed its proceedings was the spirit of cowardice, of\ntemporary expediency, of prophesying smooth things, and, if we must\nspeak with entire plainness, the spirit of utter and base unfaithfulness\nto God\u2019s revealed truth, even to that version of his revealed truth\nwhich the Presbyterians profess with their lips, and which they have\nformulated in their own creeds, confessions, and catechisms. In the face\nof the fact that on the Continent of Europe their co-religionists are\nrapidly becoming Unitarians, rationalists, and infidels; that in\nScotland German rationalistic philosophy has won its way into their\ntheological schools and poisoned the very fountains of their\necclesiastical learning, so that it has now become notorious that a\nlarge share of their ministers either do not believe what they preach or\nelse preach that which is in irreconcilable antagonism to the\n\u201cStandards\u201d; and that in America the Presbyterian bodies are drifting\ninto Socinianism on one hand, and back into the hardest and most\nrepulsive form of Calvinism on the other\u2014in view of all these undeniable\nfacts, or rather with assumed and predetermined blindness to them, the\nchosen representatives of the Presbyterian sects assemble, spend seven\ndays in talking with each other, and separate without uttering a word or\nperforming an act in affirmation or defence or vindication of absolute\nand divine truth. No! That was not in the programme; it was only on\ncondition that nothing of the kind should be attempted that the council\nwas got together at all; it was only because this promise was observed\nthat the council managed to do its talking and to disperse in peace. At\none of its meetings a curious scene occurred. A woman\u2014an earnest\nPresbyterian of the old sort, a spiritual descendant of Jennie\nGeddes\u2014had made her way into the council, and had listened to the debate\nfor some time in silence; but her emotions at last overcame her, and,\nrising to her feet, she politely informed the chairman that she hoped\nGod\u2019s lightning would come down and strike the assembly for its\nunfaithfulness. This irate lady was indiscreet; but she only expressed,\nwe suppose, the feelings of many an honest Presbyterian. The council,\nhowever, was wise in its generation, and it must be confessed that it\nacted upon strictly Protestant principles. The essence of Protestantism\nis a revolt against supreme authority; it is the affirmation of the idea\nthat one man\u2019s opinion is as good as another\u2019s, and perhaps better. An\nattempt to provide means for an organic unity of the sects represented\nwould have ended in a free fight; the affirmation of positive truths\ncondemnatory of the heresies which honey-*comb the sects was impossible\nso long as the bargain by which these heresies were to be ignored was\ncarried out.\n\nFootnote 177:\n\n  See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for April.\n\nThe official programme of the work of the council was thus conceived:\n\n    \u201cTo consider questions of general interest to Presbyterians; to\n    strengthen and protect weak and persecuted churches; to explain and\n    extend the Presbyterian system; and to discuss subjects of church\n    work\u2014evangelization, training of ministers, use of the press,\n    colportage, suppression of intemperance, observance of the Sabbath,\n    systematic beneficence, and the suppression of Romanism and\n    infidelity.\u201d\n\nWe must here record, with a grateful heart, that \u201cRomanism\u201d came off\nvery lightly. We are not certain that for this crowning mercy we are not\nindebted to those wily fellows, the Jesuits. For it was observed that,\nwhenever one of the speakers began to adduce evidence that the Pope was\nAntichrist, the chairman suddenly discovered \u201cthat time was up\u201d; and it\nwas likewise remarked that more than one soul-stirring revelation of the\ndiabolical seductions of the Scarlet Woman was cut short by the\nannouncement that \u201cthe luncheon hour had arrived, and that Bailie\nMcTavish would preside\u201d\u2014an intimation which never failed to empty the\nhall. Now, there are Jesuits in Scotland\u2014no less than a score of\nthem\u2014and that they are quite equal to the task of devising means like\nthese for their protection cannot be doubted by any enlightened\nProtestant mind. As for the twin sister of Romanism\u2014infidelity\u2014that\nescaped almost scot free. The learned and pious delegates fought shy of\nthe subject; it was felt to be a dangerous one.\n\nThe council began its sessions in the Free Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, on\nthe 4th of July. It was found to consist of 325 members, of whom 238\nwere regularly-appointed delegates, and 87 were honorary, or associate,\ndelegates. Thirty-one of the delegates were from the Continent of\nEurope; Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland sent 92 delegates; the\ncolonies 30; and the United States 85. The American delegates had\nbrought with them 32 \u201cassociates\u201d; and it was, perhaps, in order to\nguard against bulldozing on the part of the Americans that the Scotch\ndelegates appointed on the spur of the moment 48 \u201cassociates\u201d to sit\nwith their delegates and thus maintain a proper balance of power. The\nprecaution was not unnecessary; even after it had been adopted the\nAmericans did far more than their share of the talking. The established\nchurch of Scotland, in appointing its delegates to the council, had\ninstructed them to take a high and mighty attitude, and to refrain from\ndoing or saying anything which would imply that they had been sent there\nto treat on terms of equality with the representatives of the other\nsects. The American delegation was respectable for its ability, and the\nultra-orthodox element was dominant in it. The two hostile camps into\nwhich the handful of French Presbyterians are divided were both\nrepresented; and so were the two Presbyterian sects of Holland. There\nwere enough Presbyterians in Belgium to send one delegate, and no more.\nThe German Presbyterians declined to be officially represented, and the\nthree German members of the council came as volunteers. Bohemia and\nHungary had their delegates; Switzerland sent some gentlemen who were\nrather sat upon; the modern inheritors of the old Waldensian heretics\nwere the constituents of a delegate who had little to say; and the\nremainder of the thirty-one European delegates were representatives of\n\u201cthe missionary churches\u201d in Italy, Spain, and Greece. As nearly as\ncould be ascertained, there are about fifty different Presbyterian\nsects, and it was estimated that more than half of these were\nrepresented in the council. But the delegates were not endowed with any\npower to act, or even to speak officially, in the name of their\nrespective constituents. Those of the sects in Switzerland, Germany,\nBohemia, and Hungary which have a connection with the state had either\nrefused to be represented at all or had permitted their members to\nattend only as individuals. This complete absence of everything like\nlegislative or judicial power in the council is a sufficient apology for\nits failure to promulgate new decrees or to define any dogma. But had\nthe Pan-Presbyterians been of one mind and heart, they might at least\nhave lifted up their united testimony, in some shape or other, in\ndefence of those cardinal truths of Christianity which are now assailed,\nall the world over, by men in their own ranks. This they did not venture\nto do, for the reason that, had they tried to do it, their congress\nwould have ended in a row.\n\nThe opening sermon of the council was preached by Professor Flint, who\ntook for his text the prayer of our Lord for the unity of his church,\nand whose discourse was an argument to the effect that when the\nFounder of the church prayed that his followers \u201call may be one,\u201d he\nintended that they should be all divided. \u201cA universal church,\u201d says\nProfessor Flint, \u201cwas as grandiose and diseased a dream as was a\nuniversal empire\u201d; and he warned the council against striving after\norganic unity even among the fifty separate Presbyterian sects. The\nadoption of the rules of order, which provided that the meetings\n\u201cshould be opened shortly with prayer,\u201d caused a member to complain\nthat it was very awkward to use the word \u201cshortly\u201d in connection with\nprayer; but the chairman replied that while it was awkward it was very\nnecessary, else they would have nothing but praying. The first subject\nof discussion was \u201cHarmony of Reformed Confessions,\u201d which were\ndivided into three classes\u2014ante-Calvinistic, Calvinistic, and\npost-Calvinistic. These originally were not intended to be formulas,\nbut only apologies\u2014\u201cvindications of the Protestant faith against\nRomish misrepresentation and slander.\u201d For a while these confessions\nmaintained their supremacy, but now \u201cthey have lost their authority in\nalmost every country except England, Scotland, and the United States\u201d;\nand each church interprets the Scriptures to suit itself, even upon\nsuch grave questions as \u201creprobation and infant salvation.\u201d Should the\ncouncil@ leave this matter in its present indefinite state, or should\nit undertake to formulate a new confession to which all Presbyterians\nshould subscribe? A Swiss delegate ventured the startling suggestion\nthat if such a confession were formulated \u201cthe Divinity of Christ\nshould be the central stand-point in it\u201d; and another delegate\nproduced the draught of a new dogmatic constitution, in thirty-one\narticles, which had been obligingly formulated by Professor Kraft, of\nBonn, who had patched it up from the various confessions and had sent\nit to the council with his compliments. Principal Brown, of Aberdeen,\nremarked that it would be extremely desirable that this or some other\nsimilar constitution should be adopted, or something else done,\nchiefly \u201cin order to silence\u2014no, it would not do that\u2014but to put to\nshame the calumny of the Church of Rome, which said that the Reformed\nchurches were divided into as many distinct and conflicting religions\nas there were sects of them. The more intelligent Romanists knew this\nwas false\u201d (then we cannot be classed among the more intelligent\nRomanists), \u201cbut it suited them all the same to say it and repeat it,\nbecause it had a certain pithy and plausible sound. And Presbyterians\nwere there to testify that it was false, and that in all that was\nsubstantial and vital in Christianity the Reformed churches were\npractically one.\u201d After this bold declaration it would have been\nnaturally in order to take the step necessary to prove it. But canny\nProfessor Brown hastened to add that, on second thoughts, he was of\nthe opinion that the council had better leave the matter alone and not\nattempt any unity save that of \u201csympathy.\u201d Professor Candlish lamented\nthat \u201cthere was not now that lively sense of the unity and harmony of\nthe Reformed confessions that there once was.\u201d In fact, no one knew\nexactly what changes the various churches had made in the \u201cStandards,\u201d\nand he thought it would be interesting, at least, to collect\ninformation on that point, so as to ascertain how many different\nPresbyterian beliefs there were. Dr. Lang, of Glasgow, warned the\ncouncil that it was treading on dangerous ground. \u201cThere were deeper\nissues involved than merely touching the surface of their confessions:\nthere was the whole question as to the authority and place of the\nBible, and behind that the whole question of the supernatural.\u201d The\nwidest differences of opinion existed on these questions\u2014every one\nknew that\u2014but as long as possible let them be kept in the background.\nBy covering them up, and avoiding \u201ca restless and continual\nnig-nagging at the matter,\u201d a sufficient degree of harmony could be\nmaintained, at least for the present. A lay delegate, a lawyer, said\nthat if the council once ventured to deal \u201cwith the very complicated,\ndelicate, and difficult question of creeds,\u201d there might be found many\nwho would propose to solve the difficulty by dispensing with all\ncreeds. Dr. Begg at this point boiled over, and read the council a\nsevere lecture, expressing the disgust with which he had listened to\nsome of the statements which had been made and apparently accepted.\n\n    \u201cEvery age had its own theology!\u2014(laughter and applause)\u2014he did not\n    in the least believe that. Theology had been the same since the days\n    of Eden. The idea of having a new theology at every stage was a\n    blunder. (Laughter.) They heard of discoveries being made; but these\n    discoveries were only resurrections of old errors. (Laughter.) He\n    found a revolt against the divine authority and the divine Word\u2014and\n    the rebels were the discoverers of these new theologies.\u201d\n\nThe discussion was now growing warm, but as it was announced that \u201cthe\nhour for luncheon had arrived, and that Mr. Stevenson, M.P., would\npreside,\u201d the threatened fight was averted, and the subject was disposed\nof at a subsequent meeting by the passage of the following resolution:\n\n    \u201cThat this council appoint a committee with instructions to prepare\n    a report to be laid before the next General Council, showing, in\n    point of fact\u20141. What are the existing creeds and confessions of the\n    churches composing this alliance, and what have been their previous\n    creeds and confessions, with any modifications thereupon, and the\n    dates and occasions of the same from the Reformation to the present\n    day. 2. What are the existing formulas of subscription, if any, and\n    what have been the previous formulas of subscription used in those\n    churches in connection with their creeds and confessions. 3. How far\n    has individual adherence to those creeds by subscription or\n    otherwise been required from the ministers, elders, or other\n    office-bearers respectively, and also from the private members of\n    the same. And the council authorize the committee to correspond with\n    members of the several churches throughout the world who may be able\n    to give information; and they enjoin the committee, in submitting\n    their report, not to accompany it either with any comparative\n    estimate of those creeds or with any critical remarks upon their\n    respective value, expediency, or efficiency.\u201d\n\nThere was an unhappy and heated controversy concerning the appointment\nof some of the members of this committee, but this excitement was\nunnecessary. The information can all be obtained by the purchase of a\nfew books and pamphlets; and as the committee is forbidden to accompany\nits report with \u201cany critical remarks,\u201d the presence upon it of a few\nrationalists or Universalists can do no mischief.\n\nThe remainder of the time of the council\u2014and it sat thrice a day for a\nweek\u2014was occupied with talk. Nothing was done that was worthy of the\nname of action. Extracts from scores of religious essays were read;\nhundreds of little religious or semi-religious speeches were made; and\nthat was all. We do not know what the Presbyterians here and elsewhere\nexpected; but if they expected anything practical they have been sadly\ndisappointed. Some of the little speeches were comic\u2014as, for example,\nthat of \u201cthe Rev. Mr. Robinson, of Louisville, U. S.,\u201d who seems to have\npursued antiquarian researches with startling results, since he has\nascertained that Presbyterianism began with Abraham; that Moses was a\nmember of the presbytery of Egypt; and that Elisha and Ezechiel were the\nmoderators of the Presbyterian synods of Samaria and Jerusalem.\nPresbyterianism was the true form of government in the Jewish Church,\nand it was the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Judea that\npassed sentence of death on Jesus of Nazareth. Nay, according to this\nsprightly Kentucky divine, heaven itself will be a Presbyterian\ncommunity, governed by a presbytery of four-and-twenty members. To\nlisten to such excellent fooling as this; to read the essay laboriously\nprepared at home in Peoria or Dundee, and carefully rehearsed to\nadmiring wife and wondering bairns for months before starting; to\ndiscuss, even in ten-minute speeches, such thrilling and novel themes as\nthe uses of elders, the sinfulness of Sabbath-breaking, the advantages\nof assemblies, the wickedness of the Pope, and the unquestionable\nmental, moral, and religious superiority of Presbyterians in general,\nand Pan-Presbyterians especially, over all the rest of mankind\u2014all this,\nno doubt, was pleasant enough to the participants; but it was scarcely\nthe entertainment to which the outside world had been invited. True,\nthere was voted, at the close of the council, and after an unusually\nhearty luncheon at which the brethren tarried long, \u201can address to the\nqueen,\u201d accompanied by what an Edinburgh journal irreverently describes\nas \u201cunanimous votes of thanks to the Deity, Mr. A. T. Niven, C.A., and\nthe lord provost.\u201d Probably her majesty will never read the address, as\nit is a long one and does not call for a reply. But if she should peruse\nit, she will scarcely thank its authors for suggesting that she, too, is\na Pan-Presbyterian, or that she changes her religion every time she\ncrosses the Tweed. It appears something like an impertinence in the\nPan-Presbyterians to write thus to the queen:\n\n    \u201cWe venture to indicate the deep interest which we take in the\n    circumstance that, while residing in Scotland, your majesty joins in\n    the Presbyterian worship and communion.\u201d\n\nThe queen goes to a Presbyterian church when in Scotland because\nPresbyterianism is the religion of the state in Scotland, of which she\nis the head; and she goes to an Episcopalian church when in England\nbecause episcopacy is the religion of the state in England. If she were\nin India, and Mohammedanism were the state religion there, she would\nprobably go to a mosque with the same good grace that she displays when\nsitting under the parish minister near Balmoral. The council also\nappointed a committee to see whether money could be raised for the\npublication of a mass of old treatises and essays upon Presbyterianism\nwhich no private publisher has ever thought of reprinting; and another\ncommittee to \u201cconsider\u201d what could be reported to the next\ncouncil\u2014which, by the way, is to be held at Philadelphia in 1880, if the\nworld and Pan-Presbyterianism be then in existence. That portion of the\nprogramme which promised \u201cthe suppression of infidelity\u201d was not carried\nout; a day was spent in talking about the best methods of getting the\nbetter of Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Bradlaugh, and the like, but the\nmatter ended with the acceptance of the remark of Prof. Cairns, that\ndisputation with such people is rather worse than useless, since they\nare well skilled in argument, and that the only thing to be done with\nthem is to pray for them. As Americans we record with justifiable pride\nthe encomiums bestowed upon the American delegates by the great Dr.\nPhin, and the still greater Dr. Begg. \u201cSound Christian doctrine,\u201d said\nthe first, \u201cin this land has received a most powerful impulse from the\naddresses of the American brethren\u201d; and Dr. Begg \u201crejoiced because of\nthe firm tone which had characterized the addresses of the American\nspeakers, as we require in Scotland an ecclesiastical tonic to brace us\nup to a firm maintenance of our own Scriptural principles.\u201d The firm\ntone was not backed up by firm action, nor by any action at all; but,\nall the same, Dr. Begg is of the opinion that if the orthodox\nPresbyterians in Scotland could talk as their American brethren do,\nthere would soon be an end to the croaking of \u201cthe frogs of infidelity\nthat are coming into our churches like the frogs that went into Pharao\u2019s\nbed-chamber.\u201d But it may prevent some disappointment in the future to\nour American Presbyterian friends if we convey to them the warning\nuttered by the Edinburgh _Scotsman_ at the end of the council\u2014a journal\nwhose opinion on the affair is all the more valuable from the fact that\nits editor is a Presbyterian clergyman of renown who has abandoned the\npulpit for the press:\n\n    \u201cMeanwhile,\u201d says the _Scotsman_, \u201cwhat with choking 'frogs\u2019 and\n    covering up disputable subjects, the appearance of a complete, if\n    not a completely beautiful, harmony was unquestionably produced. But\n    it is only right to warn the Pan-Presbyterians that if they leave us\n    with the notion that, because all is peaceful now, unity is\n    established, they are the victims of a delusion. They may depart to\n    their Swiss hamlets or their Transatlantic cities with psalm-tunes\n    sounding peace within Jerusalem ringing in their ears, and imagine\n    that after this most refreshing time the millennium has come when\n    Dr. Phin and Dr. Blaikie will lie down together, and Dr. Marcus Dods\n    and Dr. Moody Stewart will kiss each other. But, alas! shortly after\n    they have told their deeply-affected flocks at home of the harmony\n    which prevails in Bible-loving Scotland, some morning when Dr. Rufus\n    Choate examines his Chicago _Trumpet_, and Dr. Brunnelhanner lays\n    down his meerschaum to take up his paper, they will find that all\n    the old dissensions have broken out again with alarming violence;\n    that ministers who agreed on a platform of wood can agree upon no\n    other; that Dr. Blaikie has attacked Establishments from love of\n    their members, and has Dr. Pirie\u2019s head in Chancery; that Dr. Phin\n    has a new scheme to 'dish\u2019 the Dissenters; that those who led the\n    devotions are now leading the fray; that those who were at peace are\n    not on speaking terms, or on terms in speaking which are very bad\n    indeed; while those who lauded the agreement between confessions\n    cannot agree amongst themselves as to what these confessions mean to\n    say. The visit of the Pan-Presbyterians may, after all, share the\n    fate that generally overtakes the other numerous excursionists who\n    appear among us about this season. For the moment we may be struck\n    by their numbers and their banners with their strange devices, and\n    be moved to the heart, or even deeper, by their bass-drum and their\n    instruments of brass; but when they have gone, if any memory of them\n    remains, it is only of something that was loud and singular, but\n    what it was or what it did there is nothing palpable to show.\u201d\n\nThe Pan-Presbyterians repeated very often that, while they did not\nexpect, or even desire, to effect \u201corganic unity\u201d between their various\nsects\u2014that unity being, in their opinion, opposed to the will of\nGod\u2014they were, all the same, \u201cone in spirit and in sympathy.\u201d But the\nhollowness of even this pretence was manifested when an attempt was made\nto induce them to unite in what they call \u201cpartaking of the Lord\u2019s\nSupper.\u201d Toward the close of the council it was announced that \u201cDr.\nMoody Stewart and his session invited the members of council to\ncommunion at half-past twelve on Saturday.\u201d Now, from a Catholic, or\n\u201cRomanist,\u201d point of view, it is rather surprising that a convention of\neminent Christian ministers, assembled for what they professed to regard\nas the most important purposes, should have already spent several days\nwithout performing this supreme act of Christian devotion. But\nPan-Presbyterian ways are not as our ways. Nevertheless, one would have\nsupposed that, being thus invited to do what they had neglected, they\nwould at least have received the invitation kindly. On the contrary, a\nmost unhappy scene followed. The Orthodox Pan-Presbyterians were willing\nto talk with their unorthodox colleagues; they would eat luncheons with\nthem, make speeches and read papers to them, and even listen to their\nspeeches and papers in return; but when it came to \u201cpartaking of the\nsacrament\u201d with them, they would not do it at any price. Dr. Phin at\nonce protested against the idea that he, for one, could thus be yoked\nunevenly with unbelievers. \u201cHe happened to entertain certain\nold-fashioned ideas with respect to the dispensation of the Lord\u2019s\nSupper\u201d which would prevent him from joining in it unless he knew his\ncompany. For instance, there should be \u201cthe fencing of the tables\u201d; and\nthis fencing would surely shut out either the sheep or the goats. The\n\u201cfencing of the tables,\u201d it appears, is a curious custom prevalent in\nScotland, and may be thus explained: an invitation to \u201cthe communion\u201d is\ngiven, and then every one who wishes to receive it is scared off either\nby terrific denunciations of the awful guilt incurred by those who\npartake unworthily, or is compelled to pass a severe competitive\nexamination as to the soundness of his faith and his acceptance of the\n\u201cStandards.\u201d Dr. Phin was, no doubt, correct in supposing that the\napplication of these tests would produce unpleasant results, and his\nconscience would not permit him to assist at a communion where they were\nnot applied. Dr. Begg took the same view, and \u201cregretted that the\ninvitation had been given.\u201d The chairman\u2014who on this occasion happened\nto be Dr. Ormiston, of New York\u2014sought to get over the difficulty by\nsuggesting that \u201cit would be understood that nobody was committed except\nthe gentlemen who took part in it,\u201d and he added the remarkable\ndeclaration that \u201cas members of council not one of them had any\nresponsibility to the weight of a hair.\u201d A lay member \u201cprotested against\nany administration of free communion in connection with the council\u201d;\nand Dr. Blaikie said the committee had \u201ctaken every precaution that the\ncouncil should not be committed in any way.\u201d With this assurance the\nsubject \u201cwas allowed to drop,\u201d and when the time for the communion\narrived only one hundred and thirty of the three hundred and twenty-five\nPan-Presbyterians presented themselves to receive it\u2014and among these\nneither Dr. Phin nor Dr. Begg was seen.\n\nThe Continental Pan-Presbyterians made a pitiful show for themselves\nduring the council. Few of them could speak English; and the linguistic\naccomplishments of the majority of their colleagues being limited, they\nwere compelled, when they spoke at all, to express themselves through an\ninterpreter, which is not generally an exhilarating process. One of the\nFrench delegates said there were forty Presbyterian congregations in\nFrance without pastors, and he suggested that a collection might be made\nto aid in hiring men to fill these vacancies; but this hint was not\ntaken. A volunteer member from Berlin read a sensible paper upon\n\u201cmissions,\u201d in which he ridiculed the present system of Protestant\nmissions, and said that their only fruits were the inculcation of\nhypocrisy and of pauperism among the so-called converts. On this same\nsubject, by the way, one of the members put forth the novel idea that\nthe conversion of one Jew was worth more than the salvation of a hundred\npagans. Dr. Hoedemaker, of Amsterdam, said that the Presbyterians there\nhad long been poisoned with the virus of rationalism, and that forty\nyears ago \u201cthere were very few who preached the living Christ in his\nchurch\u201d; but now, he hoped, there was some improvement. M. Decoppet, of\nthe French Presbyterian body, complained that the sect could make no\nprogress there, \u201cbecause they were not allowed by the law to give a\ntract on the street or to deliver public lectures\u201d; but still he was\nconfident that \u201cFrance would soon become a Protestant nation\u201d\u2014by the aid\nof M. Gambetta and the Reds, we presume. The representative of the\nWaldensian heretics apologized for the bad character of some of its\nministers, but said that as fast as the false shepherds were detected\nthey were expelled from the fold.\n\nPoliteness, perhaps, would command us to express our acknowledgments of\ncertain courteous, sensible, and truthful things which were said about\nthe church\u2014as, for example, that \u201cshe was the mother of infidelity\u201d and\nthe fountain and origin of all civil, moral, and religious evil. But, on\nthe whole, we think our readers will have had enough of the\nPan-Presbyterians. Dr. Begg, at the last meeting of the council, said\nthat \u201cthey saw the shadow of the great eclipse of Romanism again cast\nover the country.\u201d We take this to be the Beggonian method of expressing\nthe fact that the few Christians who remain in Scotland are on the way\nto return to the church of their forefathers\u2014the church which civilized\nand Christianized Scotland, and which had the unhappiness to nurture in\nher bosom the apostate priest who was the father of Scotch\nPresbyterianism. Dr. Begg is not an infallible prophet, but such events\nas the Pan-Presbyterian council are calculated to hasten the event which\nhe predicts. For the council has shown that the Presbyterian Church\nthroughout the world, as represented by its chosen men, is undermined by\ninfidelity, and that its existence, in their opinion, depends upon\nconcealing this fact and pretending that no one has the right to\nproclaim it.\n\n\n\n\n                        TRANSLATION FROM HORACE.\n                            ODE 14, BOOK 2.\n\n\n_Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume!_\n\n      Alas! my Posthumus, our years\n    Glide silently away; no tears,\n    No loving orisons, repair\n    The wrinkled cheek, the whitening hair,\n    That drop forgotten to the tomb:\n    Pluto\u2019s inexorable doom\n    Mocks at thy daily sacrifice;\n    Around his dreary kingdom lies\n    That fatal stream whose arms enfold\n    The Giant race accursed of old;\n    All, all alike must cross its wave,\n    The king, the noble, and the slave.\n    In vain we shun the fields of war,\n    And breakers dashed on Adria\u2019s shore;\n    Vainly we flee, in terror blind,\n    The plague that walketh on the wind;\n    The sluggish river of the Dead,\n    Cocytus, must be visited;\n    And Dana\u00fcs\u2019 detested brood,\n    Foul with their fifty husbands\u2019 blood;\n    And Sisyphus, with ghastly smile\n    Pointing to his eternal toil.\n    All must be left: thy gentle wife,\n    Thy home, the joys of rural life;\n    And when thy fleeting days are gone,\n    Th\u2019 ill-omened cypresses alone\n    Of all those fondly-cherished trees\n    Shall grace thy funeral obsequies,\n    Cling to thy loved remains, and wave\n    Their mournful shadows o\u2019er thy grave.\n    A lavish but a nobler heir\n    Thy hoarded C\u00e6cuban shall share,\n    And on the tessellated floor\n    The purple nectar madly pour,\n    Nectar more worthy of the halls\n    Where Pontiffs hold their festivals.\n\n    S. E. DE V.\n\n\n\n\n                           NEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\n    PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; their History,\n    Condition, and Management. Special Report. Department of the\n    Interior, Bureau of Education. 1876.\n\nIn 1874 the Commissioner of the Bureau of Education in the Department of\nthe Interior at Washington began the preparation of a complete Report on\nthe Public Libraries in the United States; on the 31st of August, 1876,\nthe report was submitted; it was printed, and it makes a volume of 1,187\npages. A careful study of the contents of this unique work compels us to\nexpress, in the first place, our most cordial appreciation of the great\nlabor which has been expended upon it, and of the value of the\ninformation which it contains. The size of the volume, we fear, has\ndeterred many into whose hands it has fallen from more than glancing\nover its pages; we confess for ourselves that we shrank, for a while,\nfrom the task of reading it. But we have been amply repaid for our toil,\nwhich soon became a pleasure; and we may say here that we have seen in\nforeign periodicals and journals a number of highly eulogistic and\ndiscriminating reviews of the report. We propose to make our readers\nshare in the satisfaction we have derived from our study of this work;\nbut our space will permit us only to give a condensed summary of a\nportion of its contents.\n\nNo less than 132 pages of the report are taken up with a table giving\nthe statistics of all the \u201cpublic libraries\u201d in the United States and\nTerritories numbering 300 volumes or more, excepting common or district\nschool libraries. The table is as complete as it could be made from the\nreturns received in 1875-76; but it is incomplete, because many of the\nlibraries named in it do not report the date of their foundation, their\naverage annual increase in books, their financial condition, or their\nyearly expenditures. But with all these defects the table is extremely\nvaluable. It shows, to begin with, that the total number of these\nlibraries is 3,647, having as their total number of volumes 12,276,964.\nWe pause here for a moment to say that the report also shows that in the\ndistrict-school libraries, not included in the table, there are\n1,365,407 volumes, and that in all the libraries there are about\n1,500,000 pamphlets not classed as \u201cvolumes.\u201d The census of 1870 showed\nthat there were 107,673 private libraries, containing 25,571,503\nvolumes, exclusive of those which may be in the State of Connecticut,\nfrom which State no returns on this subject were received. Here, then,\nwe have a total of 39,213,874 volumes of books in the public, private,\nand school libraries of the country\u2014a mass of printed matter large\nenough, estimating each volume to weigh a pound, to fill nine merchant\nvessels of 2,000 tons burden each. Let us also in this place give the\nfollowing list of the number of volumes in several noted libraries in\nother countries, with the remark that, as the statistics of these\nlibraries differ widely according to different authorities, we have in\neach case taken the highest number given, and that this number relates\nonly to books, and not to manuscripts or pamphlets, fugitive\npublications, etc.:\n\n          Biblioth\u00e8que Nationale, Paris              2,000,000\n          Mazarin Library, Paris                       160,000\n          Royal Library, Madrid                        200,000\n          Convent Library of the Escorial, Madrid      130,000\n          Vatican Library, Rome                      1,000,000\n          Magliabecch\u00edana Library, Florence            200,000\n          Laurentian Library, Florence                 120,000\n          Museo Borbonico, Naples                      200,000\n          University Library, Bologna                  200,000\n          Brera Library, Milan                         200,000\n          Ambrosian Library, Milan                     140,000\n          University Library, Turin                    150,000\n          Royal Library, Berlin                        700,000\n          Royal Library, Dresden                       500,000\n          University Library, Breslau                  350,000\n          University Library, G\u00f6ttingen                400,000\n          Ducal Library, Wolfenb\u00fcttel                  300,000\n          University Library, Freiburg                 250,000\n          Royal Library, Stuttgart                     450,000\n          Royal Library, Munich                        900,000\n          Royal Library, Copenhagen                    550,000\n          Bodleian Library, Oxford                     700,000\n          Advocates\u2019 Library, Edinburgh                300,000\n          University Library, Edinburgh                130,000\n          Imperial Library, St. Petersburg           1,100,000\n          City Library, Augsburg                       150,000\n          University Library, Cambridge                400,000\n          City Library, Frankfort                      150,000\n          Ducal Library, Gotha                         240,000\n          City Library, Hamburg                        300,000\n          City Library, Leipsic                        170,000\n          University Library, Leipsic                  350,000\n          British Museum, London                     1,020,000\n\nIn these 33 libraries in the Old World there are 14,110,000 volumes,\nexclusive of manuscripts, or 1,833,176 more volumes than we have in all\nof our 3,647 public libraries. We say nothing of the comparative value\nof the collections, for of course there is no comparison between a\ncollection which has been accumulating for a thousand years and one\nwhich was made yesterday. But we have no reason to be ashamed of our\nAmerican public libraries; on the contrary, as the report which we are\nreviewing abundantly shows, we have every reason to be proud of them. We\ntake from this report the following table:\n\n         Whole number of public libraries                3,647\n\n         Whole number of volumes                    12,276,964\n\n         Average number of volumes                       3,366\n\n         Yearly additions (1,510 reporting)            434,339\n\n         Yearly use of books (742 reporting)         8,879,809\n\n         Amt of permanent fund (1,722 reporting)    $6,105,581\n\n         Yearly income (830 reporting)              $1,398,756\n\n         Yearly expenditures for publications         $562,407\n         (769 reporting)\n\n         Yearly expenditures for salaries, etc.       $682,166\n         (643 reporting)\n\nThe 3,647 libraries are distributed among the various States and\nTerritories as follows; and here we make our only complaint against the\nreport\u2014to wit, that its laborious and faithful editors have not\nfurnished the footings, which we have been compelled to make for\nourselves:\n\nAlabama, 31 libraries; Alaska, 1 (the post library at Sitka, and now\nremoved since the garrison has been withdrawn); Arizona, 3 (two of them\nbeing military libraries); Arkansas, 6; California, 87; Colorado, 8;\nConnecticut, 125; Dakota, 4 (two being military libraries); Delaware,\n18; District of Columbia, 57 (31 of them belonging to the federal\ngovernment); Florida, 6; Georgia, 44; Idaho, 1; Illinois, 177; Indiana,\n133; Indian Territory, 4 (two of them military libraries); Iowa, 80;\nKansas, 19; Kentucky, 72; Louisiana, 31; Maine, 85; Maryland, 77;\nMassachusetts, 453; Michigan, 89; Minnesota, 39; Mississippi, 23;\nMissouri, 87; Montana, 2; Nebraska, 14; Nevada, 6; New Hampshire, 86;\nNew Jersey, 91; New Mexico, 4 (one of them a military library, and two\nof the others belonging to Catholic academies); New York, 617; North\nCarolina, 37; Ohio, 223; Oregon, 14; Pennsylvania, 367; Rhode Island,\n56; South Carolina, 26; Tennessee, 71; Texas, 42; Utah, 5; Vermont, 65;\nVirginia, 63; Washington Territory, 2 (one of them a Catholic library);\nWest Virginia, 23; Wisconsin, 73; and Wyoming Territory, 3.\n\nThese figures are suggestive in various ways, and many interesting and\nvaluable inferences might be drawn from them. But a careful analysis of\nthe other portions of the table would also be necessary in order to\navoid mistakes; and the wholly unknown quantity in the problem\u2014the\ncomparative value of different collections\u2014would imperil the accuracy of\nany deductions which might be made from the statistics in this table.\nFor instance, the 31 libraries in Alabama contain 60,615 volumes\u2014nearly\n5,000 less than are in the New York Society Library alone. A library is\na library, for the purposes of this report, if it contain 300 or more\nvolumes, just as a book is a book although there may be nothing in it.\nWho is to say whether some of the smaller collections in the South are\nnot really more valuable than the larger and newer libraries in the\nNorth? We fear it is not so; but there is no test by which to decide the\nquestion. If we leave this point, and turn our attention to the\nstatistics relating to the principal libraries, we shall come upon more\nsatisfactory ground.\n\nThe thirty-eighth chapter of the report, filling 273 pages, is devoted\nto a review of the public libraries of ten principal cities\u2014Baltimore,\nBoston, Brooklyn, Charleston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York,\nPhiladelphia, St. Louis, and San Francisco. In these ten cities there\nare 471 public libraries with 3,447,628 volumes, viz.:\n\n  _Name of City._                  _No. of Libraries_      _Volumes._\n  Charleston                                        6          26,600\n  Chicago                                          23         141,910\n  San Francisco                                    30         164,228\n  Brooklyn                                         21         165,112\n  St. Louis                                        31         170,875\n  Cincinnati                                       30         197,890\n  Baltimore                                        38         230,342\n  Philadelphia                                    102         707,627\n  Boston                                           68         734,741\n  New York                                        122         906,203\n                                                   \u2014-           \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014-\n  Total                                           471       3,445,528\n\nTo this list we add, in order that the South may have justice done to\nher:\n\n  _Name of City._                  _No. of Libraries_      _Volumes._\n  New Orleans                                      15          94,080\n  Louisville                                        6          65,897\n  Richmond                                         17          63,526\n\nA library containing 10,000 volumes or more, if well selected, may be\nsaid to be a respectable collection. Now, there are no less than 266\nlibraries of this class in the United Slates, and they contain a total\nof 6,984,882 volumes\u2014an average of 26,259 volumes in each. These 266\nlibraries, it will be seen, account for more than one half of the total\nnumber of volumes in all the public libraries, and they reduce the\naverage number of volumes in the remaining 3,381 libraries to 1,565. But\neven a library with 1,500 good books is not to be despised.\n\nThe largest library in the United States is that of the National\nCongress at Washington, which has 300,000 volumes; and then follow:\n\n               Social Law Library,               299,869\n               Boston\n\n               Harvard University                227,650\n\n               Mercantile, New York              160,613\n\n               Astor, New York                   152,446\n\n               Mercantile, Philadelphia          125,668\n\n               House of Representatives,         125,000\n               Washington\n\n               Yale College                      114,200\n\n               Athen\u00e6um, Boston                  105,000\n\nThese are the only libraries which have 100,000 volumes and more. Those\nwhich have 50,000 and less than 100,000 volumes are the\n\n               State Library at Albany   95,000\n\n               New York Society, New     65,000\n               York\n\n               Antiquarian Society,      60,497\n               Worcester\n\n               Peabody Institute,        57,458\n               Baltimore\n\n               Apprentices\u2019, New York    53,000\n\n               Dartmouth College         52,550\n\n               Mercantile, Brooklyn      50,257\n\n               State University, Baton   50,000\n               Rouge\n\nThere are 10 libraries having more than 40,000 and less than 50,000\nvolumes; 23, with more than 30,000 and less than 40,000; 49, with more\nthan 20,000 and less than 30,000; 52, with more than 15,000 and less\nthan 20,000; 100, with more than 10,000 and less than 15,000; 264, with\nmore than 5,000 and less than 10,000; 156, with more than 4,000 and less\nthan 5,000; 236, with more than 3,000 and less than 4,000; 362, with\nmore than 2,000 and less than 3,000; 762, with more than 1,000 and less\nthan 2,000; and 925, with more than 500 and less than 1,000.\n\nOf the whole number of 3,647 public libraries mentioned in this report,\nwe find 221 which we recognize as those of Catholic institutions. There\nare no doubt others in the list, but there is no mark by which they can\nbe certainly recognized. Of these 221 distinctively Catholic libraries\nthe following are the chief:\n\n   _Place._         _Name._                   _Origin._      _Vols._\n\n   San Francisco,   St. Ignatius\u2019 College,         1855       11,000\n\n   Santa Clara,     Santa Clara College,           1851       10,000\n\n   Georgetown,      Georgetown College,            1791       32,268\n\n   Washington,      Gonzaga College,               1858       10,000\n\n   New Orleans,     Libraire de la famille,        1872       15,000\n\n   Baltimore,       Archiepiscopal,                ....       10,000\n\n   Baltimore,       Loyola College,                1853       21,500\n\n   Baltimore,       St. Mary\u2019s Seminary,           1791       15,000\n\n   Hagerstown,      St. James\u2019 College,            1842       11,000\n\n   Worcester,       College of the Holy Cross      1843       12,000\n\n   St. Louis,       College of the Christian       1860       22,000\n                    Brothers,\n\n   Brooklyn,        St. Francis\u2019 College,          ....       13,970\n\n   Fordham,         St. John\u2019s College,            1840       15,000\n\n   New York,        St. Francis Xavier\u2019s           1847       21,000\n                    College,\n\n   Cincinnati,      Mount St. Mary\u2019s,              1849       15,100\n\n   Cincinnati,      St. Xavier\u2019s College,          1840       17,000\n\n   Latrobe, Penn.,  St. Vincent\u2019s College,         1846       13,000\n\nIn these 17 Catholic libraries there are 264,838 volumes. It is a very\nrespectable number, and, when the probable quality of the books\ncontained in these collections is taken into account, the value of such\ncomparatively small libraries will be seen to be great. The number of\nvolumes in the other 204 Catholic libraries, as we have ascertained by a\nlaborious examination of the tables, is 448,688, so that the total\nnumber of volumes in the distinctively Catholic libraries is 713,526. It\nis a large number of books; but one might complain that it was not\nlarger. We are not sure that these complaints would be well founded. As\nCatholics we establish our own libraries, but as citizens we aid in the\nlabor and share the cost of forming the general libraries, and we have\nour part in the advantages which they afford. It will always be our\nduty, of course, to exert our influence in preserving these collections\nof books from the contamination of the works of authors whose aim is to\nundermine morals and to destroy faith; and to introduce to their shelves\nthe writings of the best and most able defenders and advocates of truth\nand religion. But this duty being well performed, we are free to aid in\nthe work of building up our general libraries and in enjoying the pure\nintellectual delights which they may afford.\n\nThirty-eight pages of the report before us are devoted to a chapter upon\nTheological Libraries. A table is given of 44 of the principal\ntheological libraries in the United States; they contain 528,024\nvolumes. Eight of them belong to Catholic theological seminaries and\ncontain 71,600 volumes. The two largest of the theological libraries are\nthose of the Union Theological Seminary of New York, and the Andover\nTheological Seminary, each of which contains 34,000 volumes. The report\nstates that, with a few exceptions, the public theological libraries in\nthis country are the libraries of theological seminaries. The exceptions\nare the General Theological Library in Boston, established in 1860, and\nnow containing 12,000 volumes; and the library of the Congregational\nAssociation in the same city, which contains 22,000 volumes and 80,000\npamphlets. None of the theological libraries are 100 years old. The\neldest of all of them is the library of St. Mary\u2019s Theological Seminary\nof St. Sulpice in Baltimore, founded in 1791 by the Sulpician Fathers.\nIt now contains 15,000 volumes. The report devotes considerable space to\na dissertation upon \u201cCatholic Libraries,\u201d and its remarks upon this head\nare conceived in a kindly and enlightened spirit. \u201cAll learning,\u201d writes\nthe reporter, \u201cis welcome to the shelves of Catholic libraries, and\nnothing is excluded from them that should not equally be excluded from\nany reputable collection of books. Nor will anti-Catholic works be found\nwanting to them, at least such as possess any force or originality. The\nhistory of the church being so interwoven with that of the world since\nthe days of Augustus C\u00e6sar, there is no period which is not redolent of\nher action, and consequently no history which does not have to treat of\nher, either approvingly or the reverse. In regard to general literature,\nshe preserved ... all that has come down to us from classic sources, and\ntherefore works of this character can be no strangers to shelves of\nCatholic libraries. Still less can the Sacred Scriptures be, which\nCatholic hands collected, authenticated, and handed down for the use of\nthe men of our time. Nor will the sciences be overlooked by\necclesiastics in forming their libraries; for in past ages it was the\ncare of their brethren, with such limited facilities as were at their\ncommand and in days inauspicious for scientific investigation, to\ncultivate them.\u201d No new truths these; but they are well expressed, and\nit is worth something to have them set forth in a volume prepared by\nfederal authority and published with federal approval. The report goes\non to speak of the general characteristics of Catholic theological\nlibraries. They contain, it says, abundant versions of the Sacred\nScriptures in all languages, with copious commentaries and expositions;\nand the writer adds that the professors of our Catholic theological\ninstitutions \u201care generally graduates of the best theological schools in\nEurope.\u201d He thus proceeds:\n\n\u201cNext in authoritative rank come the Fathers and Doctors of the church,\nfrom those who received instruction from the apostles themselves and\ncommitted their doctrine to writing, down to almost our own day; for St.\nAlphonsus Liguori, the latest on whom the Holy See has conferred the\ntitle of Doctor of the Universal Church, died only in the latter part of\nthe last century, and his authority is that which is principally\nfollowed in the treatment of moral questions. Works also by later\nwriters, principally on dogmatic subjects, are constantly appearing. The\nstudy of dogma embracing an investigation into all revealed truths, and\ntherefore essential to those who are to instruct others authoritatively,\ninvolves a reference to many learned books in which proofs and\nillustrations are elaborated to the last degree of exactness, side by\nside with every possible difficulty or objection that can be brought to\nbear against each doctrine treated of. Some works are occupied with the\ndiscussion of but a single point; others take in a wide range, and some\nvoluminous authors have published an entire course of dogma....\u201d \u201cThe\nstudy of moral, the other great branch of Catholic theology, embraces a\nscrutiny into every question of morals that needs to be investigated by\nthose who have the direction of consciences, or whose duty it is, in the\ntribunal of penance, to adjudicate upon matters affecting the rights of\nothers. As solutions in these cases are sometimes attended with\nconsiderable difficulty, and a grave responsibility is attached to the\ndelivery of an opinion, authorities for reference must be ample and\nexhaustive. Such authorities will be found in the theological libraries,\nand are relied upon in proportion to their world-wide repute, as\nrepresenting the opinions of prudent, learned, and experienced men.\u201d\n\nThe report goes on to speak of the reasons why every complete Catholic\nlibrary must have copies of the published acts of the general councils\nof the church, and of national and provincial councils, as well as of\nthe decisions and solutions of the various congregations at Rome, and\nother documents emanating from the Holy See. The supply of \u201cworks on\nritual,\u201d and those necessary for a thorough course of rational\nphilosophy, must be ample, and there must be works on mathematics,\nphysics, astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, and other sciences. We again\nquote:\n\n\u201cThe attention given in these schools to sacred eloquence\u2014for practice\nin which students are required to prepare and deliver sermons in\npresence of the community\u2014calls for the best models of sacred oratory,\nbesides works on rhetoric and elocution. As models of composition,\narrangement, and intrinsic solidity, the sermons of the ancient fathers\nshare equal attention with those of the great French orators of the last\ncentury, and no library for the use of ecclesiastics will be without a\ncopious supply of the works of those and others of the best pulpit\norators in the church. Catholic libraries in general\u2014and not those alone\nwhich are attached to theological schools\u2014will be found amply supplied\nwith controversial works written by Catholic authors. These are needed,\nhowever, not so much for the use of the owners as for that of\nnon-Catholic inquirers who wish to be enlightened in regard to some\ncontroverted point, or who desire to learn the evidences upon which the\nCatholic Church bases her claims to the credence of mankind.\nCatechetical works, of which there are a great number, answer this\npurpose still better when the polemic spirit has been allayed, and it is\nimpossible to conceive of a Catholic library, large or small, without an\nabundance of both these classes of books. The controversial works\ndiscuss every objection which can be alleged against the church or the\npractice of members of it, and are necessarily very numerous. Every age\nhas left behind it these testimonies to the controversies that agitated\nit, and the present age is no less prolific than its predecessors,\nthough the grounds of dispute are shifting now rather from dogma to\nhistorical questions and matters of science, indicating the lessening\nhold which doctrine has on the non-Catholic mind.\u201d\n\nAnd again:\n\n\u201cEcclesiastical history, of course, forms an important element in\nCatholic libraries; but this history not only includes the exhaustive\ntomes of writers who take in the whole history of the church, but of\nothers who illustrate a particular age, country, event, or transaction.\nWorks concerning the history of the church in the United States, or in\nparticular States, form a growing collection. The current of\ncontemporary Catholic history is well shown forth through the monthly\nand weekly publications which appear in many countries and languages.\nThe Catholic quarterlies, however, and some of the monthly publications,\nare devoted chiefly to literary or scientific criticism. The Catholic\nweeklies in this country are now so numerous that their preservation in\nlibraries is seldom attended to. If this apology is needed for the\nabsence from such libraries of publications that will form an important\nreference hereafter for others besides Catholics, it ought to be coupled\nwith the suggestion proper to be made in a work which will be placed in\nthe hands of persons of all religions: _that a general Catholic library\nought to be established at some central point where every Catholic\npublication, at least among those issued in this country, may have a\nplace. Materials for history would gather in such a collection that\nmight not readily be found combined in any other._\n\n\u201cHaving thus touched upon the more important characteristics of Catholic\nlibraries, it would be well, perhaps, to observe that while the leading\nones in this country are attached to seminaries, colleges, or religious\nhouses, there are many private collections of considerable value,\nespecially those in episcopal residences, or belonging to gentlemen of\nthe clergy or laity who, together with literary tastes, possess the\nmeans to gratify them. Catholic libraries are also beginning to be\nformed in cities and towns, chiefly under the auspices of associations\nthat seek to provide a safe and pleasant resort for young men in the\nevenings. In these libraries will be found the lighter Catholic\nliterature, to which no reference has so far been made in this\npaper\u2014travels, sketches, poems, tales, etc., a few of which are by\nAmerican and some Irish authors, but the majority by English writers,\nchiefly converts, or translated from the French, German, Flemish, and\nother Continental languages. Finally, it would be well to observe that\nCatholic libraries are accessible for reference, if not for study, to\nall inquirers. In most cases non-Catholic visitors would doubtless be\nwelcomed to them with great cordiality. _Those who have these libraries\nin keeping rather invite than repel scrutiny into whatever is\ndistinctively Catholic in their collections._\u201d\n\nWe regret that the limits of our space forbid us to dwell further upon\nthe contents of this really fascinating volume. To use such an adjective\nin speaking of a \u201cBlue-Book,\u201d or an official report, may seem\nextravagant, but in this case it is not so. Its chapters upon the growth\nof libraries in the United States; college libraries; law, medical, and\nscientific libraries; libraries in prisons and reformatories; libraries\nof the general and State governments; libraries of historical societies;\nand upon \u201ccatalogues and cataloguing,\u201d are crammed with useful and\nimportant information; and whatever may have been the sins of omission\nor commission that may be laid at the door of the \u201cDepartment of the\nInterior at Washington,\u201d we are willing to bear witness that its Bureau\nof Education, in the preparation and publication of this report, has\ndone much to atone for them.\n\n\n    ELEMENTS OF GEOMETRY. By G. M. Searle, C.S.P. With an Appendix\n    containing Problems and Additional Propositions. New York: John\n    Wiley & Sons. 1877.\n\nThe object of this work is to place geometry on a more perfectly logical\nbasis than it has been usually considered worth while to adopt in\ntext-books. Geometers at the present day generally agree as to the\nunsatisfactory nature of the axioms usually adopted, some being\nsuperfluous, and others, especially the famous one about parallels, not\nbeing clearly self-evident.\n\nThe reduction in the number of axioms has of course introduced some\ncomplexity into the reasoning in this book, and the difficulty about\nparallels is not completely removed; nor does the author pretend\ncompletely to remove it. Some new views, however, are presented which\nmay be worthy of consideration.\n\n\n    ELEMENTS OF ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. Adapted especially to the Discipline\n    of the Church in the United States. By Rev. S. B. Smith, D.D.,\n    formerly Professor of Canon Law, author of \u201cNotes,\u201d etc., etc. New\n    York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Einsiedeln: Benziger Brothers,\n    Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 1877.\n\nThis work of Dr. Smith\u2019s cannot fail to be a welcome addition to any\ntheological library. There are a great many works on canon law, it is\ntrue, but very few which give much information on the discipline of the\nchurch here, which is what priests in this country and those who are\npreparing for the priesthood principally need to understand.\n\nThe present volume goes far to supply this deficiency, and the author\npromises to supplement it soon by another, for which we shall look with\ninterest. He has made a good choice in writing in English; there seems\nto be no need of choosing Latin for a book on this subject, and intended\nfor this nation chiefly.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes:\n\nMissing or obscured punctuation was corrected.\n\nTypographical errors were silently corrected.\n\nSpelling and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant form\nwas found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.\n\nText in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).","title":"The Catholic World, Vol. 25, April 1877 to September 1877","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":486898}